Introducing BugGuardian.MVC and BugGuardian.WebForms

Today I'm very excited to announce that I have released two additional modules for BugGuardian.

For who doesn't know it, BugGuardian is a library that allows to easily create a Bug or a Task work item on your Visual Studio Team Services account or on your on-premises Team Foundation Server 2015 in the case your application throws an Unhandled Exception.

To better support the integration of this library with web projects, today I'm announcing the availability of BugGuardian.MVC and BugGuardian.WebForms.

BugGuardian.MVC (GitHub, NuGet) is an extension for BugGuardian specifically written to support Asp.net MVC applications. 

It adds an Action Filter to your application to let you automatically intercept all the exceptions.

BugGuardian.WebForms (GitHub, NuGet), instead, is an extension for BugGuardian specifically written to support Asp.net WebForms applications.

They are based on the new BugGuardian version 1.3.0 and they support projects written with the .Net Framework v4.0 and above.

As it is for BugGuardian, these two additional libraries are OSS so feel free to see their code on GitHub.

If you encounter any issue using these libraries, please let me know through the GitHub Issues pages and I'll fix the problem as soon as possible!

Again, I want to thanks my friend and fellow MVP Marco Minerva (@marcominerva, GitHub) for the support and the suggestions.

Welcome BugGuardian

Someone of you has maybe noticed the I did only few post in the last months. This happened because of two main reasons.

The first one is, as some of you already know, I moved in another country far away from home, with a completely different culture and language, to start a new adventure. This inevitably took a lot of time from the already small amount of spare time I have.

The second reason I wasn't so active here, that is also the reason of this post, is that I worked on a new project that I have released today: BugGuardian.

What is BugGuardian

BugGuardian is an Open Source library, written in C# like Shared Project, that allows to easily create a Bug work item on your Visual Studio Online account or on your on-premises Team Foundation Server 2015 in the case your application throws an Unhandled Exception.

It can also be invoked manually in try/catch blocks to keep track of handled exceptions.

It supports applications written with the .Net Framework v4.0 and above, and it can be used on every kind of project, including:

• Asp.net
• Asp.net MVC
• WPF
• Windows 8 / 8.1 Apps
• Windows Phone 8 / 8.1 Apps
• Universal App
• Universal Windows Platform Apps (Windows 10)
• and so on...

As I mentioned, it is OSS so you can find the sources on GitHub.

To let you install and use it without having to build the sources by your own, I have published it on NuGet. Just search for BugGuardian in the Package Manager GUI or run the following command in the Package Manager Console:
Install-Package DBTek.BugGuardian

Usage, support and Feedback

Refer to the project documentation to find examples about how to use this library. You can also find some code samples in the TestApps folder.

Anyway, just to make an example and to show it's really simple to use, this is the code you need to manage an exception and to open a Bug on your VSO / TFS:

using (var creator = new DBTek.BugGuardian.Creator())
{
    creator.AddBug(myException);
}

If you encounter any issue using this library, please let me know through the Issues page and I'll fix the problem as soon as possible!

I'm waiting for your feedback :)

I want to thank you my friend and fellow MVP Marco Minerva (@marcominerva) for the support, the patience and the Code Review.

Create a RSS reader in an Umbaco 7 MVC Partial View

There are several way to create and embed a RSS reader in an Umbraco page: using custom controllers, using XSL macros, etc...

But wath if we want to use a normal MVC Partial View without to develop a custom controller?

Well, it is really simple to achieve this goal with just a few C# lines.

@inherits Umbraco.Web.Mvc.UmbracoTemplatePage
@using System.ServiceModel
@using System.ServiceModel.Syndication
@using System.Xml
@{
 string url = "http://your_blog_rss_url";
 XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(url);
 SyndicationFeed feed = SyndicationFeed.Load(reader); 
 reader.Close(); 
}

@foreach(var feedItem in feed.Items)
{ 
 <div class="col-md-6">
  <article>
   <div class="date">
    <span class="day">@feedItem.PublishDate.Day</span>
    <span class="month">@GetMonthName(feedItems[i].PublishDate.Month)</span>
   </div>
   <h4 class="heading-primary"><a href="@feedItem.Links[4].Uri">@feedItems[i].Title.Text</a></h4>
   <p>@(feedItem.Summary.Text + "... ") <a href="@feedItem.Links[4].Uri" class="read-more">read more <i class="fa fa-angle-right"></i></a></p>
  </article>
 </div>
}

As you can see, only a couple odlines are required. At this point we just have to include this partial view in the page where we want to see our RSS feed.
Obviously, you can change the layout (the one here is what I used in my project).

