Md. Mahfuzul Islam (John)

DotNetNuke module development : Broke UI while using AjaxControlToolkit TabPanel

2009-07-22T10:44:00.001+06:00

I was developing a DotNetNuke module for our Code71.com website. I was using ajaxcontroltoolkit’s tabpanel for this module. Everything was working fine in firefox. But when I checked that module in IE, UI of the TabPanel was broken :(.

I searched in for the issue, but could not find related to this problem. After spending a whole day trying to solve the problem (by changing css), I found that it was working fine with the default skin of DotNetNuke but broken with my custom skin! Then I copied all code from default skin to my custom skin, but still it was broken :(. Then I compared rendered HTML for two different skin and found that only difference is in DOCTYPE!

In my custom skin, I did not defined any DOCTYPE, so it was automatically generating -

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">

Then I changed the DOCTYPE and the UI was working fine.

To define a DOCTYPE for your skin in DotNetNuke, you have to create a xml file defining the DOCTYPE in your skin directory. This xml file should be named as [SkinName].doctype.xml. For example, if your skin name is MySkin then DOCTYPE file name will be MySkin.doctype.xml. Content of the xml file should be like this -

<SkinDocType>
  
  <![CDATA[<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">]]>

  
</SkinDocType>

Elasticfox showing error “Invalid EC2 private key” while trying to get “Administrator Password”

2009-07-02T16:30:00.002+06:00

If you are using Amazon EC2 and Elasticfox then getting the error “Invalid EC2 private key” is very common with Windows instance while trying to use command “Get Administrator Password”.

To solve this problem you need to change the "EC2 Private Key Template" setting of Elasticfox. Click on "Tools" in elasticfox window. It will bring the settings window.

You will find that the settings for "EC2 Private Key Template" is set with the file extension ".ppk". For example "C:\EC2\AWS_KEY${keyname}.ppk".
Now change this value with the path where your private key file is saved which was used to create the instance and change the extension to .pem. So after changing the setting it will look something like "C:\EC2\AWS_KEY\${keyname}.pem"

Hope this tips will solve the problem with getting administrator password using Elasticfox.

DotNetNuke module development : Custom module permission

2009-06-02T22:16:00.002+06:00

By default dotnetnuke provides role based permission in Page and module level. In module level it provides View/Edit permission by default. By using this module level permission you can give access to all View or Edit controls to any numbers of roles. But if you need this permission in more granular level, for example – you want to create an Article module where a regular user will be able to view any article and post comment (all view controls). You want another type of permission (ArticleWriter) which will be able to add new articles and to approve and publish those articles you need another permission (AritclePublisher) who will be able to add as well as approve any article. To implement this scenario you will need to add another two permission in your module.

By default DotNetNuke does not provide any easy way to do it without writing some codes. I have found one blog post in DotNetNuke.com and one article in CodeProject which explains the way to add new permissions in a module. I think these two articles will be very useful for anyone trying to add custom permission in his module.

How to get Skin directory in DotNetNuke

2009-04-22T08:42:00.001+06:00

If you want to keep your skin images or any other type of file that is related to your skin into skin directory, you need to get the path of that skin directory. To resolve the path of your skin directory DotNetNuke provides a property named “SkinPath” which belongs to DotNetNuke.UI.Skins.Skin class. You need to use <%= SkinPath %> to get the path of skin directory.

If you stored an image named “nav_back.jpg” in your skin directory and you want to set it as a background of a <td>, your code should be like -

NetBeans J2ME Project debugging problem : Attaching to localhost:xxxxx Connection refused

2009-04-10T14:14:00.002+06:00

After a long time I was working on a J2ME application using NetBeans. Previously that application was built using WTK and I was trying to add those source file in new netbeans project.

Application was compiling properly. But When I was starting debug, it was showing "Attaching to locahost:5999 Connection refused" in "Debugger Console". At first I thought that port is used by some other program or firewall was blocking NetBeans to use that port. But I found that port was not being used or blocked by any other program. Then I carefully examined all of the messages in NetBeans output window and found following message -
com.sun.kvem.midletsuite.InvalidJadException: Reason = 22
The manifest or the application descriptor MUST contain the attribute: MIDlet-1

After some googling I found the way to solve this "com.sun.kvem.midletsuite.InvalidJadException: Reason = 22" exception. When this exception was solved, "Attaching to localhost:xxxxx Connection refused" problem was also solved!!!

Here are the process to solve that InvalidJadException -

From your problematic NetBeans Mobility Project folder open /nbproject/project.properties (default project directory is My Documents\NetBeansProjects) file using any text editor. Search for the property "manifest.midlets". You will find something like - manifest.midlets=MIDlet-1: , , \n
In this manifest.midlets property, midlet name is missing, so NetBeans was giving that error. To solve that exception you need to add your midlet name here. For example, if your midlet name is "HelloMidlet" which is under package "hello" then you need to change the line like -
manifest.midlets=MIDlet-1: HelloMidlet, , hello.HelloMidlet\n

SQL Publishing Wizard - A tool to generate database schema and data in Sql Server 2005

2008-09-10T23:45:00.002+06:00

I was searching for some functionality to generating database schema with existing data in Sql Server Management Studio Express. But could not find such functionality there. So, I was searching for some tool that can generate database schema with data.

