Web Content Management Systems

So I've been searching for a good content management system to reccomend to my company and I came across Dot Net Nuke at http://www.dotnetnuke.com/ ! They apparently use the .net framework and from my previous experience with Asp.Net and Asp.Net MVC, I can vouch for their robustness and stability.

Predicates, Action, lambdas and extension

 public class Product
    {
        public string Category{get;set;}
        public string Name { get; set; }
        public decimal Price { get; set; }
    }
    public class Products:IEnumerable
    {
        public List _products;
        
        public Products()
        {
            
            _products = new List();
        }

        public void Add(Product p)
        {
            _products.Add(p);   
        }

        public decimal TotalPrice(Predicate match)
        {
            if (match==null) 
                throw new ArgumentNullException();
            
            decimal totalPrice = 0;
            int itemCount = _products.Count;
            for (int i = 0; i < itemCount; i++)
            {
                if (match(_products[i]) == true)
                    totalPrice += _products[i].Price;

            }
            return totalPrice;
        }


        public void ForEach(Action action)
        {

            for (int i = 0; i < _products.Count; i++)
            {
                action(_products[i]);

            }


        }



        #region IEnumerable Members

        public IEnumerator GetEnumerator()
        {
            this._products.GetEnumerator();
        }

        #endregion

        #region IEnumerable Members

        System.Collections.IEnumerator System.Collections.IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
        {
            this.GetEnumerator();
        }

        #endregion
    }

extensions:

public static class MyExtensions
    {
        public static int MyCount(this IEnumerable list)   
        {
            return list.Count()/2;
        }
    }

tests:

[TestFixture]
    public class PredicateLamdaActionTests
    {
        [Test]
        public void TestNUnit()
        {
            //Assert.Fail();

           Assert.That(true);
        }

        [Test]
        public void FindPriceTest()
        {
            Products products = new Products();
            products.Add(new Product() { Name = "Pear", Category = "fruit", Price = 2 });
            products.Add(new Product() { Name = "Apple", Category = "fruit", Price = 3 });
            products.Add(new Product() { Name = "Banana", Category = "berry", Price = 2 });
            products.Add(new Product() { Name = "Blueberry", Category = "berry", Price = 2 });
            products.Add(new Product() { Name = "Beans", Category = "vegetable", Price = 2 });

            Assert.AreEqual(5,products.TotalPrice(p => p.Category == "fruit"));


        }

        [Test]
        public void DoWorkOnAllTest()
        {
            Products products = new Products();
            products.Add(new Product() { Name = "Pear", Category = "fruit", Price = 2 });
            products.Add(new Product() { Name = "Apple", Category = "fruit", Price = 3 });
            products.Add(new Product() { Name = "Banana", Category = "berry", Price = 2 });
            products.Add(new Product() { Name = "Blueberry", Category = "berry", Price = 2 });
            products.Add(new Product() { Name = "Beans", Category = "vegetable", Price = 2 });
            //products.ForEach( delegate(Product p){p.Category="fruit";});
              products.ForEach(p=>p.Category="fruit");                  
           
            Assert.AreEqual(11, products.TotalPrice(p => p.Category == "fruit"));


        }
        [Test]
        public void MyCountTest()
        {
            Products products = new Products();
            products.Add(new Product() { Name = "Pear", Category = "fruit", Price = 2 });
            products.Add(new Product() { Name = "Apple", Category = "fruit", Price = 3 });
            products.Add(new Product() { Name = "Banana", Category = "berry", Price = 2 });
            products.Add(new Product() { Name = "Blueberry", Category = "berry", Price = 2 });
            products.Add(new Product() { Name = "Beans", Category = "vegetable", Price = 2 });
            Assert.AreEqual(2, products._products.MyCount());
        }


    }

A Rangeable, Validated Type

As of now in .Net, we have support for Nullable types. What I really wish for is a type that would support ranges or regexes. This would enforce method calls boundaries to be well defined well defined from service oriented point of view.

Having such an ability will let us remove validation code from the method body and move it to the parameter/argument level, therefore, fixing responsibility of sending validated variables to the calling method.

