Custom DDNS update script on ASUS router with merlin firmware

This post is a bit different than others, but it might save some of you some time. Lately, my ISP upgraded my network connection and forced me to use new cable modem which turns out to be multifunction modem and router. Unfortunately, it turns out that it had buggy firmware and was unable to work in bridge mode. It was very shitty device, so I would like to use my own ASUS router.

GUI went missing on Windows 2012

So, you have uninstalled .NET Framework from your brand new Windows 2012 Server and GUI went missing. Well, it happens.

MS SQL Server load testing with JMeter and stored procedures

JMeter is a great tool. I have been using it for quite some time for now, but mainly to test web application and web services. Recently I had to perform bunch of load tests on SQL Server, just to check if new one will be faster than old one. It turns one that JMeter is pretty handy when comes to simple SQL load testing.

Increase session token lifetime in passive federation scenario

I'm currently working on MVC 5 web application which claims based authentication. Recently I run into two small problems:

1. How to increase session token lifetime
2. Configure application to work properly in load balanced environment

AngularJS, SignalR and promises

Recently I have started to play a bit with AngularJS and SignalR. When I was developing first, simple solution I run into interesting problem.

DevDay 2013

I could not miss DevDay this year, mainly because of Jon Skeet. Master of answers on StackOverflow came to Cracow.

Windows Azure Active Directory Solutions

While I was looking for guidelines regarding implementation of WCF REST services with Federated Authentication I found this nice TechNet article with number of scenarios. It aggregates number of possible scenarios with pretty good explanation. And if you are looking for some more info in this topic, there is this nice free book from MS A Guide to Claims-Based Identity and Access Control.

Have a nice reading!

Running Selenium WebDriver UI tests from TeamCity

Task is fairly simple but require one tweak.

When you run TeamCity agent as service, you need to allow interaction with user desktop. Keith Dahlby created nice solution to enable this feature for service working under any account which is not Local System.

After this tweak, works like a charm!

Executing scripts remotely from TeamCity using PowerShell

The problem I had to solve seems to be pretty simple on the beginning. Execute couple of deployment scripts on remote Windows 2008 R2 box, to perform deployment of web applications using with custom package manager used in our project.

JSONP WCF service over SSL

In .NET Framework 3.5 JSONP message encoding is not available out of the box. In this short post I will show how to configure WCF to support JSONP endpoint over SSL.

Listing methods tagged with custom attribute

Attributes are very powerful mechanism in .NET. In this particular case, I had created custom attribute and wanted to list all methods tagged with it. Additionally my requirement was to get only methods which has been tagged with my custom attribute with specified parameter value.

Query execution time in miliseconds in SQL Server Management Studio

If you need to get query execution time in milliseconds in SQL Server Management Studio, there is a simple way to achieve this.

Getting field value for specific item version

In this blog entry I will share some findings regarding SharePoint API for items versioning in document library.

Extraction of term custom properties from list item field of managed metadata type

The task was to extract custom properties from managed metadata field of list item. Custom properties can be stored in name value like collection for each term, which is very handy in many cases.

Locating list item in document library by url

If you need to find list item by url, there is easy way. You can create site based on file url. Than it is enough to run GetFile which will return SPFile object. Last thing is to get Item object from returned file object. No need to write CALM queries.

Detection of field value changes in document library

There is pretty easy way to detect change of field value in document library. You can use EventReceiver attached to your content type. ItemUpdating is a good place detects changes and performs validation if required. In my case it was required to detect that value of field has changed and additionally to synchronize value of two fields and perform some additional validation of entered values.

Document Library and custom rendering templates

Goal was to create document library with requirement to hide fields which have 'Hidden' string in name (unfortunately I could not use ShowIn.. settings due to specific requirement from external tools integrated with SharePoint instance). My first idea was to use custom FormTemplates with custom ListFieldIterator.

Quickly, it turns out that there is a problem with registering FormTemplates for content types based on document library. SharePoint 2010 was ignoring them. The only solution I was able to find, was to disable content type inheritance. That allowed me to register my own FormTemplates.

Returning rows in random order from MS SQL Server

Have you ever needed to return rows from MS SQL Server in random order every time you execute query? Here is simple solution to achieve this.

select top 10 * from some_table order by newid();

Sending emails from .NET to local folder

This is useful trick when you need to test email sending from your application without flooding your inbox.
It is enough to set up our mail settings in following way:

<configuration>
  <system.net>
    <mailSettings>
      <smtp deliveryMethod="SpecifiedPickupDirectory">
        <specifiedPickupDirectory pickupDirectoryLocation="Dir"/>
      </smtp>
     </mailSettings>
  </system.net>
</configuration>

Raven DB tutorials

Very nice series of tutorials about RavenDB by Piotr Kwapin.

• Part 1 - Introduction and Basic Operations
• Part 2 - Simple Querying

Definitely worth to see. Have a nice reading