The Pursuit

Go2Wifi

2012-01-03T17:56:00.001-08:00

Go2Wifi provides single touch shortcut to your iPhone Wifi settings screen.

* Now there is no need to install any third party profiles on your iPhone.
* No need to install any icons.
* This app does not require a 3G connection.

To report a bug kindly email to: gandhi.rohan@gmail.com

Reflection , qualify nested class

2008-08-13T12:38:00.001-07:00

This thing got my attention today when I came across a runtime error in the

code trying to access a nested class via reflection.

The code was something like this:

// The code below gives error "cannot find MyClass.NestedClass in assembly .... bla bla...bla"

Type nestedType = assembly.GetType("MyClass.NetstedClass");

Looking at it for a few minutes I could not think of anything obvious that's wrong until I figured out the use of '+' when qualifying nested class.

Type nestedType = assembly.GetType("MyClass+NetstedClass"); // work just fine :)

Error installing SQL server management studio ( missing prerequisites msxml6 )

2008-08-11T04:26:00.001-07:00

Installed visual studio 2008 that comes bundled with SQL server 2005 express database.

But does not include a enterprise manager to browse and manage the database. You can get a free download sql server management studio separately (Download details- Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express)

While installing this I got an error after which the installation aborts :

error: Setup is missing prerequisites:
- MSXML6

To fix the problem ,

Go to control panel>add/remove programs
and select msxml
click on change
It will give an option to repair the installation , select that.
This should fix the registry with the correct keys and you can now proceed installing SQL server management studio.

LINQ

2008-08-11T00:25:00.000-07:00

Linq is a set of extensions to Microsoft dotnet framework that encompasses language integrated query and provides the ability to query native data via simple SQL like syntax.

It allows any data source to be queried that exists as object.

Its possible to query for similar information without the use of linq. However here linq provides syntactic sugar for writing these queries which result in less lines of code.

Immutable Type

2008-02-23T11:27:00.001-08:00

When a type offers no members that can change its state , its called an immutable type.

int and Int32

2008-02-23T10:38:00.001-08:00

Int32 and int are the same.

int is the 'C# type' that actually maps to the primitive type 'Int32' which is the actual FCL Type.

Any data types the compiler directly supports are called primitive types. Primitive types map directly to types existing in the Framework Class Library (FCL).

CLS ( Common Language Specification ) is a sub-set of the primitive types that are supported by all dot.net languages.

C# Primitives not CLS complaint:

System.SByte - Signed 8 bit value
System.UInt16
System.UInt32
System.UInt64

Namespace

2008-02-23T07:26:00.001-08:00

Provides logical grouping of related types.
Increases code readability

Type Spoofing and CLR

2008-02-23T06:33:00.001-08:00

Type spoofing is the cause of many security breaches and
compromises an application's stability and robustness. Type safety is therefore an extremely
important part of the CLR.

CLR checks the type security at runtime

Casting Object to a specific type will compile all fine, but at run time an exception 'InvalidCastException' is thrown if the type boxed in Object cannot be converted to the specific type ( i.e is not of the specific type or its base type )

Use As Over Is : using Is and then casting results in type checking twice. Once for Is and then while casting the CLR does the default type check. To avoid this use the As operator.

Where is System.Object ?

2008-02-23T06:12:00.001-08:00

System.Object is defined in MSCorLib.dll . This dll contains all the FCL types like Object ,Int32, String,etc.

All the objects in C# are derived from System.Object class.

There are not data members in this class.
This class offers 4 public instance methods:
- Equals()
- ToString()
- GetHashCode()
- GetType()
Two protected methods:
- MemberwiseClone
- Finalize

Property , C#

2008-02-21T01:24:00.000-08:00

Use of Properties
In a way exposing the data members in a class as 'public' serves the same purpose as having the same member exposed via Property with simple get/set definitions.However the former is against the concept of Data Encapsulation , which states that the your type's fields should never be public exposed.

Usual Practice: To have a public 'get' and a protected 'set' accessor. Property in this case is listed with least restrictive accessibility ( I.e public in this example)

GetSetMethod Vs Property : is the same thing , just that with the method the code does not look that pretty.Properties offers more simplified syntax.

Backing Field: is the underlying private member access-wrapped in a property.

Code Inlining : At compile time the code for simple get set methods is Inlined by the compiler , in the method the property is accessed.This is only true for Release build and not Debug.
Assign a custom name to a Parameterful Properties ( Indexer) : System.Runtime.CompilerServices.IndexerNamee.g [lndexerName("Update")]

Still this cannot be used in C# to overload Indexers by Name ,we can only overload by parameter type.

System.Reflection.PropertyInfo : used to read the Property at runtime.

Deceptive:
- property may return data that's not part of its state.
- Confusing to tell by looking at the code if the property is full read-only or write only.