Only 2 notes:

1. I used "feedItem.Links[4].Uri" to retrieve the blog post url, this works if you use blogger. If you use other blogging platforms as sources, you'll have to check the Links collection to know "where" is the url you want.
2. The "@GetMonthName" is just an Helper to convert the "number" of the month into its name.

ASP.net MVC ActionLink with Image: Part 3 (Ajax)

In my previous posts we've seen how to implement some custom helpers to add  Bootstap Glyphs or Images to ActionLinks.

Now we're going to see how to do the same thing but with Ajax support too.

The basic things to do is to build the html code taking care of all the "ajax-related stuff" that the normal Ajax.ActionLink helper adds.

In this example I used the glyph as image, but you can use the same approach also with the normal images.

/// <summary>
/// Create an Ajax.ActionLink with an associated glyphicon
/// </summary>
/// <param name="htmlHelper"></param>
/// <param name="linkText"></param>
/// <param name="actionName"></param>
/// <param name="controllerName"></param>
/// <param name="glyphicon"></param>
/// <param name="routeValues"></param>
/// <param name="htmlAttributes"></param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static MvcHtmlString ImageActionLink(this AjaxHelper ajaxHelper, string linkText, string actionName, string controllerName, string glyphicon, AjaxOptions ajaxOptions, RouteValueDictionary routeValues = null, object htmlAttributes = null)
{
 //Example of result:           
 //<a id="btnShow" href="/Customers/ShowArtworks?customerId=1" data-ajax-update="#pnlArtworks" data-ajax-success="jsSuccess" 
 //data-ajax-mode="replace" data-ajax-method="POST" data-ajax-failure="jsFailure" data-ajax-confirm="confirm" data-ajax-complete="jsComplete" 
 //data-ajax-begin="jsBegin" data-ajax="true">
 //  <i class="glyphicon glyphicon-pencil"></i>
 //  <span>Edit</span>
 //</a>

 var builderI = new TagBuilder("i");
 builderI.MergeAttribute("class", "glyphicon " + glyphicon);
 string iTag = builderI.ToString(TagRenderMode.Normal);

 string spanTag = "";
 if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(linkText))
 {
  var builderSPAN = new TagBuilder("span");
  builderSPAN.InnerHtml = " " + linkText;
  spanTag = builderSPAN.ToString(TagRenderMode.Normal);
 }

 //Create the "a" tag that wraps
 var builderA = new TagBuilder("a");

 var requestContext = HttpContext.Current.Request.RequestContext;
 var uh = new UrlHelper(requestContext);

 builderA.MergeAttribute("href", uh.Action(actionName, controllerName, routeValues));

 //Ajax section
 builderA.MergeAttribute("data-ajax", "true");
 builderA.MergeAttribute("data-ajax-update", ajaxOptions.UpdateTargetId.StartsWith("#") ? ajaxOptions.UpdateTargetId : "#" + ajaxOptions.UpdateTargetId);
   
 if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(ajaxOptions.InsertionMode.ToString()))
  builderA.MergeAttribute("data-ajax-mode", ajaxOptions.InsertionMode.ToString());            
 
 if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(ajaxOptions.OnBegin))
  builderA.MergeAttribute("data-ajax-begin", ajaxOptions.OnBegin);
 
 if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(ajaxOptions.OnComplete))
  builderA.MergeAttribute("data-ajax-complete", ajaxOptions.OnComplete);
   
 if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(ajaxOptions.OnFailure))
  builderA.MergeAttribute("data-ajax-failure", ajaxOptions.OnFailure);
   
 if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(ajaxOptions.OnSuccess))
  builderA.MergeAttribute("data-ajax-success", ajaxOptions.OnSuccess);
   
 if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(ajaxOptions.Confirm))
  builderA.MergeAttribute("data-ajax-confirm", ajaxOptions.Confirm);
  
 if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(ajaxOptions.HttpMethod))
  builderA.MergeAttribute("data-ajax-method", ajaxOptions.HttpMethod);

 if (htmlAttributes != null)
 {
  IDictionary<string, object> attributes = new RouteValueDictionary(htmlAttributes);
  builderA.MergeAttributes(attributes);
 }

 builderA.InnerHtml = iTag + spanTag;

 return new MvcHtmlString(builderA.ToString(TagRenderMode.Normal));
}

As you can see, the code is similar to the one we've seen in the other posts but with the exception of the fact we are extending an "AjaxHelper" insetead of  an "HtmlHelper" and the add of the "ajax section"

ASP.net MVC ActionLink with Image: Part 2 (using Images)

In my previous post I talked about creating a custom helper to render an ActionLink with a Glyph image.

In this post I will show how to create a similar helper but using "normal" images instead of bootstrap glyphs.

