Orchard 1.3 fixes bugs, improves performance and introduces the following features:

•  Content item preview
• Markdown support
• Delete content types and parts
• Title part enables non-routable types to have a title
• Common added by default to content types
• Rules: trigger custom actions triggered by events
• Forms API: create forms from code
• Tokens: system-wide variables
• New content manager methods: part eager loading, get multiple items by ids in one query
• Task Lease API: creates server affinities for background tasks on web farms and cloud platforms
• Localization: data annotations, widgets, alternates
• Lists have RSS feeds

The full list of fixed bugs for this release can be found here: 

Orchard Items

 

 

 

When creating websites and applications it is one thing to make your application work in your development environment but it is another thing to make it work in the many integration environments that it will live in. An example, of this is a website that is developed locally, integration tested on a development box, tested in a QA environment, reviewed by a client in a staging environment, and pushed live to a production environment. 

All of these configurations require different database connection strings, email server addresses, and local file system locations for uploaded files. On top of these dynamic environment settings includes a Version Control system that most all of us use in our everyday life. I am sure everyone has accidentally checked in a web.config file that has a development connection string and it has caused problems in production. Secondly, it is a pain to manage these files in multiple environments by having to edit them on each server. Newer version of .NET have released the concept of the web.config.debug and web.config.release versions to mitigate this problem a bit but it really does not solve the problem for more than two environments.

Lastly, with the ability to write applications for the Windows Azure platform we want our applications to be easily tested locally and deployed to the cloud seamlessly. I want to be able to test my application locally on perhaps a local SQL database, but then when in the Cloud it should be connecting to a SQL Azure datasource and utilizing blob storage instead of file storage.

Cloud Construct has been using the concept of a dynamic configuration file for applications since we started writing web applications and standalone apps as well. The general concept is an XML driven file that contains settings that can be set for multiple environments that use an "endpoint" to resolve at application start the environment the application is running in. For example, in a web application project we will add some code to initialize our static Configuration class. The Configuration class will resolve the environment based on server endpoint and apply its settings to the object's properties. We can then access these properties from any place in our code.

Endpoints are resolved by server name and settings are pulled in the following order: 1. Global Settings 2. Environment Settings 3. Endpoint Settings. This allows global items to be applied to all environments when needed. Then environment specific settings will be applied. Lastly, any machine settings. Here is an example of this file:

config.xml (3.47 kb)

As you can see we have 3 specific environments:

1. Production, a single "Cloud" endpoint which resolves for the wildcard hostnames given in the cloud.

2. Staging, a single server endpoint.

3. Development, my local development machine endpoint and also my machine when it is in the local "Cloud" debugging mode. (It resolves Cloud endpoints over normal endpoints by checking to see if: RoleEnvironment.IsAvailable ? "cloud_endpoint" : "endpoint"

Each of these environments can have multiple endpoints as you can see so that if you have multiple servers in production they can all be resolved to that environment and possibly have their own settings on that machine. This file can be checked in easily to version control without causing problems in other environments accidentally and also limits all settings to a single file. Also I can take my applications and develop them in a way that in the future if clients want to expand to the cloud they can easily do so by just adding a cloud endpoint with its settings. For example, the EmailServer that uses SendGrid in the cloud or a local one when in staging:

if (CloudConstructConfig.Environment.IsInCloud)
{
   System.Net.NetworkCredential credentials = 

    new System.Net.NetworkCredential(CloudConstructConfig.EmailUsername, 

   CloudConstructConfig.EmailPassword);

   smtpClient.Credentials = credentials;
}

 

Above we are simply adding an extra credential when we are in the cloud to send emails. Otherwise the code is the same!

Sooo I am sure you want to know how do I get this code and integrate it right? Well here is the library: 

CloudConstructWebConfigurator_V1.0.zip (305.98 kb)

In order to integrate it into your application you can do the following:

1. Add a reference to CloudConstructWebConfigurator.dll in your project. (You can also add a reference to log4net dll as well for logging integration if you already are using it.)

2. Add a static class to your project that holds all of the settings configured in your XML file. This is the object you reference in code for your settings. (See the ClassLibrary1 project in the example integration zip below.)

3. Wire up your code in your global.asax.cs file to run on application startup and instantiate your static class.

4. Copy the Config directory into the App_Data directory.

Here is the link to the zip file of the example project utilizing the dynamic configuration library:

WebApplication1.zip (157.22 kb)

Important files to look at are the global.asax.cs, ClassLibrary1.CloudConstructConfig, and config.xml which drives the settings.