Exceptions

2008-02-18T11:42:00.000-08:00

Exceptions allow the developers to isolate the failure recovery code from the code required to get the work done.

CLR Compilers

2008-02-18T11:37:00.001-08:00

Microsoft provides several compilers that produce the code targeting the runtime: C++/CLI, C# , Visual Basic.NET and JScript.

C++/CLI(Common Language Infrastructure) is Microsoft's language specification to supersede MC++ ( Managed Extensions for C++ )

Microsoft has a version of .NET available for FreeBSD, Windows and Mac OS X called the Shared Source CLI (Rotor).

Technology

2008-02-18T10:56:00.000-08:00

Technology has evolved providing abstraction layers to developers to allow them to focus more on the problem by caring less on the micro implementation details. When there are various different technologies offering abstractions over different areas ( web,win, com, etc ) the developers face the challenge when integrating these together to make them talk to each other.

The dot net framework (CLR + FCL) offers all of these abstraction layers on a common platform (IL).

CLR offers an object oriented programming model that defines what types and objects are and how they behave.

FCL - Framework Class Library offers an object oriented API set that all applications use.

Test post from Windows live

2008-02-16T11:59:00.001-08:00

test post

m600i , sync google calendar

2007-10-14T13:41:00.001-07:00

I read about this cool service today goosync and tired it , works very well. I was ignorant that to sync the events on my m600 and google cal it was just a click away.

how...

first step : register at goosync

1. Goto the calendar in from your m600 menu.

2. Select 'more' > 'calendar manager' > 'synchronize'.

3. Check Calendar from the list.

4. Now create a new profile and enter the following details:

server : http://sync.goosync.com

username: your goosync username

password: your goosync password

5. That's it , you are done. Save your settings and hit 'Sync'.

This service is going to also introduce another option for us to sync google contacts with a mobile device.

goosync works with almost all mobile phones as you do not have to install any extra software on your phone. Calendar application is already part of the operating system on the mobile device. GooSync plays the role of proxy to interact with google ( remember you have to authenticate goosync to read in your google cal when you sign up!) and feed in/out the cal events.

Rss feed your Gamil

2007-10-06T16:44:00.001-07:00

Not very commonly known, you can receive your top email subjects via rss feed. Read on to know how How do I view Gmail messages with my aggregator?

What's your real age ;)

2007-10-06T16:38:00.001-07:00

check this out , click here

CodeSnippet Plugin for WindowsLiveWriter

2007-10-06T16:25:00.001-07:00

This tools is just great , so very often writing a code article one needs to

Class CodeSnippet

{

// with text hilighting

int a = int.MinValue;

string s = string.Empty;

  

public CodeSnippet() 

{

}

format the code snippets. Not anymore simply paste your code and CodeSnippet plug-in will do the rest. All you need to do is focus on the content and hit publish!

Atlas ScriptManager Control

2007-10-06T16:04:00.001-07:00

Very important to learn the basics in atlas ajax programming. NK's blog once agian has a sexy introduction to this

Windows Live Writer

2007-10-06T15:58:00.001-07:00

This is my first 'test' post from windows live writer. It looks very cool and simple to use. Download from here

Dynamic CascadingDropDownExtender Control and Viewsate

2007-09-05T12:44:00.000-07:00

Spent some time at work trying to get the cascadingdropdown extender control (that comes with AJAX tollkit ) to work according to my needs. The intention was not to do some thing very complicated , a simple page with dynamic controls ( parent-child chain of dropdowns) being added at runtime. Looking at the sample app that ships with the ajax toolkint tells at best the different usage of each controls\extenders.

Preset a default value: One bit where I was challanged in the start was to get my drop downs populated with a default value ( like when you open a page in edit mode ) , it took me a while to figure out that setting SelectedValue property of the cacading extender control actually sets the default value and not by simply adding items to the dropdown , something that we would usually do. Another interesting thing to notice was that the default value gets set via an ajax call after the page is rendered on client side ( browser ).

Viewstate: Another thing I did not get working in the first go was , persisting the dropdown viewstate after a post back. The client side script was working its job all fine with the parent-child data coming as response with the asynchronous ajax calls,etc. It was in the end ( when I thot all the hardship is over ) I realised that the selected value of the dropdowns wre not available after a postback ( dejavu... dynamically added controls ). Although I did make sure to give the same ID for the respective dropdowns to have the 'dynamic control viewstate' theory do the rest of the job for me , but not so lucky. After a bit of googling found out that if I add these controls in the OnInit function ( override OnInit and add the control dynamically here ) rather than page load it works perfect. .... i always have hate this solution. I ended up using the old asp way of getting the value from the form request bag. ( Request.Form[dropdownList1.UniqueID] )

Asp.Net link for this control. ( forum )