The Joy of Excellence

  • Getting a Digital ID for Outlook 2010

    From time to time I need to send documents securely. While I’ve tried some other means in the past, one way is to use the Digital IDs in Outook. Since the certificate is for one year I have to run through this… once a year. That’s plenty of time for me to forget what I…

  • MVC 3 Breaks Error Tracking in CodeSmith Insight

    I finally have the Crash Reports working again with CodeSmith’s Insight. The release of MVC 3 provided a new way to deal with errors using the HandleErrorAttribute. The changes to the Global.asax.cs file look something like this: Application_Start     protected void Application_Start()     {         AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();           // Added this when converting to MVC 3         RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);           RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);…

  • Unit Testing HandleErrorAttribute

    Code Analysis doesn’t like the former MVC pattern of using a catch for all errors when updating a model. I wanted to use the HandleError attribute to deal with errors, but how should I unit test it? There are several keys to having the HandleError attribute work: Must decorate the Action with [HandleError] Must have…

  • SmtpClient.Dispose() Bummer

    Headline: You will need to put in some try/catch logic when you call dispose on the SmtpClient. I was working on getting rid of some of my code analysis warnings – “Warning    10    CA2000 : Microsoft.Reliability : In method ‘AccountMembershipService.SendActivationEmail(HttpContextBase, string, Guid, string, string)’, object ‘client’ is not disposed along all exception paths. Call System.IDisposable.Dispose…

  • I was “Thinking” of venturing out… not now.

    It doesn’t look that bad where I live, but I thought I should check the Houston Transtar Traffic Map. Glad I did – I’ve never seen this many little red exclamation points! Update: The first red ! I moused over were accidents. But when I went back, many were just “ice on roadway”… I think…

  • What I did on my winter vacation…

    Headline: I passed my Microsoft Certified Professional Developer exams using my vacation time and my personal funds to pay for the course. I’ll talk about several different areas that might be of interest to other as well as “journal” about why some of this happened. What was I thinking? (Or – Why I Did It)…

  • Migrated to Razor View Engine for MVC 3

    I just finished converting my views from .aspx files to .cshtml Razor view engine files. It took about 4 hours for 38 views. The key lesson I learned is, “If you didn’t do anything very fancy in a View, just delete it and recreate it.” I think that would have caused it to go faster.…

  • Upgrading to MVC 3

    Headline: If you try on your own, it is painful. If you use the right tool, it’s not too bad. Use the MVC 3 Project Upgrade Tool Here is a link that discusses the MVC 3 Project Upgrade Tool. The only real issue I had is that all my code is in source control, so…