A potentially dangerous Request.Form value was detected from the client…

Posted By: Rydal Williams | posted @ Saturday, March 03, 2012 10:34 PM | Feedback (0)

To fix use the follow attributes on your Actions for ASP.NET MVC or <httpRuntime requestValidationMode="2.0" /> in your config.

        [HttpPost, ValidateInput(false)]
        public ActionResult NewJavaScript(FormCollection fc)
        {

            return RedirectToAction("JavaScripts");
        }

TypedJS: Annotate your functions with type signatures

Posted By: Rydal Williams | posted @ Thursday, February 23, 2012 10:56 AM | Feedback (0)

Now this is a better way of testing, I’m loving it. I’ve always been looking for a flexible way to test y JS libraries but haven’t found any because they are way too complicated to setup, however, typedjs by Ethan Fast is looking very promising. I’m starting a new project next week, I’m going to try it out. The only concern at this moment is how flexible is it or will it be as some of my JS functions get pretty complex.

TYPEDJS uses a function's type signature to generate input parameters, and evaluates the function upon these inputs to form a test case. This test case fails if an exception occurs, or the output violates function constraints. While type signatures provide a limited form of program specification, TYPEDJS adds a quick and rigorous sanity check to your deployment pipeline. The code lives on github.

//+ my_prop :: {name:String, valid:Boolean} -> Boolean
function my_prop(obj){
  if(obj.valid === true){
    return "true"; // Error, we are 
  }                // returning a string here
  else{
    return obj.valid;
  }
};

The Twitter team has done it again–Hogan.js

Posted By: Rydal Williams | posted @ Wednesday, February 08, 2012 10:18 AM | Feedback (0)

As I have mentioned before, I’m a fan of the Twitter development team and they have done it again. They recently launched a JavaScript templating engine called Hogan.js and its awesome. Obviously, there are a lot of templating engines out there but there are a few that actually works efficiently and simply.

Hogan.js is a 2.5k JS templating engine developed at Twitter. Use it as a part of your asset packager to compile templates ahead of time or include it in your browser to handle dynamic templates.

<!-- include hogan -->
<script src="/js/hogan.js"></script>

<!-- include your server-side compiled templates -->
<script src="/js/my-templates.js"></script>

<!-- render your templates -->
<script>
  var context = { variable: 'myVariable' };
  var partial = { partial: myPartial };
  var template = myTemplate.render(context, partial);
  document.body.innerHTML = template;
</script>

Bootstrap, from Twitter

Posted By: Rydal Williams | posted @ Wednesday, February 08, 2012 10:10 AM | Feedback (0)

I’m loving the twitter development team as I’ve always been a fan of their designs, simple and elegant. I’ve been playing with their web framework recently (html, CSS & JavaScript) and its awesome, simple and powerful. love it! Thanks Twitter team.

Simple and flexible HTML, CSS, and Javascript for popular user interface components and interactions.

Design for everyone, everywhere.

Features

• Built for and by nerds
• 12-column grid
• Growing library
• HTML5
• For all skills
• Responsive design
• Custom JQuery plugins
• Cross-everything
• Styleguide docs
• Built on LESS
• CSS3
• Open-source

DateTime.Now vs DateTime.UtcNow

Posted By: Rydal Williams | posted @ Tuesday, January 10, 2012 2:50 PM | Feedback (0)

Try to use .UtcNow() as much as you can over .Now() as it is inherently faster than the later. The problem seems to stem from the fact that DateTime.Now performs a DateTime.UtcNow first and then performs a very expensive called to figure out daylight savings time and time zone information.

public static DateTime Now
{
    get
    {
        DateTime utcNow = DateTime.UtcNow;
        bool isAmbiguousDst = false;
        long ticks = TimeZoneInfo.GetDateTimeNowUtcOffsetFromUtc(utcNow, 

out isAmbiguousDst).Ticks;
        long num = utcNow.Ticks + ticks;
        if (num > 3155378975999999999L)
        {
            return new DateTime(3155378975999999999L, DateTimeKind.Local);
        }
        if (num < 0L)
        {
            return new DateTime(0L, DateTimeKind.Local);
        }
        return new DateTime(num, DateTimeKind.Local, isAmbiguousDst);
    }
}

public static DateTime UtcNow
{
    [TargetedPatchingOptOut("Performance critical to 

inline across NGen image boundaries"), SecuritySafeCritical]
    get
    {
        long systemTimeAsFileTime = DateTime.GetSystemTimeAsFileTime();
        return new DateTime((ulong)(systemTimeAsFileTime + 

504911232000000000L | 4611686018427387904L));
    }
}

Thanks to Keyvan Nayyeri who did a detail analysis of DateTime.Now, DateTime.UtcNow and Stopwatch class at his blog post called The Darkness Behind DateTime.Now. Very good read for detail explanation.

Note that Environment.TickCount is also faster than DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks.

Framework layers on layers

Posted By: Rydal Williams | posted @ Tuesday, January 10, 2012 2:38 PM | Feedback (0)

As an architect, I stress to my team, colleagues or anyone that wants to talk IT that a solid developer needs to understand the fundamentals of how things work – especially when dealing with such a large framework such as the .Net Framework.

I’m usually very slow when it comes to adopting new versions of the framework, as of now I still write code in 2.0/3.5 while 4.5 is about to start collecting dust. It has become clear to me in the past years that sometimes frameworks simply get bloated. I wrote comfortable powerful and sophisticated applications with .NET 2.0 but when 4.0 came out everyone claimed it and jumped, yeah - I started writing code in assembly, therefore, I believe in less layers which is what newer framework versions are usually made up of.

If a framework does not provide with critical patches and newer features, then there is no need for me to upgrade. simply converting 6 lines of code to 2 lines by wrapping it is just not enough.

HandleError – ASP.NET Mvc Attribute

Posted By: Rydal Williams | posted @ Monday, January 09, 2012 4:47 PM | Feedback (0)

I’m not a fan of hiding error messages, as it could bite you real hard. However, there are existing functionalities that just need to be discussed such as the HandleError attribute of the ASP.NET MVC application. If you are not a fan of displaying the very common Yellow Screen of Death, then HandleError should be your new friend.

    [HandleError]
    public class ListController : Controller
    {
        //
        // GET: /List/
        public ActionResult Index()
        {
            return View();
        }
    }

        protected override void OnException(ExceptionContext filterContext)
        {
            // TODO: NLog exception here. base.OnException(filterContext);
        }

        protected override void OnException(ExceptionContext filterContext)
        {
            // TODO: NLog exception here.

            // Handle exception
            if (filterContext.HttpContext.IsCustomErrorEnabled)
            {
                filterContext.ExceptionHandled = true;
                Response.StatusCode = 500;
                Response.TrySkipIisCustomErrors = true;
                this.View("Error").ExecuteResult(this.ControllerContext);

                //
                base.OnException(filterContext);
            }
        }