Finally I've found that there is a tool - "SQL Publishing Wizard" comes with Sql Server 2005 express in Visual Studio 2008 installation dvd (I'm not sure about VS 2005). If you install SqlServer2005 express with Visual Studio 2008 installation then you can find this tool in - "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Publishing\1.2\SqlPubWiz.exe". If this is not installed you can download it from - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=56E5B1C5-BF17-42E0-A410-371A838E570A&displaylang=en

You can also start this tool from Visual Studio. Right click on any Data Connection from Server Explorer and select "Publish to Provider". This will start "SQL Publishing Wizard" for the selected database.

How to mock indexer and out parameter in NMock

2008-07-24T23:42:00.002+06:00

In my last project I was trying to mock an indexer and some out parameters. But I could not find anything about mocking indexer and out parameter in NMock documentation. Then after some google searches, I have found some good post about these topics.

You can view this blog post on mocking out parameters. I think this post is good enough to learn how to mock out parameter. Now, if you want to mock an indexer then you can see in this post. You can also take a look in this post to know how to mock an indexer in NMock.

Array/List of numbers in oracle procedure or function

2008-07-12T00:17:00.002+06:00

Sometimes you may need to pass a list of numbers or string into a oracle procedure or function. But there is no built in support for an array or list in oracle. To solve this type of problem you can create your own array type and a small utility function which returns an array of numbers from a comma(,) delimited string of numbers. Here are the steps -

1. Create an array type

CREATE OR REPLACE TYPE array AS TABLE OF NUMBER;

2. Create the utility function which will return array of numbers from an comma delimited string of numbers.

CREATE FUNCTION get_array(num_list IN VARCHAR2)
RETURN array PIPELINED
IS
    countAppearance NUMBER := 0;
    delimiter_position NUMBER := -1;
    start_position NUMBER := 1;
    num VARCHAR2(10); 
 
BEGIN
    WHILE delimiter_position != 0 LOOP
        countAppearance := countAppearance + 1;
        delimiter_position := InStr(num_list, ',', 1,countAppearance);
        IF delimiter_position = 0 THEN
            num := Trim(SubStr(num_list,start_position));
        ELSE
            num := Trim(SubStr(num_list,start_position,(delimiter_position - start_position)));
            start_position := delimiter_position + 1;
        END IF; 
 
        PIPE ROW(TO_NUMBER(num)); 
 
    END LOOP;
    RETURN;
END get_array;

Here is a sample function which uses this get_array function -

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION testFunc(num_list IN VARCHAR2)
RETURN NUMBER
IS
   total NUMBER := 0;
BEGIN
   SELECT 
      COUNT(*) INTO total 
   FROM 
      testTable 
   WHERE 
      age IN (SELECT * FROM TABLE(get_array(num_list)));
 
   RETURN total;
END testFunc;
 
In the same way you can also create array for string. It will be helpful when you will need to pass an array from a programming language to a oracle function/procedure.

CruiseControl.NET (ccnet) webdashboard in IIS7

2008-06-02T21:43:00.008+06:00

Cruise Control.Net (ccnet) installer does not add webdashboard as a virtual directory under iis7. If you want to use webdashboard then you have to manually add it as an application.

After you adding it as an application you may get some errors because of Managed Pipeline Mode of your Application Pool settings. By default iis7 will configure your site with DefaultAppPool which has Integrated Managed Pipeline Mode. You have to chage your webdashboard's ApplicationPool's Managed Pipeline Mode to Classic in order to make it work properly.

If you want to keep default settings (Integrated Managed Pipeline Mode), then you have to add following settings in your webdashboard's web.config file. This configuration will work both in iis6 and iis7.

<system.webServer>

<validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false" />

<handlers accessPolicy="Read, Write, Script, Execute">

<add name="ccnetAspxHandler" verb="*" path="*.aspx" type="ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.WebDashboard.MVC.ASPNET.HttpHandler,
ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.WebDashboard" />

<add name="ccnetXmlHandler" verb="*" path="*.xml" type="ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.WebDashboard.MVC.ASPNET.HttpHandler,
ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.WebDashboard" />

</handlers>

</system.webServer>

Nature

2007-08-26T22:53:00.000+06:00

Flower

2007-08-26T10:50:00.001+06:00

Flower

2007-08-26T10:35:00.001+06:00

Flower

2007-08-26T10:28:00.001+06:00

Flower

2007-08-26T10:09:00.001+06:00

Nature

2007-08-26T09:53:00.001+06:00

Flower

2007-08-26T09:45:00.001+06:00