If the calling method passes a variable that does not support the validation rule, an invalid argument exception is thrown!

I propose a type called ValidVariable or ValidateableVar

examples:

//ensure that only 2 digit numbers are added

public int Add2DigitNumbers(ValidVariable(10,99) first,ValidVariable(10,99) second)
{
...
}


//ensure only valid emails are supported

public  void SetEmail(ValidVariable(regex_for_email))
{
...
}

If only the next version of c# supported it! or maybe I will start a project on CodePlex.

Easiest way to sort a datatable

If it is not typed:

Dim  table1,table2 as DataTable
table1 = GetDataTable()
table1.DefaultView.Sort = "ColumnName"
table2 = table1.DefaultView.ToTable()

If the DataTable is typed:

Dim  table1 as MyDataTable 'MyDataTable is a strongly typed DataTable
Dim table2 as New MyDataTable()
table1 = GetDataTable()
table1.DefaultView.Sort = "ColumnName"
table2.Load(table1.DefaultView.ToTable().CreateDataReader)

As simple as that.

This may not be very efficient but is very easy :)

Why IEquatable ?

In the .net framework 2.0, a new interface IEquatable<T> has been introduced. Implementing it in your classes would give you a type safe way of equating your class instances.

The default .equals of the System.Object does a reference check and is not particularly useful when you want to equate instances of your class based on say certain fields. The workaround in .net 1.1 was to override the .equals(object o) , but this meant that additional type checking had to be done. Now with Generics,
IEquatable<T> gives you a type safe method to implement your class instance equality check.

I wrote some simple code to figure it all out:

First, A class which doesn't implement IEquatable ....

using System;

namespace test
{
    class RegularAnimal :Animal
    {



        public RegularAnimal(int legs, string sound, string species)
        {
            this.legs = legs;
            this.sound = sound;
            this.species = species;

        }

        public void Introduce()
        {
            Console.WriteLine("I am a regular " + species + "  I have " + legs.ToString() + " legs and I " + sound);
        }
       

    }
}

Now the same class that implements IEquatable<T>

using System;


namespace test
{

    class EquatableAnimal : Animal, IEquatable<EquatableAnimal>
    {

        public EquatableAnimal(int legs, string sound, string species)
        {
            this.legs = legs;
            this.sound = sound;
            this.species = species;

        }

        public void Introduce()
        {
            Console.WriteLine("I am an equatable " + species + "  I have " + legs.ToString() + " legs and I " + sound);
        }


        public bool Equals(EquatableAnimal other)
        {
            return (this != null && this.sound == other.sound);
        }


    }

}

Now some code to put the classes to test:

static void Main(string[] args)
        {


            RegularAnimal regular_cat = new RegularAnimal(4, "meow", "cat");
            RegularAnimal regular_dog = new RegularAnimal(4, "bark", "dog");
            RegularAnimal regular_siameseCat = new RegularAnimal(4, "meow", "siamese cat");

            regular_cat.Introduce();
            regular_dog.Introduce();
            regular_siameseCat.Introduce();
            IsEqual(regular_cat, regular_dog);
            IsEqual(regular_cat, regular_siameseCat);

            EquatableAnimal cat = new EquatableAnimal(4, "meow", "cat");
            EquatableAnimal dog = new EquatableAnimal(4, "bark", "dog");
            EquatableAnimal siameseCat = new EquatableAnimal(4, "meow", "siamese cat");
            cat.Introduce();
            dog.Introduce();
            siameseCat.Introduce();
            IsEqual(cat, dog);
            IsEqual(cat, siameseCat);

            
                  
        }

        public static void IsEqual(EquatableAnimal animal1, EquatableAnimal animal2)
        {
            if (animal1.Equals(animal2))
            {
                Console.WriteLine("We are the same: " + animal1.species + " and " + animal2.species);
            }
            else
            {
                Console.WriteLine("We are not the same: " + animal1.species + " and " + animal2.species);
            }
        }
        public static void IsEqual(RegularAnimal animal1, RegularAnimal animal2)
        {
            if (animal1.Equals(animal2))
            {
                Console.WriteLine("We are the same: " + animal1.species + " and " + animal2.species);
            }
            else
            {
                Console.WriteLine("We are not the same: " + animal1.species + " and " + animal2.species);
            }
        }
      

