Month: May 2016

Browsing functionality in a referenced binary

Keyword: object browser in Visual Studio

If you are working on a project with some binaries developed by the company previously and you don’t have access to the source code.

Aside from asking your colleague, use Visual Studio’s Object Explorer to browse the API in referenced binaries without the need of the source code.

Cannot bind multiple parameters in Web Api, cannot bind Json parameter

Simple, Web Api 1 doesn’t support multiple parameters.

Also, make sure the route config are correct so that the controller and action can be reached.

To bind Json parameter, use Content-Type: application/json in the request header, make sure the json object is the root object and the model to load from the server user properties instead of fields.

Cannot connect to SQL DB from IIS, connection works from IISExpress

Stackoverflow question/answer: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20723623/application-cannot-open-sql-connection-when-on-iis

You can either give permission to the app pool from within SQL Server.

Or create a SQL Server user/pass, update the connection string to use User/Pass instead of Integrated Security

Setting up SSL with IIS for development and testing of ASP.NET applications

Note: this will potentially solve the issue when Visual Studio shows the following error upon trying to debug: “Unable to debug the web server… An error occurred on a send.”

The problem can be solved by re-creating and adding a SSL cert to the port 443 binding of the default web application.

 

Follow the following steps:

From IIS, under the local server, open “Server Certificates”. Use an existing cert or create a self-signed cert, give it a name.

Select the Web application(not a virtual directory) that you want to use. Edit the bindings, add a binding for https port 443 and select the certificate you created previously and then save.

Note: when running applications off an existing web application in IIS, make sure to create virtual directories for each app if they are not available, you can do so by going to the project’s properties, under “Using local IIS server”, next to the URL of the app click the button “Create virtual directory”

Saving settings to app.config for C# winforms app

Follow the following stackoverflow question:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30572923/read-all-key-values-from-app-config-c-sharp

Configuration config = ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration(Application.ExecutablePath);

config.AppSettings.Settings.Remove("MySetting");
config.AppSettings.Settings.Add("MySetting", "some value");

config.Save(ConfigurationSaveMode.Modified);

To study of new code base

Use some of the suggestions below:

The power of communication is often underestimated, try to talk to the author(s) of the code first.

Then, read through design documents provided by the authors. However stop if the documents seem to make things more confusing than help you understand.

Make use of note and diagramming tools, such as the SQL Server diagram tool, to make understanding the code more intuitive.

Learning the framework or development style used (MVC, N-tier, REST api) can be very useful to understand how code work if it follows certain programming style.

Do a debug and step through the code, see how things connect with each other. Don’t abuse this method ’cause it can be time consuming.

Hack around to get the job done.