Code/Tea/Etc... : Visual C#

This blog has moved... notice #2...

Duncanma — Thu, 16 Sep 2004 05:17:00 GMT

For various reasons, the biggest being my desire to play around with .Text, I've moved my blog to my own server at http://blogs.duncanmackenzie.net/duncanma

following the 3 leaf model when they moved, I thought I should post this notice a couple of times...

This blog has moved...

Duncanma — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 17:11:00 GMT

For various reasons, the biggest being my desire to play around with .Text, I've moved my blog to my own server at http://blogs.duncanmackenzie.net

The first post over there shows the app that I wrote last night and then used to copy all of my posts and categories over from this blog to the new location... I'll post the code for that app at some point, as boring as it is...

Wes Haggard discusses the new iterators in C# 2.0

Duncanma — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 06:13:00 GMT

Recusive GetFiles for DirectoryInfo via a C# Iterator
I have been working on a project using C# Express and so I have been playing around with some of the new C# 2.0 features. In my project I had a need to get all the files of a particular type in a given directory including all sub-directories. The DirectoryInfo class has a method GetFiles that takes a search pattern (ie "*.exe") but it only searches that directory it doesn't search sub-directories. So I figured this would be a good chance for me to play with these new things called iterators. At any rate I wrote a recursive version of GetFiles using an iterator so that I could do a simple foreach loop to get all the files recursively.

Click on the title of the post to read the entire article...

C# 2005 and C# Express Content Up...

Duncanma — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 21:28:00 GMT

Just up...

Investigating Code Snippet Technology
Andrew W. Troelsen
Intertech Training
Summary: This article explorers the use of Visual Studio 2005 and Visual C# 2005 Express Edition code snippet technologies. Once the reader understands the XML syntax used to represent code snippets, this article examines the process of building and registering custom code expansions with your Microsoft .NET IDE of choice. (21 printed pages)

and up a few days ago...

An Introduction to Programming Using Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition
Andrew W. Troelsen
Intertech Training
Summary: This article introduces programming with the C# language using the Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Using various example projects, readers will be exposed to several aspects of the C# programming language and key concepts of the .NET platform. (23 printed pages)

The Updater Application Block... various additions...

Duncanma — Tue, 10 Aug 2004 08:16:00 GMT

One of the nice things about the Updater Application Block is that it was written to be quite extensible... I saw a post today where SamSantiago mentioned he had created a custom class to delete all those old versions on your machine whenever you do an update.... very cool, I'll be trying that out right away...

Personally, I've updated the updater in a few different ways, but the most recent changes have been the most reusable, in my opinon;

I fixed the code so that it no longer requires users to have admin rights...
I added a 'mandatory' flag to the updates (and updated the manifestutility in a few different ways), so that for some updates the client app would know not to ask the user if they want to upgrade... great for occasionally forcing everyone up to the same build...
and I modified the manifest retrieval code so that it can call an ASP or ASP.NET page, which in turn allowed me to create a manifest.aspx page that returns different manifests based on the user's credentials (so I can have a 'beta' group who are given one version, and everyone else gets the last major release...)

I've got to work out a way to get these bits of code online.... it isn't hard, but it takes time that I haven't planned in yet :)

Ok... I can finally read my comments again...

Duncanma — Sun, 08 Aug 2004 09:54:00 GMT

I'm sure I'll be one of many commenting on this, but the recent updates to .Text on this site are a wonderful improvement. For the past while I had been unable to really sift out the good comments from the bad, so real (non-spam) comments to the VB or C# FAQ sites, and to this blog... were all being drowned out by all of the spam. Keeping up with it (to delete the spam) was almost impossible and I gave up some time ago ...

We'll see how it goes, but I'm hoping these changes make these blogs sites a less attractive target for spam.

Previews of articles...

Duncanma — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 06:23:00 GMT

A couple of weeks ago I posted my "Quick Poll" Coding 4 Fun column in its unedited form... was that useful?

If it was, I can continue to do that with my articles ... basically posting my version of them up in advance onto www.duncanmackenzie.net and then redirecting that to the real article once it ends up on MSDN.

Anders on MSDNTV

Duncanma — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 22:11:00 GMT

Whiteboard with Anders Hejlsberg
At Tech Ed 2004, Anders Hejlsberg gave an informal talk, answered attendee questions, and wrote some code examples on the whiteboard. (July 29)

Trying out something 'bad'...

