Rhyous

I have a lot of Virtual Machines and having to checkout a large code base from source control to each box is annoying and time consuming. There are a couple of branches that take almost an hour to get the latest code.

I am using Visual Studio and TFS. Visual Studio and TFS is installed on all my VMs. So I set out to have the VM host store the source and then all the Virtual Machines map a drive to the host.

At first this appeared to work just fine, but then I started to run into errors. I fixed the errors one at a time.

There were a few things I had to do to make this work and I thought I would share them:

System Changes

1. Map the drive and make it persistent. That means the drive stays mapped after reboot.
2. Add the mapped drive as a local intranet site in Internet Explorer’s Security settings.

Visual Studio Changes

1. Make sure to always log into to TFS in Visual Studio with the same user account. There will be TFS problems if you use a different user account.
2. Add the loadFromRemoteSources tag to the section of the devenv.exe.config file and set it to true:

   Note: I had to run Notepad++ as administrator to make this change.

   Visual Studio 2010:
   C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe.configVisual Studio 2012
   C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe.config

3. Add the loadFromRemoteSources tag to other .config files.
   Note: In order to debug a web service, I had to also add this tag to the  WcfSvcHost.exe.config.

   Visual Studio 2010:
   C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\WcfSvcHost.exe.config

   Visual Studio 2012
   C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\WcfSvcHost.exe.config

   In that IDE folder there were a 22 .config files in VS 2010 and 32 in VS 2012. I am not sure which ones will ever need this. There are two schools of thought: 1. Add the loadFromRemoteSources tag to all of the config files or 2. Add them only when you encounter and error. Since I am in a lab environment and everything is on one physical box (the host and the hosted VMs) I went ahead and added this to all the config files.

4. Sometimes when running Visual Studio as administrator, the mapped drive appears off line. Simple click File | Open | File and browse to the network drive. You don’t have to actually open anything. Just click cancel. It seems as soon as you browse to the mapped drive, Visual Studio knows about it and everything works fine.This doesn’t seem to work as well in VS 2012 on Windows Server 2012.  You may even have to have the drive mapped twice. Once as the logged in user and once as the Administrator. To do this open two command prompts: 1. A regular command prompt. 2. A command prompt running as Administrator. Run the mapped drive command in both: (Yes, use the same drive letter in both on Windows 2013 or Windows 8)

   net use z: \\pcname.domain.tld\yourshare /PERSISTENT:YES

Be aware you’ll get more prompts

I noticed than when running executables orVBScripts or PowerShell scripts, that I was prompted. This is because your running them from a network share, which is completely fine as long as you trust the network share.

Conclusion

Having all your Virtual Machines share the same source repository is possible and saves a lot of time checking out code as you don’t have to do it an each Virtual Machine.

Doing this for multiple users did not work well as the we used TFS and the source seemed to be tied to the user.

I have not yet tried to share between VS 2010 and VS 2012. I hope that works…I’ll update when I know.

You may want to Unit Test your JavaScript code and one library to do this with is QUnit.

QUnit is based on the idea of opening a web page to run your JavaScript tests. So here is how I create a new QUnit project in Visual Studio.

This article assumes that you have the following installed already:

• Visual Studio 2010 or later
• The NuGet Add-in for Visual Studio

Step 1 – Create a Visual Studio Project

1. Open Visual Studio.
2. Go to File | New | Project.
3. Select ASP.NET Empty Web Application.
4. Give the project a name:
   Note: For this walk-thru, I named mine QUnitExample
5. Click OK.

Step 2 – Import QUnit

Method 1 – Using NuGet

This step requires internet access.

1. Right-click on your Project and choose Manage NuGet Packages.
2. Search for QUnit and locate QUnit for ASP.NET MVC.
3. Click Install next to QUnit for ASP.NET MVC.
4. Click Close.

You should now see a folder called Content with a QUnit.css file and a folder called Scripts with a QUnit.js file.

Note: The NuGet package had old files, so I had to update them manually following Method 2.

Method 2 – Just downloading the files

If the NuGet package is not up to date, you may want to download the files manually. Follow the steps above to get QUnit through NuGet and if it doesn’t work, download the latest files from the QUnit web site and replace the ones NuGet added to your project with the latest ones.

