Pluralsight

July 23, 2013 1 Comment

Or is it Pluralsite?  They seem to use both.  In any event, I finished an audition for Pluralsight yesterday.  It was a 10 minute demo of slides and code.  It was a really interesting process and makes me appreciate what it takes to do it.  Lesson learned include:

1) Script the slide deck – down to the pauses for breathing.  I first tried to do it without any help – epic failure.  I then tried to do it with bullet points – failure.  After about an hour of takes and re-takes of the first slide, I surrendered and scripted everything.  I then could get through the slide deck in about 5 takes per slide.

2) Everything is editable.  In the beginning, once I screwed up, I would stop and restart.  Then, I realized that I was re-recoding my good content so I started to place a break after my screw up, re-record and then edit out the the screw-up.  I learned that to do this effectively, I need splice points that don’t look like splice points so I can screw up without losing the good stuff.

3) Speaking of which, I spent waaaay too much time in Camtasia, the video editing software.  Just learning how to use that took a better part of my Sunday.  Once I figured it out some, it was great to use.

4) I did the code in about 6 takes – and it shows.  I did not script my code, instead I treated it more like the classes I teach with the occasional flub and mistyping (And I technical error that Rob Seder sent me).  I also typed my code versus drag and dropping code blocks (or using code snippets).  I talked to different people and each have a different option on this – I find presentations more interesting with typing, even if it is not as smooth as a professional typist.  Some people like the typing (you can really hear my mechanical keyboard in the video), others do not.  Derik Whittaker was kind enough to do a full-on, no holds-barred review of what I did suggested in speeding up time for the longer typing moments – which I didn’t even think of.

5) Speaking of Derik, he has done a couple of courses and he showed me how to prepare for a course.  If I get picked up, I will implement much of his methodology.  Basically, you can’t be too organized for teaching a Pluralsight course.  Derik has a 3 monitor setup when recording and he scripts everything in one-note.  He also does much of his effects in editing, so he is not concentrating on that stuff when recording.

6) Speaking of getting picked up, there is a TON of content in the pipeline.  I am pitching .NET best practices and there are several other courses that have some overlap (some already in prod) so I am curious that if the course gets green-lighted, how many people will actually watch it.

In any event, it was an interesting process and since I learned something, it was worth it.  If I get picked up, I will take a hiatus from blogging because my free time will be spent on that.  Seems like a worthwhile adventure, no?

Filed under Pluralsight

WPF Event Bubbling and Routed Events

July 16, 2013 Leave a comment

Consider a User Control with a single button on it:

  1. <UserControl x:Class="Tff.ButtonClickBubble.MainUserControl"
  2.              xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation&quot;
  3.              xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml&quot;
  4.              xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006&quot;
  5.              xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008&quot;
  6.              mc:Ignorable="d" Height="100" Width="100">
  7.     <Grid Background="Red" Margin="0,0,0,0">
  8.         <Button x:Name="MainButton"
  9.             Content="Push Me" HorizontalAlignment="Left"
  10.                 Margin="19,36,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top"
  11.                 Width="62" Height="25"
  12.                 Click="MainButton_Click"/>
  13.     </Grid>
  14. </UserControl>

 

In the code behind, the click event shows a dialog

  1. public partial class MainUserControl : UserControl
  2. {
  3.     public MainUserControl()
  4.     {
  5.         InitializeComponent();
  6.     }
  7.  
  8.     private void MainButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
  9.     {
  10.         MessageBox.Show(e.Source.ToString());
  11.     }
  12. }

After hitting F6 so the control will show in my toolbox, I then put an instance of that control on a basic page like so:

  1. <Window
  2.         xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation&quot;
  3.         xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml&quot;
  4.         xmlns:local="clr-namespace:Tff.ButtonClickBubble" x:Class="Tff.ButtonClickBubble.MainWindow"
  5.         Title="MainWindow" Height="236" Width="184">
  6.     <Grid x:Name="MainGrid" Background="AliceBlue">
  7.         <local:MainUserControl HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="35,44,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top"/>
  8.     </Grid>
  9. </Window>

 

When I hit F5, I get the expected MessageBox:

image

So now I want the main window to intercept that button click and pop its own dialog box.  The Window class does not have a click event – rather it has a mousedown event.  By adding the mouse down event hander to the main window, I have this:

  1. <Window
  2.         xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation&quot;
  3.         xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml&quot;
  4.         xmlns:local="clr-namespace:Tff.ButtonClickBubble" x:Class="Tff.ButtonClickBubble.MainWindow"
  5.         Title="MainWindow" Height="236" Width="184" MouseDown="Window_MouseDown">

 

And in the code behind:

  1. private void Window_MouseDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
  2. {
  3.     MessageBox.Show(e.Source.ToString());
  4. }