Duncanma — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 23:54:00 GMT

So, if you missed it... I was just playing with displaying a poll in the blog... don't worry, I won't make a habit of this :)... I did it using ~~the spawn of evil~~ an iframe... I've removed it now, the experiment is done... but it exposed an interesting problem. When viewed through the IFRAME IE's default settings (well, my settings... I'm not sure if they are the default) blocked any cookies from that page, which meant that you could vote as often as you liked... hmm... not a good thing. Obviously a second-line of defense is necessary.

Solutions at a Glance... great for all .NET developers interested in security...

Duncanma — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 23:22:00 GMT

I was just talking with J.D. Meier (from PAG) about the Improving Application Security book and he pointed out a great page to me... the "Solutions At A Glance" list... this page lists a ton of very frequently asked questions around .NET security and provides links deep into all that great PAG security info.

Some examples;

How to write secure managed code
Use strong names to digitally sign your assemblies and to make them tamperproof. At the same time you need to be aware of strong name issues when you use strong name assemblies with ASP.NET. Reduce your assembly attack profile by adhering to solid object oriented design principles, and then use code access security to further restrict which code can call your code. Use structured exception handling to prevent sensitive information from propagating beyond your current trust boundary and to develop more robust code. Avoid canonicalization issues, particularly with input file names and URLs.
For information about how to improve the security of your managed code, see Chapter 7, "Building Secure Assemblies." For more information about how to use code access security effectively to further improve security, see Chapter 8, "Code Access Security in Practice." For information about performing managed code reviews, see Chapter 21, "Code Review."

and

How to prevent SQL injection
Use parameterized stored procedures for data access. The use of parameters ensures that input values are checked for type and length. Parameters are also treated as safe literal values and not executable code within the database. If you cannot use stored procedures, use SQL statements with parameters. Do not build SQL statements by concatenating input values with SQL commands. Also, ensure that your application uses a least privileged database login to constrain its capabilities in the database.
For more information about SQL injection and for further countermeasures, see "SQL Injection" in Chapter 14, "Building Secure Data Access."

For a ton more questions and answers, you can check out the entire page here

ReSharper 1.0 Released...

Duncanma — Fri, 23 Jul 2004 20:16:00 GMT

From their site...

"ReSharper is an add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 that brings intelligent C# coding assistance, real-time error highlighting, and refactoring features to this popular development platform."

More info here...

Don't ask me why, but I've become the official forum for Spiderman 2

Duncanma — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 18:43:00 GMT

I blame google.

(250 + comments so far, not counting the ones I've had to remove)

Previewing my "Quick Vote" article...

Duncanma — Wed, 21 Jul 2004 09:08:00 GMT

I've put the draft of my next Coding 4 Fun column ('Duncan Mackenzie describes his process to build a "Quick Poll" using Visual Basic and ASP.NET.') up onto my personal site, click here to check it out.

Books, Books, Books...

Duncanma — Tue, 20 Jul 2004 20:30:00 GMT

I've been thinking about books and the MSDN developer centers for some time... I've been wondering what we should do in terms of highlighting books on the MSDN site.

Do you want reviews?
Top x Books by topic area (Beginning VB.NET, Data Access, Windows Forms, Language Focused...)? How would "Top" be determined though? Top could be sales #s, votes on some sort of dynamic site (which one, who should host this... INETA, http://www.dotnetbooks.com) ?
My favorite books? (which means Chris's favorites on Longhorn, Kent's on ASP.NET, Brian's on C++, etc...)
MVP Reviews?
No books at all? (You'll just use other sites to find .NET books?)
Sample Chapters?
Or, should we just feature them all (by topic) and rotate them through for highlighting?

I could set up a poll for this, but I think the discussion will be more useful so please use the comments section to voice your thoughts!!

We have a bit of a cluster in my poll results...

Duncanma — Tue, 20 Jul 2004 16:38:00 GMT

I'm running a poll on http://www.duncanmackenzie.net to see what topics I should write about next in my Coding 4 Fun column... There are 7 choices in total, but 3 are getting the lion's share of the votes...

Game Dev (a 'battleship' networked game, etc..)

27%

Web Development (like this polling component)

21%

Windows Control Development

21%

It seems these three categories are by far the most popular... with gaming leading the pack...

Go vote and let me know what you want to see...