URL ReWriting with ASP.NET

Recently I got onto a nice article I want to share with you. It is about URL ReWriting with ASP.NET.
I am sure the Open Source manics of you know pretty good the "mod_rewrite" for Apache Web Server. But for those of you who are .NET maniacs, this article will be a good start: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/02/26/tip-trick-url-rewriting-with-asp-net.aspx

Enjoy it!

MSXML6 as Prerequisite for most of installations

I hate MSXML 6 !
Why
When I run setup of some "Visual Studio 2005" family softwares I got the error "MSXML6 could not be install, setup cannot continue". Then, when I go to Control panel I see "MSXML6 Parser". If I try to UNINSTALL it says "This action can be ... only for installed components" ... What the ?
Then a veeeryyyy useful post comes to be the only one that helped:
Aaron Stebner's WebLog.
For fast issue - first try: setup.exe /NO_BSLN_CHECK
It works on almost every Visual Studio family products, but unfortunately it does not work on SQL Server family products ...
So another workaround should be found for the SQL Family.

More Object Datasource

Gee,
Ever encounter "Exception Details: System.InvalidOperationException: ObjectDataSource 'ods' could not find a non-generic method 'Update' that has parameters: ...." ? No kidding ?
I will not show you the hot water, people have already found it :
http://geekswithblogs.net/mnf/archive/2007/03/01/107642.aspx (the short version)
and
http://weblogs.asp.net/bradygaster/archive/2006/09/26/How-to-Bloody-Your-Forehead.aspx (the long story)
Just a hint - do not use "Use Optimistic Concurrency" !!!
And then you Should slightly modify the Auto-generated code for the ODS.
Well, it's not a good idea at all to mess with auto-generated code, but what else can we do?
Luckily, Microsoft has promised that this BUG is fixed for the next release of Visual Studio.
I wander how many additional bugs are there waiting to crash developer's work ;)

ObjectDataSource ?

I want to give you a hint of something that bothered me the last hours:
The type specified in the TypeName property of ObjectDataSource '' could not be found.
This is the Error I was getting the last half an hour and that drove me crazy.
A simple definition lays behind in the code:

ObjectDataSource odsP = new ObjectDataSource();
odsP.TypeName = "OrderDoc";
odsP.SelectMethod = "GetPriceDetails";

Why then the message is with EMPTY TypeName ?
Well, if you have the definition of the OrderDoc in the scope (namespace) of your current project that is executing the code - there is no problem at all.
The problem comes out when you place your business logic in a business logic layer. And there is no matter how you add the reference to the BL project. You would never succeed.
The answer lays behind the mechanisim the ObjectDataSource is searching for the given TypeName. Well, it uses Reflection, so you must provide a fully-qualified name of the Type including the assembly / namespace. For example:
MyBusinessLogic.OrdersLogic.OrderDoc
So the lines in the example will turn onto:

ObjectDataSource odsP = new ObjectDataSource();
odsP.TypeName = "MyBusinessLogic.OrdersLogic.OrderDoc";
odsP.SelectMethod = "GetPriceDetails";

Cheers,

Nested DIVs in Mozilla

Recently I got into something strange.
Let's assume we have several nested DIV elements.
Also, assume we have one enclosing DIV, but inside DIVs are with style FLOATING.

<div style="clear: both; display: block; background-color: blue;">
   <div style="clear: none; float: left;">some block</div>
   <div style="clear: none; float: left;">some block</div>
   <div style="clear: none; float: left;">some block</div>
</div>

What attracted my attention is that in IE everything works just fine (all nested DIVs have the background from its parent).
But when I opened the result in Mozilla Firefox I noted that the enclosing DIV is like for itself and no inner content.
The problem is that floated elements are taken out of the doument flow and hence do not
contribute to the height of their parent. So generally the enclosing div does not understand it has a content inside.
The solution: put an element (DIV) with style set to CLEAR: BOTH, after all the floating elements.

<div style="clear: both; display: block; background-color: blue;">
   <div style="clear: none; float: left;">some block</div>
   <div style="clear: none; float: left;">some block</div>
   <div style="clear: none; float: left;">some block</div>
   <div style="clear: both;"></div>
</div>

Interesting times for the Browser understanding of CSS ...