Step 3 – Create an HTML file to display test results

1. Right-click on the project and Choose Add | New Item.
2. Find and choose HTML Page.
3. Give the page a name.
   Note: I named mine QUnitTestResults.htm.
4. Open the QUnitTestResults.htm file for editing.
5. I made the DOCTYPE tag simpler in line 1:
6. Enter something in the Title: Line 4.
   Note: I called mine QUnit Test Results.
7. Add a Link to the qunity.css file: Line 5.
8. Add a script in the body that calls the qunit.js file: Line 8.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
  <title>QUnit Test Results</title>
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="/Content/qunit.css">
</head>
<body>
  <div id="qunit"></div>
  <div id="qunit-fixture"></div>
  <script src="/Scripts/qunit.js"></script>
  <script src="/Scripts/tests.js"></script>
</body>
</html>

Step 4 – Create your first QUnit Test

1. Right-click on the Project and choose Add | New Folder.
2. Rename the folder to TestScripts.
   Note: I like to keep the test scripts separate from the other scripts.
3. Right-click on the TestScripts folder and Choose Add | New Item.
4. Find and choose JScript File.
5. Give the JavaScript file a name.
   I named mine ExampleTests.js.
6. Open the ExampleTests.js file for editing.
7. Add a test method to the ExampleTests.js file.

test("hello test", function () {
    ok(1 == "1", "Passed!");
});

Note: This test is straight from the QUnit home page.

Step 5 – Add the Tests to your HTML file

1. Open the QUnitTestResults.htm file for editing.
2. Add a script in the body that calls the ExampleTests.js file: Line 9.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
  <title>QUnit Test Results</title>
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="/Content/qunit.css">
</head>
<body>
  <div id="qunit"></div>
  <div id="qunit-fixture"></div>
  <script src="/Scripts/qunit.js"></script>
  <script src="/Scripts/tests.js"></script>
  <script src="/TestScripts/ExampleTests.js"></script>
</body>
</html>

Step 6 – Run the tests

1. Right-click on the QUnitExample project and choose Set as StartUp Project.
2. Right-click on QUnitTestResults.htm and choose Set As Start Page.
3. Click Debug | Start Debugging.

Step 7 – Start testing your JavaScript files

Now you probably want to recreate this project in as an additional project to your production solution (if you haven’t done this already).

It is time to start testing your JavaScript file. If you add the script to your project as a link, then you don’t have to maintain two copies of it.

1. Right-click on the Scripts folder and choose Add | Existing Item.
2. Browse to the JavaScript file that you want to test and select it but don’t add it yet.
3. Click the down arrow next to Add and choose Add as link.
4. Right-click on the TestScripts folder and Choose Add | New Item.
5. Find and choose JScript File.
   Note: My file is called MySample.js.
6. Give the JavaScript file a name.
   Note: I named mine MySampleTests.js.
7. Open the ExampleTests.js file for editing.
8. Start adding tests.

Conclusion

This method allows for rudimentary testing of your JavaScript. However, it does not integrate with Visual Studio, or Code Coverage, or Gated Check-ins. So there is a lot more work that needs to be done.

Let’s say you want to have a list of items. However, you want the word “Step” before each number in the list. You may be tempted to not use the ol and li tags and just write the list.

Step 1 – Do something.
Step 2 – Do something else.

However, it will be obnoxious to type “Step” every time. The list doesn’t scale either. If the list gets long and you want to reorder the list, or even add a step, you have to change every number. Also, what if you want a hanging indent? How are you going to do that?

Well, just use these CSS classes.

ol.Steps {
  counter-reset: section;
  list-style-type: none;
  padding: 0;
  padding-left: 55px;
}

ol.Steps li {
  text-indent: -55px;
}

ol.Steps li:before {
  counter-increment: section;
  content: "Step " counter(section) " - "; // Change to ": " if you like
}

Here is some sample html:

<ol class="Steps">
  <li>The first thing to do.</li>
  <li>The second thing to do.</li>
  <li>The third thing to do. However, this step is really, really long. In fact, it is so long that the instructions to do this step wrap all the way into multiple lines.</li>
  <li>The fourth thing to do.</li>
</ol>

Here is how it looks:

1. The first thing to do.
2. The second thing to do.
3. The third thing to do. However, this step is really, really long. In fact, it is so long that the instructions to do this step wrap all the way into multiple lines. No really. It has to go one multiple lines, even if the screen is really, really big.
4. The fourth thing to do.

Yesterday we learned how to Get the Current User’s Active Directory info. Today we will learn how to get a named user’s Active Directory info?