NOTE: It may be necessary to also add a reference to Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime.dll if it does not exist on your system. It is provided with the zip file.

LOGGING INFORMATION:

If you utilize log4net you will get some great startup logging information:

 

2011-10-01 09:55:08,995 INFO  - *********************************

2011-10-01 09:55:09,005 INFO  -  Starting My WebApp

2011-10-01 09:55:09,005 INFO  - *********************************

2011-10-01 09:55:09,163 INFO  - Found host name to be: ARRA-CLOUD-PC.

2011-10-01 09:55:09,164 INFO  - Found 5 required items in the configuration file.

2011-10-01 09:55:09,164 INFO  - Found a global item list in the configuration file.

2011-10-01 09:55:09,167 INFO  - Processed Global file item: ContactEmailTemplate

2011-10-01 09:55:09,167 INFO  - Processed Global configuration item: EmailClientFooter

2011-10-01 09:55:09,168 INFO  - Processed Global flag item: DoCacheProfiles

2011-10-01 09:55:09,349 INFO  - Recognized environment as development, executing in normal context

2011-10-01 09:55:09,349 INFO  - Processed Environment database item: PrimaryDB

2011-10-01 09:55:09,349 INFO  - Processed Environment configuration item: EmailServer

2011-10-01 09:55:09,349 INFO  - Updated to Environment flag item: DoCacheProfiles

2011-10-01 09:55:09,349 INFO  - Matched host as ARRA-CLOUD-PC

2011-10-01 09:55:09,350 INFO  - Loaded 5 out of 5 required items.

2011-10-01 09:55:09,350 INFO  - No errors found when validating all configuration items.

2011-10-01 09:55:09,351 INFO  - Completed loading configuration file.

Every site out there now ends up being shared on Facebook. If you want your site to look good on a person's wall or in the news feed when it is shared you need to include Open Graph protocol tags. 

The first step to seeing how your site appears is going to Facebook's URL Linter tool. Here you can enter in your site's URL and it will tell you how it will appear on Facebook. You will notice there are tags such as "og:title", "og:image", etc that you can include on your page that will allow you to control how Facebook displays the text and icon associated with your site when someone pastes it into Facebook.

For example:

<meta property="og:title" content="The Cloud Construct Blog" />

<meta property="og:description" content="The Cloud Team's Thoughts, Ideas, and Expressions." />

<meta property="og:type" content="blog" />

<meta property="og:url" content="http://blog.cloudconstruct.com" />

<meta property="og:image" content="http://blog.cloudconstruct.com/images/fb-image.png" />

These would be great properties to include on the homepage of my blog site so when people linked to it on Facebook it appeared correctly and served up a nice image with it. If Facebook decides to display pages of type=blog different than a website it also can do that too. Basically, you are conforming to the Open Graph standards so all sites who choose to dispay your site can do it in the best way possible. The image has specific standards such as being 50x50 and certain file types. After you place the above tags in your page, you will want to read this Facebook Tutorial about adding the appropriate html namespace tags as well:

 

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"

      xmlns:og="http://ogp.me/ns#"

      xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml">

 

There are tons of tags you can add to make your site even more inline with the OG protocol. See the Social Graph options on the Facebook site.

Lastly, when you run the URL Linter on your site it will update your site in the Facebook cache. So if you are not properly indexed now, run the tool after you update your site and it will update Facebook's cache.

 

NOTE: Although I am writing this article and the Cloud team places these tags in all of our newly developed sites. We still have not had time to put it on our own site. Please don't hold that against us :)

 

Have you ever had to produce a WCF service or POX webservice that returns valid markup based on a third party schema? Well I have. There is alot of industry standards out there for data transfer and integration. Chances are you may have to support communicating within these means via a webservice. Well as long as you can get your hands on an XSD document for the XML you need to generate Visual Studio makes it easy for you to do this. XSD.exe is a tool that comes with Visual Studio and it allows you to auto generate class files based on your XSD document. 

For example, you have a set of data that stored in your database that you need to communicate with an outside party and you both agree to use a common standard of XML for communication. (Maybe you are in mutual fund trading and there is a standard out there for fund transfer, or the other company has an existing schema they would like you to use.) If there is and XSD document provided by the governing body of that protocol or the company you can simply run "xsd.exe file.xm"l from the command line and you got your application layer for you webservice. Simply drop those class files into your solution and make a database call to populate the objects and return it via your webservice call. 