The results(click on the picture to enlarge):


I am a regular cat I have 4 legs and I meow
I am a regular dog I have 4 legs and I bark
I am a regular siamese cat I have 4 legs and I meow
We are not the same: cat and dog
We are not the same: cat and siamese cat
I am an equatable cat I have 4 legs and I meow
I am an equatable dog I have 4 legs and I bark
I am an equatable siamese cat I have 4 legs and I meow
We are not the same: cat and dog
We are the same: cat and siamese cat
Press any key to continue . . .







The 'EquatableAnimal' compares the 'sound' field to identify animals of the same species while the RegularAnimal equality check fails since we are not overriding the Object.equals(Object o).If we had gone that route instead of implementing the IEquatable interface, we'd need to introduce this code in the RegularAnimal class:

 public override bool Equals(object obj)
        {
            return ((obj != null) && (obj.GetType() == this.GetType()) && ((RegularAnimal)obj).sound == this.sound);
                
                                
        }

Useful links:
http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/sampchap/5353.aspx
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms131187.aspx
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms379564(vs.80).aspx

Enum and DropDowns

So I need to get the name and value of an Enum to tie sensibly to a DropDownList. This is how you do it:

Enum definition:

    public enum Categories
    {
        Wildlife,
        Resorts,
        Beer,
        Other
    }

To tie to DropDownList called ddCategory:

    ddCategory.DataSource = Enum.GetNames(typeof(Categories));
    ddCategory.DataBind();

To set the selected value:

    ddCategory.SelectedValue = Enum.GetName(typeof(grr.Categories),1) // or just "Wildlife"

Object to DataTable

When I lay my hands on ASP.NET 2.0, I was thrilled to use Generics in the form of List( of T) and used it to create collections of my business objects. I was even more excited to use the ObjectDataSource control and bind it to a GridView. But when I tried sorting the GridView, I got a runtime error which said that sorting of List (of T) is not supported and suggested using a DataTable or DataSet! Googling for a few minutes, I learned that to enable sorting for my collection class (in this case a Generic List), I need to first create a custom collection and then implement the IComparable interface. And then, I had to setThe ObjectDataSource's SortExpression.

I was too lazy to do all this and also didn't want my code scattered in multiple events so I decided to write a bit of 'reflective' code to convert my List(of T) to a DataTable. All I had to do then is Databind the DataTable and let GridView handle sorting.

The class cList2Table has a method to convert your System.Generics.List(of T) to a DataTable. cList2Table takes a generic list as its constructor parameter and returns a DataTable when you call the GetTable() method.

Imports System.Reflection
Public Class cObjectToTable(Of T)    
Dim objectCollection As List(Of T)    
Public Sub New(ByVal objectCollection As List(Of T))
        Me.objectCollection = objectCollection
   End Sub
   Public Function GetTable() As DataTable
        Dim table As New DataTable
        Dim objectType As Type = GetType(T)
        Dim objectProperties As PropertyInfo() = objectType.GetProperties
      'create a column for each property in the class
        For Each propertyItem As PropertyInfo In objectProperties            table.Columns.Add(New DataColumn(propertyItem.Name, propertyItem.PropertyType))
        Next
    For Each item As T In objectCollection
    'create a new row based on the table structure we just created  Dim row As DataRow = table.NewRow()
         'copy object data to the datarow
       For Each propertyItem As PropertyInfo In objectProperties
                row(propertyItem.Name) = propertyItem.GetValue(item, Nothing)
            Next
        'add row to the table
            table.Rows.Add(row)
        Next
    Return table
End Function
End Class

Now I usually like to see schema in the GridView during design time,So I filled my typed DataSet with the following snippet of code.

Dim loTable As New dsSection.dtSectionDataTable
loTable.Load(loObject2Table.GetTable().CreateDataReader)