/// <summary>
/// Create an ActionLink with an associated image
/// </summary>
/// <param name="htmlHelper"></param>
/// <param name="linkText"></param>
/// <param name="actionName"></param>
/// <param name="controllerName"></param>
/// <param name="imagePath"></param>
/// <param name="routeValues"></param>
/// <param name="htmlAttributes"></param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static MvcHtmlString ImageImgActionLink(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, string linkText, string actionName, string controllerName, string imagePath, object routeValues = null, object htmlAttributes = null)
{
 //Exemple of result:
 //<a href="@Url.Action("Edit", new { id = Model.id_rod })">
 //  <i class="glyphicon glyphicon-pencil"></i>
 //  <span>Edit</span>
 //</a>

 if (imagePath.StartsWith("~/"))
 {
  imagePath = VirtualPathUtility.ToAbsolute(imagePath);
 }

 var builderImage = new TagBuilder("image");
 builderImage.MergeAttribute("src", imagePath);
 builderImage.MergeAttribute("alt", linkText);
 builderImage.MergeAttribute("style", "border=0");
 string imageTag = builderImage.ToString(TagRenderMode.SelfClosing);

 string spanTag = "";
 if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(linkText))
 {
  var builderSPAN = new TagBuilder("span");
  builderSPAN.InnerHtml = " " + linkText;
  spanTag = builderSPAN.ToString(TagRenderMode.Normal);
 }

 //Create the "a" tag that wraps
 var builderA = new TagBuilder("a");

 var requestContext = HttpContext.Current.Request.RequestContext;
 var uh = new UrlHelper(requestContext);

 builderA.MergeAttribute("href", uh.Action(actionName, controllerName, routeValues));

 if (htmlAttributes != null)
 {
  IDictionary<string, object> attributes = new RouteValueDictionary(htmlAttributes);
  builderA.MergeAttributes(attributes);
 }

 builderA.InnerHtml = imageTag + spanTag;

 return new MvcHtmlString(builderA.ToString(TagRenderMode.Normal));
}

You can pass to the helper both absolute urls or relative urls (as imagePath) so it gives you total flexibility.

ASP.net MVC ActionLink with Image: Part 1 (using Glyph)

If you are using ASP.net MVC you surely know that there is an helpful helper to create a link that points to an Action of a controller: it's the Html.ActionLink.

You can use this helper only with text, but what about if you want to add to the link a glyph image, like in this example?

Well, the "fast&dirty" answer is to write some html directly in the cshtml page. Something like:

<a href="@Url.Action("Edit", new { id = Model.id })">
  <i class="glyphicon glyphicon-pencil"></i>
  <span>Edit</span>
</a>

This approach is faster that any other, if you need to have it only in few places. But what about if you have to use it spread all around you application (as in my case?). You will have to copy&paste the code all around and then change it. Not so good...

The better way to do it, in this case, is to write a custom helper that will do it for you.

/// <summary>
/// Create an ActionLink with an associated glyphicon
/// </summary>
/// <param name="htmlHelper"></param>
/// <param name="linkText"></param>
/// <param name="actionName"></param>
/// <param name="controllerName"></param>
/// <param name="glyphicon"></param>
/// <param name="routeValues"></param>
/// <param name="htmlAttributes"></param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static MvcHtmlString ImageActionLink(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, string linkText, string actionName, string controllerName, string glyphicon, object routeValues = null, object htmlAttributes = null)
{
 //Exemple of result:
 //<a href="@Url.Action("Edit", new { id = Model.id_rod })">
 //  <i class="glyphicon glyphicon-pencil"></i>
 //  <span>Edit</span>
 //</a>

 var builderI = new TagBuilder("i");
 builderI.MergeAttribute("class", "glyphicon " + glyphicon);
 string iTag = builderI.ToString(TagRenderMode.Normal);

 string spanTag = "";
 if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(linkText))
 {
  var builderSPAN = new TagBuilder("span");
  builderSPAN.InnerHtml = " " + linkText;
  spanTag = builderSPAN.ToString(TagRenderMode.Normal);
 }            

 //Create the "a" tag that wraps
 var builderA = new TagBuilder("a");

 var requestContext = HttpContext.Current.Request.RequestContext;
 var uh = new UrlHelper(requestContext);
 
 builderA.MergeAttribute("href", uh.Action(actionName, controllerName, routeValues));

 if (htmlAttributes != null)
 {
  IDictionary<string, object> attributes = new RouteValueDictionary(htmlAttributes);
  builderA.MergeAttributes(attributes);
 }
  
 builderA.InnerHtml = iTag + spanTag;
 
 return new MvcHtmlString(builderA.ToString(TagRenderMode.Normal));
}

At this point it will be possible to invoke the Html.ImageActionLink helper in the same way and with the same parameters that we will use with the "normal" Html.ActionLink plus the glyphicon class of the glyph image we wanna add to the link.