I like this method over supporting WSDL for services because it is safer from my point of view. No need to publicly expose any internal information and only the parties with the XSD.exe document know how to communicate. The methods and locations of the service are hidden from the end party as well.

The Orchard Culture Picker module is a great way to allow users to switch the culture they wish to view your site in. It takes the cultures you enabled in the settings for Orchard and places them in a dropdown for users to select their culture. This is all great but what if you don't want to have a dropdown? Below is an example of a custom implementation by overriding the Culture Picker in my theme:

We allow users to click on the culture they wish to use and have it styled inline with our utility navigation. Lastly, we modify the display text to the user so it is trimmed down from the entire language and culture combination. The code below shows how I modified the original Modules\Orchard.CulturePicker\Views\Parts\CulturePicker.cshtml file. All you need to do is copy that file from the module and put it in your Themes\YOURTHEME\Views\Parts folder. Then you can modify the file as you want. 

The original file uses a dropdown and when you change the value it submits the page to the CulturePicker controller ChangeCulture method. I simply made a link that submits a querystring value to that same method with the same id as the dropdown. (cultureName). The value is sent to the method and it all functions as normal. Here is the code:

@foreach (var item in availableCultureswithNames)
{    
   <text> | </text> 
    if (Model.UserCulture == item.Key)
    {
        @Html.ActionLink(item.Key.Split(new char[]{'-'})[0].ToUpper(), "ChangeCulture", "UserCulture", new { Area = "Orchard.CulturePicker", CultureName = item.Key }, new { @class = "selected" })
    }
    else
    {
        @Html.ActionLink(item.Key.Split(new char[] { '-' })[0].ToUpper(), "ChangeCulture", "UserCulture", new { Area = "Orchard.CulturePicker", CultureName = item.Key }, new { })
    }
}

You can replace this with the code that creates the dropdown and form, starting with the "@using" keyword. It also is splitting the culture key so we only display the language and not the whole culture string to the user. Give it a try!

 

After needing to add a new XML schema response to my existing WCF service, I thought I could just add a new method to my service with a similar name as my existing one and change the return type of that method to be an object with different properties. This would support the separate XML schema I needed to provide. One problem with this solution was that the new object is still using the default DataContract serializer. For some reason the DataContract serializer does not allow serialization of attributes on elements. Why, I don't know. Perhaps to increase speed.

Anyway the only way around this is to utilize the old XMLSerializer provided in the framework. To do this add the [XmlSerializerFormat] attribute to each class definition on your new object. Secondly, don't forget to add it to your service contract as well! I made this mistake and nothing would work until I did this. In the end you just add the [XmlAttribute] attribute to every property you wish to be serialized as a node attribute. If your using the default service factory with the automaticFormatSelectionEnabled="true" flag set in your web.config then you will still get JSON returned if someone requests your method using JSON.

One final note as well. I found that if any of your enumerated types that are part of the Data Contract have the [Flags] attribute then your service help page won't properly render. See this support page here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2020406

So Apple launched their iCloud platform recently and I have been kind of soaking it all in before I wrote a post on it. I also got a little shove from Lauren Carlson. I read her article entitled Can the Apple iCloud Make it Rain in the Enterprise? I thought it was a great read and expressed some similar thoughts I had on the whole iCloud platform.

When I see Apple products come out I get excited because I own an iPhone and a Macbook. I buy my music through iTunes and use my iPhone for my calendar, photos, and music playing. But as a developer it doesn't mean much to me. I feel like unless your building iPhone apps then I am really unsure of what your building on the Apple platform. Maybe it is because I am so immersed in the Microsoft world I don't know of anything outside of it, but I really can't think of any other development being done in that space. Apple's iCloud is targeted towards the everyday consumer but does nothing for me as a developer. It just allows app developers to utilize the online storage and syncing capabilities.

Apple will win the consumer facing cloud battle because so many people use their products. As Lauren Carlson pointed out in her blog, most people who own one Apple product own multiple Apple products. So to them the iCloud is a logical infrastructure for them. Although I thought this already existed with MobileMe anyways right?? But what about building cloud scalable applications and utilizing the cloud platform as a new tool to build enterprise ready applications? Apple is not up to par with Microsoft's Azure Cloud platform or Google's platform. Apple is offering a solution for Apple consumers to sync their information across multiple devices and 5GB of free storage. This is something that has been in existence in Google's solution and Microsoft's for some time now. Microsoft has had SkyDrive which syncs all of your documents, contacts, photos, and videos. And they give you 25GB free!