Get a named User’s Active Directory info?

The first steps are the same as yesterday.

Step 1 – Create a new Console Application project in Visual Studio.

Step 2 – Add a .NET reference to System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement.

Step 3 – Populate the Main Method as shown below.

using System;
using System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement;

namespace NamedUserAdInfo
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string userName = "Rhyous";
            PrincipalContext context = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain);
            UserPrincipal user = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(context, userName);
            Console.WriteLine("Name: " + user.Name);
            Console.WriteLine("User: " + user.UserPrincipalName);
            Console.WriteLine("GUID: " + user.Guid);
            Console.WriteLine(" SID: " + user.Sid);
        }
    }
}

The only difference between the current user and a named user is that there is a static value for the current user called UserPrincipal.Current whereas for a named user, you need the user name.

Writing a program that does both

OK, so lets make a program that takes a parameter and does both. Here it is.

using System;
using System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement;

namespace GetAdUserInfo
{
    class Program
    {
        static UserPrincipal user = UserPrincipal.Current;

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            ParseArgs(args);
            OutputUserInformation();
        }
        
        private static void OutputUserInformation()
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Name: " + user.Name);
            Console.WriteLine("User: " + user.UserPrincipalName);
            Console.WriteLine("GUID: " + user.Guid);
            Console.WriteLine(" SID: " + user.Sid);
        }

        private static void ParseArgs(string[] args)
        {
            foreach (var arg in args)
            {
                if (arg.StartsWith("user=", StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase))
                {
                    string[] splitArgs = arg.Split("=".ToCharArray());
                    string userName = string.Empty;
                    if (splitArgs.Length == 2)
                        userName = splitArgs[1];
                    if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(userName))
                    {
                        Syntax();
                    }

                    // set up domain context
                    PrincipalContext ctx = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain);

                    // find a user
                    user = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(ctx, userName);
                    continue;
                }

                if (arg.StartsWith("user=", StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase))
                {
                    Syntax();
                }

                // if arg not found treat it like /?
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("Argument not found: " + arg);
                    Syntax();
                }
            }
        }

        private static void Syntax()
        {
            String fullExeNameAndPath = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location;
            String ExeName = System.IO.Path.GetFileName(fullExeNameAndPath);
            Console.WriteLine(ExeName + " user=[username]");
        }
    }
}

Here are the sample projects.
GetAdUserInfo.zip

Get the Current User’s Active Directory info?

Here is how to get the currently logged in users Active Directory GUID and SID.

Step 1 – Create a new Console Application project in Visual Studio.

Step 2 – Add a .NET reference to System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement.

Step 3 – Populate the Main Method as shown below.

using System;
using System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement;

namespace GetAdUserInfo
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Name: " + UserPrincipal.Current.Name);
            Console.WriteLine("User: " + UserPrincipal.Current.UserPrincipalName);
            Console.WriteLine("GUID: " + UserPrincipal.Current.Guid);
            Console.WriteLine(" SID: " + UserPrincipal.Current.Sid);
        }
    }
}

See Part 2 – Get a named User’s Active Directory info?

Since this is an html file, just create a blank file on your desktop called Test.html and copy and past the code below.

The steps for doing this are comments in the code.

Note: This should handle typing, pasting, code change, etc…

<!-- Step 1a - Create HTML File (see step 1b way below) -->
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <!-- Step 2 - Include jquery -->
    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.pack.js"></script>
 
    <!-- Step 3 - Add script to run when page loads -->
    <script  type="text/javascript">
        jQuery(document).ready(function () { 
            <!-- Step 4 - Bind method to text box -->    
            $("#txtField").bind("propertychange keyup input paste", setButtonState);
			
            <!-- Step 4 - Set the default state -->
			setButtonState();
        });
		var setButtonState = function () {
			if ($("#txtField").val() == "")
				$("#btnEnter").attr("disabled","disabled");
			else
				$("#btnEnter").removeAttr("disabled"); 
		}
    </script>
</head>
<body>
<!-- Step 1b - Add HTML elements --> 
<input type="text" id="txtField" size="50"/>
<button type="button" id="btnEnter">Enter</button>
</body>

Update: 5/22/2013: Fixed example. Before if it was used on a page with links, going forward and back could result in the button being disabled even if the text box was populated. This new example solves this issue.

See a MVVM version of this here:
Using MVVM with HTML5 and JavaScript

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