Thursday, March 15, 2007

HOWTO: Debugging JavaScript using "debugger;"

There are a lot of developers who write custom JavaScript or need to debug pre-written JavaScript, yet do not know that they can debug it in Visual Studio 2005. This is a fairly simple process.

Visual Studio offers the developer the ability to utilize the IDE to debug, just like you would debug if you are debugging .NET code. How? Very simple, the "debugger;" key word.

How It Works

First, you must enable script debugging in Internet Explorer (we will get that in a minute, first lets look at some code).

To debug: Write your JavaScript and place the "debugger" keyword where ever you want the code to break into debugging. The JavaScript interpreter hits this keyword and halts execution and returns the control back to the IDE. This is like setting a breakpoint inside of Visual Studio.

Example

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="JsDebuggerExample._Default" %>

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >
<head runat="server">
<title>Untitled Page</title>
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">

var myJsonVar = {
firstName : "Donn",
lastName : "Felker"
};

debugger; // The code will break right here and return to the IDE for you to debug.

</script>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>

</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>

This will allow you to break into the code. When control returns to the IDE, it looks like this:

How To Enable in Internet Explorer

You'll need to uncheck a few boxes in the advanced section of Internet Explorer to enable script debugging. If you dont, script debugging simply wont work. It will not break and you'll be left scratching your head wondering what you did wrong.

Go to Internet Options inside of Internet Explorer

Then go to the Advanced Tab and Uncheck "Disable script debugging (Internet Explorer)" and "Disable script debugging (Other)"

Click "Ok".

Now place your "debugger" keyword anywhere in your JavaScript. Fire up the page through Visual Studio and get your debug on.

:)

ASP.NET | Visual Studio 2005

Comments [3] |

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Notepad++ Shortcuts - Vista 64bit Update

In a previous post I gave an example of how to run Notepad++ from the command line by typing the letter n. This was the solution for Windows XP. Shortcutting the name is a tip I learned from Scott Hanselman, check out his blog for tons of other good stuff.

I recently upgraded to Vista (x64) and found out that my reg edit wouldnt work any more so I created a new one.

You can use this new reg edit to run Notepad++ from the command line in Vista (x64).

Code

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\n.exe]
@="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Notepad++\\notepad++.exe"

Shell Integration

Notepad++ does not install shell integration in Vista (x64 in my case) so I created another registry entry for this as well. This will enable the right click and selection of "Notepad++" into the windows context. Like this:

Download the shell integration file belwo.

Downloads
'n' Shortcut: n.zip (.31 KB)

Shell Integration:

vista_x64_notepadpp_shell_integration.zip (.34 KB)

Productivity

Comments [5] |

Monday, March 12, 2007

C# Google Geocode (Latitude and Longitude) Class

Update 2007/05/07: There is also a Microsoft MapPoint v4.5 project I've written that does the same thing. Click here to go to that post.

Retrieve the Latitude and Longitude of any addresses in the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan (link) with this class. View the class below and download the class at the bottom of this post.

Code

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Web;
using System.Net;
using System.Web.UI;

namespace GoogleGeocoder
{
   public interface ISpatialCoordinate
   {
      decimal Latitude {get; set; }
      decimal Longitude {get; set; }
   }

   /// <summary>
   /// Coordiate structure. Holds Latitude and Longitude.
   /// </summary>
   public struct Coordinate : ISpatialCoordinate
   {
      private decimal _latitude;
      private decimal _longitude;

      public Coordinate(decimal latitude, decimal longitude)
      {
         _latitude = latitude;
         _longitude = longitude;
      }

      #region ISpatialCoordinate Members

      public decimal Latitude
      {
        get
        {
            return _latitude;
        }
        set
        {
            this._latitude = value;
        }
      }

      public decimal Longitude
      {
        get
        {
            return _longitude;
        }
        set
        {
            this._longitude = value;
        }
      }

