Fiddler and Asp.Net

Ran across this today, just a handy item to know.  I use Fiddler a lot of debugging web programming.  Today I needed to use to to debug some Web.Request conversation.  For the most part I write everything out to log files and it contains what I need.  But, I was dealing with a tech support organization who really wanted Fiddler output.


http://weblog.west-wind.com/posts/2009/Jan/14/Monitoring-HTTP-Output-with-Fiddler-in-NET-HTTP-Clients-and-WCF-Proxies

So, even though I have libraries to man-handle the Web.Requests the following entry in the web.config file allowed Fiddler to see the conversation.  No code change!

  <system.net>
    <defaultProxy>
      <proxy
              usesystemdefault="False"
              bypassonlocal="True" 
              proxyaddress="http://127.0.0.1:8888"              
              />
    </defaultProxy>
  </system.net>

If you forget and don't have Fiddler running, you can get the following error

System.Net.Sockets.SocketException: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it 127.0.0.1:8888

Handy App Pool info - 32bit vs 64 bit

We process a lot of huge document so to be able to run in 64 bit mode and use more than 4GB of memory is kind of important.

Trying to figure out which app pools are actually running in 32-bit mode

appcmd list wp

Then go into Task Manager, show processes for all users. If the PID doesn't show up then View | Select Columns | check PID

The processes that have a *32 next to the name are the ones running in 32 bit mode.

So, w3wp.exe *32 is running in 32 bit mode

How to solve that...

Go into the IIS Manager, find the Application Pools, right click | advanced settings | Enable 32-bit application = False.

You must compile your application in 64 bit mode or AnyCPU.  Here is a really good explanation for
moving-asp-net-web-application-from-32-bit-to-64-bit

MSChart cheat sheet

Microsoft bought Dundas charts.  Sometimes it helps to google that tool as well.  Better documented.
Dundas Documentation

Line graphs are not fond of nulls, seems to mess up results

Formatting
chart.Series[name].Label = "#VALY{C0}";  //will give you the value of Y formatting with currency

chart.ChartAreas[0].AxisY.LabelStyle.Format = "{C0}";  //format the labels of the Y axis with currency

abcPDF

Here is an interesting problem when using abcPDF Gecko engine.

Error creating initial PDF: WebSupergoo.ABCpdf9.Internal.PDFException: Failed to add HTML: Page load timed out.; Gecko engine hit an error it was unable to recover from. Possible causes: XULRunner folder is corrupt or is from another version of ABCpdf. ---> WebSupergoo.ABCpdf9.Internal.PDFException: Gecko engine hit an error it was unable to recover from. Possible causes: XULRunner folder is corrupt or is from another version of ABCpdf. at WebSupergoo.ABCpdf9.Internal.Gecko.GeckoWorker.AddImageUrl(String url, Double pageWidthMm, Double pageHeightMm, AddImageUrlOptions options, UInt32& numCommands, Byte[]& data) --- End of inner exception stack trace ---


This took a while to track down. It is a combo of two things. One, if the page that you are rendering has something like this one it:

$(document).ready(function () { window.print(); });

And, your abcPDF Gecko MediaType is Screen. Regardless of your UseScript setting.

Now the document also refer to an error in another condition as well. Wouldn't it be awesome if they would give you the exception that will be thrown?

"For the Gecko engine, the Screen media must be used with UseScript true. An invalid combination (i.e. Screen with UseScript false) yields an exception when you call AddImageUrl or AddImageHtml."

I must also say, I have been a huge fan of WebSupergoo for a long time. I have programmed a lot of heavy duty PDF magic with their product. Also, I have been a fan of their support. But, I have to say their support is getting slow to respond and unhelpful.

Quick way to access the GAC

"Just hit Windows+R and type Assembly"

Digesting Sql Server View Definitions

I needed to parse a view definition and figure out the field mappings and underlying tables.  Just some tricks along the way.  I was using Sql Server 2008.

This will give you the entire view definition divided out into rows.  Each row constitutes 255 chars

  EXEC sp_helptext 'myViewName'
or
EXEC sp_help 'myViewName'

This gives you the entire view definition

select definition, *
from sys.objects     o
join sys.sql_modules m on m.object_id = o.object_id
where o.object_id = object_id( 'myViewName')
  and o.type      = 'V'

Getting all the tables and fields that a view is dependant upon

sp_depends @objname = N'dbo.myViewName'


Getting the columns in the view in an easier consumable format

SELECT
*
FROM  
  INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
WHERE  
  TABLE_NAME like ('%myViewName%')
ORDER BY
  ORDINAL_POSITION ASC;

Server 2012 Log Off

Tip of the Day-- go to the Start "screen", click on your user account picture/name in the upper-right hand corner of the screen, and select "Sign out".  Or you can ‬select "Switch User" from here.

To get to the "Start" menu hover the bottom right hand edge of the task bar and the "charms" should pop up--Start, Settings, etc... 

This might be the first in a series of "How do I do what I use to do"

Directory compares without installing a nifty little app

Here's the right way to do it, without the external downloads.  It looks like a lot at first, but once you've done it, it's very easy.  It works in all Windows versions from 7 back to 95.  For our example assume that you're comparing two directories named 'A' and 'B'.
1. run cmd.exe to get a command prompt.  (In Windows 7, the powershell won't work for this, FYI.)  Then do it again, so that you have two of them open next to each other.
2. in each window go to the directories that you want to compare.  (Using 'cd' commands.  If you're not comfortable with this, then you should probably go with the external utilities, unless you want to learn command prompt stuff.)
3. type 'dir /b > A.txt' into one window and 'dir /b > B.txt' into the other.  You'll now have two text files that list the contents of each directory.  The /b flag means bare, which strips the directory listing down to file names only.
4. move B.txt into the same folder as A.txt.
5. type 'fc A.txt B.txt'.  The command 'fc' means file compare.  This will spit out a list of the differences between the two files, with an extra line of text above and below each difference, so you know where they are.  For more options on how the output is formatted, type 'fc /?' at the prompt.  You can also pipe the differences into another file by using something like 'fc A.txt B.txt > differences.txt'.

use dir /s/b to include the subdirectories

Useless or fun and useful? Make windows minimize

Win7

Another *neat* little trick is if you want to ONLY show one window on your screen and minimize everything else, just grab the title bar with your mouse and SHAKE THE WINDOW REALLY HARD.  Everything but the window you're holding on to will minimize.  To bring everything back up, just shake your single Explorer window again and it all restores.