RamblingThoughts

2010-10-05T11:57:00.002-04:00

NY to FL Aboard the Roadrunner Trip Log

2010-10-04T21:32:00.004-04:00

Here are some video's from a trip I recently made. I have posted them here as an example of how to code them for the NY to FL Aboard the RoadRunner blog

Skipper Bob's video in New York City

Skipper Bob's video in Norfolk

Skipper Bob's interview with the crew

MVC Up and Running on my Host's Server

2009-03-05T19:10:00.001-05:00

I use Applied Innovation for my hosted server. I recently tried to publish my technology site which is an ASP.NET MVC application. No luck. Could not get it to recognize the routing stuff. I contacted their support staff and in a couple of hours, they made the fixes they needed to make and it's working perfectly now!

The site is www.kreiselman.com/technology

It's very new and will change as I get time to work on it.

Xml to Html Using LINQ

2009-02-10T16:34:00.006-05:00

Here’s something I just worked up to convert Xml to Html using Linq. My goal was to produce output that looks like:

The xml string I have to work with is:

Now, I know there are a ton of different ways to accomplish this. I initially used a brute force approach and generated the html by looping through the xml document and writing the individual lines of html. I wanted to use Linq, so I started looking around to see how it can be done.

Nothing matched up very well because of the “real” data is stored as attributes instead of elements. But with some trial and error, I came up with the following Linq statement to produce what I wanted:

private string XmlToHtml(string value)
{
XElement layersXml = XElement.Parse(value);

    XElement html =
    new XElement("div", new XElement("div", new XAttribute("class", "info"), "This request has returned field information for ", layersXml.Attribute("count").Value, " layer tables."),
        from layer in layersXml.Descendants("layer")
        select new XElement("div",
            new XAttribute("class", "layerinfo"),
            new XElement("h3", new XAttribute("class", "layername"), (string)layer.Attribute("name")),
            new XElement("div", new XAttribute("class", "fields"),
                from field in layer.Elements("fields").Descendants("field")
                select new XElement("div",
                    new XElement("span", new XAttribute("class", "fnametxt"), "Field Name: "),
                    new XElement("span", new XAttribute("class", "fieldname"),(string)field.Attribute("name")),
                    new XElement("span", new XAttribute("class", "typetxt"), "Type: "),
                    new XElement("span", new XAttribute("class", "typename"), (string)field.Attribute("type"))))
        )
    );
    return html.ToString();

}

This is not the most elegant code as you still need to know a lot about the structure and names contained in the xml. It really is kind of cool the way you can tie the code together though.

VS2008 Choose Items Error

2009-02-06T09:09:00.003-05:00

I’ve just sent several hours chasing down this problem. My attempts where focused on the error code 0xe0434f4d. I chased down the recommendations to no avail.

Then I went after “choose items” and discovered the blog entry at http://andreascode.blogspot.com/2008/12/vs2008-crash-on-choose-items-in-toolbox.html

Following Andreas’ instructions solved my problems. Thanks Andreas!

Rethinking

2009-02-05T09:21:00.001-05:00

After spending 2 years in the .net windows application world, the economy has caught with me. I’m now leaning back to the web world and GIS mapping systems.

My efforts are going to be targeted at using the asp.net MVC environment to develop my applications.

Wish List

2008-03-12T10:22:00.002-04:00

Here are my top 5 things to do:

Ability to control who can

add, move, drop, and edit widgets
add new pages
edit Titles (both on widgets and pages)

Be able to Delete a Page
Apply portal page set up to a user group instead of a specific user
Manage relationships between users and user groups
Be able to "Publish" portal setup to a user group.

I've solved the first item. More on that in a future blog.

Beginning Web Portal Development...

2008-03-11T19:59:00.000-04:00

I've kicked around the idea of Web Portal development for the past 5 years. In the early days, I used DotNetNuke (DNN) to deploy an interesting portal that allow selected users to add and manage content on the portal. The guests that access the web site see what the administrators want them to see.

DNN has continually evolved over the years and upgrading to new releases can be extremely difficult. I haven't touched the site for at least 3 years because it ain't broke, so why screw with it? Lately, I've had some thoughts about what can be done with it, but I don't have the enthusiasm to muddle through everything it would take to make DNN do what I want.

I recently picked up, and started reading Omar AL Zabir's book, 'Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5'. There is some pretty cool stuff going on with Omar's Web Portal. Some of it I like, and some of it I don't really agree with. But that depends on what you want to accomplish with the Web Portal. I'm looking for something that will be easy to turn over to special administrators that will put the content together in a meaningful way, while the ultimate consumer of the site sees what they are supposed to see.

Omar's version allows things like adding widgets (content), dragging and dropping them around on the page, changing settings, removing widgets, adding pages (tabs), and other neat things. I see this as a really cool feature for the admin's to do their job, but I'm not sold on turning it loose to the general user. It works great for the population that Omar's addressing, but my thoughts are for a different group of users.

I'm not looking for the Portal to be the spot where everyone wants to start their day with. I am looking to accomplish providing a site that can be managed easily and provide a meaningful experience to both types of users.

So, with all that said, what am I looking to do and what am I looking to do it with?

As I said, the features Omar describes look like the things I'd like to provide to my admin's. I just don't want to give the end user the same privileges. So I'm going to use the things described in Omar's book and make some changes to them to meet my needs of allowing for different permissions to different users. I also have another agenda, and that is to start using the new technologies of Linq and WorkFlow.

This effort is going to result in a series of posts that will follow what I'm attempting to do.

I hope you'll stay tuned and I welcome your comments.

Otherwise it'll be a way for me to document what the hell I've done.