Recently I have been working on creating a dynamic reporting engine for use within the DotNetNuke system, a method to allow for the execution of a stored procedure and the proper display of the results. This includes creating a list of parameters, including dynamically loaded lookup systems and more. Well the most complex item that I have had to condition for was how to deal with filter options that require the use of the SQL IN clause, there are many ways of doing this, but I have found a way that appears to work perfect for my needs, this will be explained in this posting.
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Posted by Mitchel on Friday, August 08, 2008
Recently I have answered a number of questions regarding an easy way to export datagrid contents to excel format. In this blog post I will share a static class that I have created called "ExportHelper" which I use quite often to generate quick Excel exports of datagrid data. I will outline the process and the code below. It should be noted that this solution is NOT a DotNetNuke specific solution, I use this for both DotNetNuke and standard ASP.NET solutions.
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Posted by Mitchel on Thursday, May 22, 2008
Recently when browsing the forums on DotNetNuke.com I have noticed more and more
questions regarding Script Injection vulnerability in the core and third-party modules.
I have often found that at times it is hard for non-developers to truly understand
the concept of script injection and what makes a site vulnerable. So in this
article I will take a bit of time to discuss both types of injection that users
of DotNetNuke should be aware of, how to test for them, and also how to prevent
the vulnerability when creating modules.
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Posted by Mitchel on Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Recently I have been asked by multiple people what rapid design tools I use, or
what types of code generation tools do I use. Many people are surprised when
I tell them that for the most part I don't use any rapid generation tools.
I do use a few home grown tools, such as my Info Class Generator, which is available
on this site. However, that is as far as I go with automated code generators.
However, one thing that I have started using more and more frequently are Code Snippets
within Visual Studio.
I have found that creating a few helpful Code Snippets has allowed me to quickly
and easily format my code, and build my needed structures in almost no time.
In this blog article I will share two of my most commonly used Code Snippets, if
there is a demand I will post future code snippets here as well.
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Posted by Mitchel on Sunday, March 02, 2008
Recently there have been numerous discussions on the DotNetNuke.com Forums regarding hosting providers and who one should go with and who they should switch to because they are unhappy with their current provider. During all of these discussions I have always recommended the company that I use for hosting 3Essentials. Since making this recommendation I have been receiving numerous e-mails regarding the process to actually migrate a live site over to 3Essentials so I thought I would write a short blog article that explains the basics of moving a website over to 3Essentials, in actuality these instructions SHOULD work for most providers, however ther might be some differences.
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Posted by Mitchel on Friday, July 27, 2007
Recently I have noticed an increased number of questions regarding the upgrade process from DNN 3.x to DNN 4.x and overall I do not think there is very much good documentation available on how to actually complete the upgrade. Therefore with this article I will walk you through the process of upgrading a 3.x site to 4.x, I will try to cover as many of the "gotchas" as possible, but please remember as with all of my other tutorials PLEASE use these at your own risk!
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Posted by Mitchel on Thursday, June 28, 2007
I am sure that most readers of this site have at one point or another noticed my RegularExpression articles. Well this past week I was looking for a very specific regular expression and thought I would share it with you. The following regular expresion is used to validate a GUID value for user input. You can use this to ensure that product keys and other GUID values that you are using are in the proper format.
^(\{){0,1}[0-9a-fA-F]{8}\-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}\-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}\-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}\-[0-9a-fA-F]{12}(\}){0,1}$
Posted by Mitchel on Sunday, April 22, 2007
Like many ASP.NET programmers I utilize a third party hosting company to host all of my sites. We have all ran into situations where we have been loosing sessions and other oddities and it would be very helpful to find out exactly what caused the application to restart. Well thanks to this post on DotNetNuke.com by Frankt I have found a way to track this information. In this entry I will provide you with code that can obtain this information
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Posted by Mitchel on Thursday, March 15, 2007
This posting is an overview document that provides examples of sending SMTP e-mail from .NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0. It covers the differences between each of the .NET versions as well as the methods needed to send SMTP messages using an authenticated SMTP server.
Please see the full posting for detailed information!
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Posted by Mitchel on Wednesday, February 28, 2007
This is the second part of my Regular Expression overview. In the first article I discussed the basics of creating Regular Expressions and provided a link to test expression patterns using the .NET Framework RegEx classes. In this article I will discuss the various actions that can be taken to match values in a string using regular expressions. I will also discuss how you can implement a SQL CLR UDF to allow regular expression validation from your database to provide a strong level of input validation at the database level.
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Posted by Mitchel on Tuesday, December 12, 2006
I have created this two part article series to provide a quick and practical introduction to using regular expressions.. Regular expressions can be used for many things; however, they are typically used for input validation or to perform advanced searches on text in supporting applications. This first article will explain how to create a regular expression pattern; the expression defines what is considered a match. The second article will provide details on how to implement regular expressions in .NET applications.
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Posted by Mitchel on Wednesday, November 29, 2006
So like many personal development projects, I have a few ASP.NET applications I am working on that have no money backing them and I need to create reports. So for the past week or two I have been looking for a good free .NET charting component that I can use to create bar and pie charts for my ASP.NET application.
So far, I have found one free control called "WebChart" provided by Carlos Aguilar Mares via his website, a link to the control is here.
Overall I am very happy with his control, however it does take some manipulation to get things laid out correctly if you are using datasets that have large (20+ character) element titles as the legends and row indicators are sometimes rendered in a non visible location.
I found this to be a very helpful tool for creating simple to moderatley complex data charts. If anyone knows of more "Free" chart components please let me know.
Posted by Mitchel on Sunday, October 01, 2006
Included in this entry is sample C#.NET code (1.1 and 2.0 compliant) that can encrypt and decrypt data files. The input elements are byte arrays and it uses a simple key value that you can substitute for a more advanced value if needed.
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Posted by Mitchel on Monday, September 25, 2006