I think the iCloud is exciting news for consumers who utilize Apple products but doesn't mean much as far as advancing the cloud computing space. In fact there are rumors that Apple is utilizing Microsoft's solution for some of the logic and infrastructure of their new iCloud. I find this very interesting and perhaps it means Apple really doesn't care about the enterprise/developer route. They seem to be crushing it in the consumer space anyways. Even last week my dad bought an iPod.

A colleague of mine just sent me a link about a new power tool for Visual Studio called Debugger Canvas. The debugger canvas is a cool new way to visualize debugging outside of the normal file view. It allows you to easily navigate files and compare the source code side-by-side for each file involved in your debugging.

Other features included, saving an XPS file with notes to send other engineers information on the fix. Also you can utilize the Intellitrace feature to easily find pieces of code and search them for possible areas where code may be broken.

There is a short video you can watch here:

Thanks to @Jere_Jones for the information.

The other day I read an article on Mashable about a new JS library called Now.js. This article called Will Node Power the Next Twitter? NowJS Is Betting On It discussed how many believe the next phase of the web, Web 3.0, will be powered by servers running on libraries such as Node.js. I watched the video included in the article that depicted a user setting up a node server and then setting up a now.js chat room. It was a cool video that showed a new concept of having server and client both running the same code and managing the users connected to the chat.

NowJS Introduction: Simple Chat Server in 12 Lines of Code from NowJS on Vimeo.

After watching the video I was did some reading around the web at various sites trying to find the pros and cons of a JavaScript based web server. To me it seemed like the argument for node.js was that it is event based where traditional web servers are synchronous in nature. Node.js can handle many requests because they delegate the work and wait for a callback rather than waiting for the request to finish. This sounds like an optimal way to handle requests, but isn't it still only a good way to handle requests? Won't the server eventually be just handling requests so fast and pushing off the work that the system will slow down? Sure the initial request will get through quickly but the time of response will be longer as request amounts increase.

A couple other things I find it hard to believe is that all of the benchmarks done out there are indicating node.js blows away all of the traditional web server technologies. For starters, a compiled program should run quicker than an interpreted language. I know Google's V8 is lightning fast for a JS interpreter but it is just a basic concept I figure has to be brought up. Secondly, while node.js is putting out these great benchmark times it is important to remember it does not contain the modules that a Microsoft IIS has. Security, request filtering, error handling, and much more and not included. Writing out the headers of the document being returned is a manual step as shown here. I am still searching for some of the benchmarks and will post them as I find them.

Anyone who can comment on my questions here would be great. I would like to hear peoples thoughts. In the meantime I am going to try and download some of the pre-compiled libraries of node.js and get it going on Windows. Also I saw another cool walk through of implementing node.js in Windows Azure Cloud. Check them out with me and lets see what Web 3.0 is all about.

Looking to get O-Auth working for my Windows Phone 7 application and I started using the Hammock RESTful helper library. It works great for O-Auth because it handles all the messy stuff behind the scenes. You can literally set the appropriate parameters in your methods and Hammock does the rest. Here is a code snapshot:

RestClient client = new RestClient()
{
Authority = "https://query.yahooapis.com/v1",
Credentials = new OAuthCredentials()
{
ConsumerKey = key,
ConsumerSecret = secret,
Token = oauth_token,
TokenSecret = oauth_token_secret,
SignatureMethod = OAuthSignatureMethod.HmacSha1,
ParameterHandling = OAuthParameterHandling.HttpAuthorizationHeader,
Type = OAuthType.ProtectedResource,
Version = "1.0"
}
};

var teamRequest = new RestRequest
{
Path = "/yql?q=select*fromfantasysports.leagues"
};

RestResponse rr = client.Request(teamRequest);

This lets me query my Yahoo! fantasy sports league and return data about my teams in the league. Unfourtunately, Yahoo! has been less than helpful with some of the O-Auth problems I have been having with them. My token keeps getting rejected and their support is terrible. I am waiting on them to get this piece working but in the meantime I have been able to connect my Windows Phone 7 app to my WCF service and use Hammock to make all my asynchronous requests. Because Windows Phone 7 only supports asynchronous requests from your application Hammock is a nice library to properly format and contain all your requests.

One drawback is if you do not use the WebClient class for your web requests then you will have to use the Dispatcher object when updating the UI of your phone app. The WebClient class takes care of this for you but using your own RESTful helper then you need to use Dispatcher in your callback. Here is a code example:

this.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() =>

{

//YOUR UI CODE

});