 

Unfortunately, that doesn’t work.  The button click event swallows the event so the MouseDown only fires on the part of the window where the button is not:

imageimage

So I went into StackOverflow and I found this post that I think describes the problem.  So I changed the MouseDown to the PreviewMouseDown event and sure enough, I can handle the event from the main screen:

image

But the ClickEvent on the button is not being fired.  I then added a e.handled = false but that did not help:

  1. private void Window_PreviewMouseDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
  2. {
  3.     MessageBox.Show(e.Source.ToString());
  4.     e.Handled = false;
  5. }

 

So the answer marked as correct on stack overflow does apply here.  The answer below the marked as correct answer is relevant.  I tried to add a handler to the Grid (Windows don’t have AddHandler methods) like this:

  1. public MainWindow()
  2. {
  3.     InitializeComponent();
  4.     MainGrid.AddHandler(MouseDownEvent, new MouseButtonEventHandler(MainGrid_MouseDown), true);
  5. }
  6.  
  7. private void MainGrid_MouseDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
  8. {
  9.     MessageBox.Show(e.Source.ToString());
  10. }

 

The problem is that it is not working either.  Fortunately, the answer below THAT one does work:

  1. <Window
  2.         xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation&quot;
  3.         xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml&quot;
  4.         xmlns:local="clr-namespace:Tff.ButtonClickBubble" x:Class="Tff.ButtonClickBubble.MainWindow"
  5.         Title="MainWindow" Height="236" Width="184" >
  6.     <Grid x:Name="MainGrid" Background="AliceBlue" Button.Click="MainGrid_MouseDown">
  7.         <local:MainUserControl HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="35,44,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top"/>
  8.     </Grid>
  9. </Window>

 

And

  1. public partial class MainWindow : Window
  2. {
  3.     public MainWindow()
  4.     {
  5.         InitializeComponent();
  6.     }
  7.  
  8.     private void MainGrid_MouseDown(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
  9.     {
  10.         MessageBox.Show(e.Source.ToString());
  11.     }
  12.  
  13. }

 

They key thing is wiring up the Grid like this:  Button.Click="MainGrid_MouseDown"

Filed under WPF

SSIS Packages

July 9, 2013 Leave a comment

Dear Future Jamie:

 

If you have to set up a SSIS package in the future and you need to use non-integrated security – you can’t save the password in the package itself.  You need to create a .config file and place it on a central location on the data server.  You can then enter in the Password into that file and the job will run.

 

Love Current Jamie

Filed under SSIS

Meetup’s API

July 9, 2013 Leave a comment

One of the things I want to do at this year’s TRINUG’s code camp is to have self-service kiosks the way that Mark Wilson did for the Charlotte code camp.  To that end, I took a look at Justin Saraceno’s awesome project on Github of consuming the Meetup API to do the door prize at TRINUG.

Instead of javascript, I am going to write the app in C# and side-load it onto a couple of kiosks.  To that end, I built a web request/response to the meetup API:

  1. static void GetMeetupInformation()
  2. {
  3.     String url = @"https://api.meetup.com/2/event/125656692?key=&quot; + _apiKey;
  4.     WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(url);
  5.     request.ContentType = @"application/json; charset=utf-8";
  6.  
  7.     WebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
  8.     using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()))
  9.     {
  10.         String responseText = reader.ReadToEnd();
  11.         Console.WriteLine(responseText);
  12.     }
  13. }

 

I then pushed the response text into JSONToCSharp and got the following classes:

  1. namespace Tff.MeetUpAPI
  2. {
  3.     public class Member
  4.     {
  5.         public string name { get; set; }
  6.         public int member_id { get; set; }
  7.     }
  8.  
  9.     public class MemberPhoto
  10.     {
  11.         public string photo_link { get; set; }
  12.         public string thumb_link { get; set; }
  13.         public int photo_id { get; set; }
  14.         public string highres_link { get; set; }
  15.     }
  16.  
  17.     public class Event
  18.     {
  19.         public string id { get; set; }
  20.         public object time { get; set; }
  21.         public string event_url { get; set; }
  22.         public string name { get; set; }
  23.     }
  24.  
  25.     public class Venue
  26.     {
  27.         public int id { get; set; }
  28.         public string zip { get; set; }
  29.         public double lon { get; set; }
  30.         public bool repinned { get; set; }
  31.         public string name { get; set; }
  32.         public string state { get; set; }
  33.         public string address_1 { get; set; }
  34.         public double lat { get; set; }
  35.         public string city { get; set; }
  36.         public string country { get; set; }
  37.     }
  38.  
  39.     public class Group
  40.     {
  41.         public int id { get; set; }
  42.         public double group_lat { get; set; }
  43.         public double group_lon { get; set; }
  44.         public string join_mode { get; set; }
  45.         public string urlname { get; set; }
  46.     }
  47.  
  48.     public class Result
  49.     {
  50.         public string response { get; set; }
  51.         public Member member { get; set; }
  52.         public MemberPhoto member_photo { get; set; }
  53.         public object created { get; set; }
  54.         public Event @event { get; set; }
  55.         public object mtime { get; set; }
  56.         public int guests { get; set; }
  57.         public int rsvp_id { get; set; }
  58.         public Venue venue { get; set; }
  59.         public Group group { get; set; }
  60.         public string comments { get; set; }
  61.     }
  62.  
  63.     public class Meta
  64.     {
  65.         public string lon { get; set; }
  66.         public int count { get; set; }
  67.         public string link { get; set; }
  68.         public string next { get; set; }
  69.         public int total_count { get; set; }
  70.         public string url { get; set; }
  71.         public string id { get; set; }
  72.         public string title { get; set; }
  73.         public long updated { get; set; }
  74.         public string description { get; set; }
  75.         public string method { get; set; }
  76.         public string lat { get; set; }
  77.     }
  78.  
  79.     public class RootObject
  80.     {
  81.         public List<Result> results { get; set; }
  82.         public Meta meta { get; set; }
  83.     }
  84.  
  85.  
  86. }

 

I then created a data structure that contains only the data that I care about and build a quick translator function:

  1. private static Attendee CreateAttendeeFromMember(Result result)
  2. {
  3.     Attendee attendee = new Attendee();
  4.     attendee.MemberId = result.member.member_id;
  5.     attendee.Name = result.member.name;
  6.     if (result.member_photo != null)
  7.     {
  8.         attendee.PhotoUrl = result.member_photo.thumb_link;
  9.     }
  10.     
  11.     return attendee;
  12. }

 

Putting it together, I now have a way of parsing the event and getting a list of the attendees that I can use on the signin page:

  1. static List<Attendee> GetMeetupAttendees()
  2. {
  3.     List<Attendee> attendees = new List<Attendee>();
  4.  
  5.     String url = @"https://api.meetup.com/2/rsvps/?rsvps=yes&event_id=125656692&key=&quot; + _apiKey;
  6.     WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(url);
  7.     request.ContentType = @"application/json; charset=utf-8";
  8.  
  9.     WebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
  10.     using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()))
  11.     {
  12.         String responseText = reader.ReadToEnd();
  13.         var outObject = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<RootObject>(responseText);
  14.  
  15.         Attendee attendee = null;
  16.         foreach (Result result in outObject.results)
  17.         {
  18.             attendee = CreateAttendeeFromMember(result);
  19.             attendees.Add(attendee);
  20.         }
  21.     }
  22.  
  23.     return attendees;
  24. }

 

And in action:

  1. Console.WriteLine("Start");
  2. List<Attendee> attendees = GetMeetupAttendees();
  3.  
  4. foreach (Attendee attendee in attendees)
  5. {
  6.     Console.WriteLine(attendee.Name);
  7. }
  9. Console.WriteLine("End");
  10. Console.ReadKey();

 

gives:

image

Filed under Meetup

NInject Example

July 2, 2013 Leave a comment

I started looking at NInject do handle the dependency injection that I normally do by hand.   To that end, I spun up the project that I used for my last foray into the world of dependency injection:

  1. public interface IAnimal
  2. {
  3.     void Talk();
  4.     void Eat();
  5. }

 

And

 

  1. public class Elephant: IAnimal
  2. {
  3.     public void Talk()
  4.     {
  5.         Console.WriteLine("Trumpet");
  6.     }
  7.  
  8.     public void Eat()
  9.     {
  10.         Console.WriteLine("Yummy Peanuts");
  11.     }
  12. }
  13.  
  14. public class Seal: IAnimal
  15. {
  16.     public void Talk()
  17.     {
  18.         Console.WriteLine("Ark Ark");
  19.     }
  20.  
  21.     public void Eat()
  22.     {
  23.         Console.WriteLine("Yummy Fish");
  24.     }
  25. }

 

Mow, instead of using Activator.CreateInstance, I am going to use NInject to do the mapping,  To that end, I installed NInject via NuGet

image

I then coded up the example for the on-line tutorial using the StandardKernal class like so

  1. static void Main(string[] args)
  2. {
  3.     IKernel kernel = new StandardKernel();
  4.     IAnimal animal = kernel.Get<Elephant>();
  5.     animal.Talk();
  6.     animal.Eat();
  7.     Console.ReadKey();
  8. }

 

and sure enough

image

So this is good stuff.  I think NInject and MOQ are my two favorite new tools in the toolbox…

Filed under Unit Testing || Mocking