   #endregion
   }

   public class Geocode
   {
      private const string _googleUri = "http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?q=";
      private const string _googleKey = "yourkey";
      private const string _outputType = "csv"; // Available options: csv, xml, kml, json

      private static Uri GetGeocodeUri(string address)
      {
         address = HttpUtility.UrlEncode(address);
         return new Uri(String.Format("{0}{1}&output={2}&key={3}", _googleUri, address, _outputType, _googleKey));
      }

      /// <summary>
      /// Gets a Coordinate from a address.
      /// </summary>
      /// <param name="address">An address.
      /// <remarks>
      /// <example>1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043</example>
      /// </remarks>
      /// </param>
      /// <returns>A spatial coordinate that contains the latitude and longitude of the address.</returns>
      public static Coordinate GetCoordinates(string address)
      {
         WebClient client = new WebClient();
         Uri uri = GetGeocodeUri(address);

         /* The first number is the status code,
         * the second is the accuracy,
         * the third is the latitude,
         * the fourth one is the longitude.
         */
         string[] geocodeInfo = client.DownloadString(uri).Split(',');

         return new Coordinate(Convert.ToDecimal(geocodeInfo[2]), Convert.ToDecimal(geocodeInfo[3]));
      }

   }
}

How To Use

Replace "yourkey" with your google api key. Get one here.
Include in your project, reference the class through a using directive.
Call get the coordinates like this:
1. Coordinate coordinate = Geocode.GetCoordinates("1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043");
  decimal latitude = coordinate.Latitude;
  decimal longitude = coordinate.Longitude;

Uses

For each record in your system, get the lat/long and save it to the database. This can be used for calculating distances. e.g.: "Find all stores within ___ miles of this zip code.

***Notes***

The maximum # of Geocode requests that can be completed in one day are 50,000 (details).

Download
Geocode.zip (1.05 KB)

.NET | GIS

Comments [22] |

aspnet_wp.exe could not be started?

I got this odd error message from an internal web service today that stumped me for ~30 minutes. It was:

"aspnet_wp.exe could not be started. The error code for the failure is 80070545. This error can be caused when the worker process account has insufficient rights to read the .NET Framework files. Please ensure that the .NET Framework is correctly installed and that the ACLs on the installation directory allow access to the configured account."

I took a look on some forums and blogs and other users who encountered this error said that they checked permisisons on the framework, the temp directory, the ASP.NET Temp directory and the application path. I did the same. Everything was ok, but the app was still broken. Other users said to uninstall and reinstall .NET 1.1 and that fixed it. I didn't think that was necessary.

How to fix it...

I did some more poking around and noticed that the .NET framework that was executing this was 1.1. It should have been 2.0. Like below:

***Update***: This problem still intrigued me, so it was looked into some more. It seems that some how a recent install (either WSE 3.0 or AJAX) has caused an issue. All of our 1.1 apps were not responding. Because this server we were working with is a testing box we were able to elevate the permisisons of the ASPNET user higher than "user" and the apps started working again. We elevated the ASPNET user to "Administrator" for the time being. We plan to replace this box in the very near future (few weeks) so its not that big of an issue for us since only developers have access to the system, and, well, its a test system. :) Please note, this is not a desirable thing to do in a production environment.

.NET | ASP.NET

Comments [0] |

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Open Source .NET Wiki

I've been on the hunt for a good .NET wiki that was open source and I think I've finally found one. The folks over at ScrewTurn Software have developed ScrewTurn Wiki.

Its GPL'd, built on .NET 2.0, does not require SQL Server 2005, works in a medium trust enviroment (that means that you hosted types can use it!) and has many other features which are listed here. The only two things that you'll need are:

IIS5 (or better) with .NET 2.0 installed.
One write enabled directory in the root of the wiki

If you need to see it in action, check out the .NET Tiers website. The guys over at .NET Tiers are also using this for their site.

This is definately something that can come in handy in the corporate world when you don't have something like SharePoint installed (which offers built in Wiki support).

.NET | Tools

Comments [2] |