For a project I did using VSTO, we need to have strong named assemblies when deploying our VSTO application.

Now we have one 3rd party assembly which is not strong named.

So how could you make a 3rd party assembly strong named for your project ?

It’s very easy and it only takes 2 command line commandos:

ILDASM /out:asm.il asm.dll
ILASM asm.il /KEY=key.snk /DLL /OUTPUT=asm.dll

With these parameters

• Asm.dll is your dll to sign
• Key.snk is your key

Everyone knows Snag-it, the great capturing tool of Camtasia.  I think that a lot of developers use this tool to make screen captures.

Well these guys gives us a nice plugin for VSTS.  After you have installed this plugin, you can easily add a screenshot to your work items in VSTS.  It's just great :-).

You can download it here. If you want to see it working before installing just watch this video.

A colleague on my current project asked me how he could set very fast the correct tab order in a Win Form, as this seems different to VS2003.

It’s simple, follow these steps

1. Open your Win Form
2. Under the View menu or in the menu bar you will find the Tab Order option.  If it’s not enabled, you select all your controls.
   
   
3. Then your screen will look like this
   
   
4. Now you can click on the controls to set the tab order.

This is the new result.

This is a very fast way to set your tab order. BTW : If you have numbered you control to far, just keep clicking.  When the number of controls is reached, the taborder will start over at 0, so you can just cycle then till you have the correct tab order.

Keep in mind; the labels have also a tab order but VS removes the tab order of them.  Only when you use hotkeys, the tab order of the labels is also important.

I just found a strange label behaviour in VS2005.  When I add a label on my winform and I add the text to it where we use rounded brackets, the closing rounded bracket isn't showed and at the beginning of text another opening rounded bracket is showed.

The properties of the label.

The result on the label

The most strange thing is that it's only in the project where I'm currently working and they don't have their own label control.

After checking out more it's also with the "/" character.

Don't know what it is, but it's irritating.

Update : this behaviour is only when you use the property RightToLeft = true and the combination of Autosize = false.  It seems that this is a bug.  Don't have found a solution for it. But a collegue of me has reproduced this bug.

For a project I'm currently working on, we need a service that send on regular base a signal to a certain system, this service can't be hosted in IIS and we need to use a windows service because the Windows Service can continuously send that signal. This service uses an httplistener to receive the soap messages from clients and parses the incoming SOAP to get the data. This simulates the IIS so soap calls can be send through HTTP, clients are not aware of the fact that they are not talking to IIS. This concept allows keeping sending the heartbeats while processing the soaprequest.

But what about the WSDL ? Normally developers can ask the WSDL so they can create the proxies for their clients.
This is an issue, as the service is not an IIS service, we need another way to solve this problem. You can do this using this technology :

The contract is developed as webservice without implementation. This results in a .cs file which declares the webmethods, but holds no functionality and an .asmx file. The HTTP listener can forward the call for the WSDL to the ASP.NET environment which generates the WSDL. The ASP.NET environment processes the .asmx?WSDL query and generates the WSDL. This WSDL is send to the client development environment so proxies can be generated.

This whole description is fine, but practical ?
OK, this is my best practice. In my solution I create a webservice project. In this project I write all the code I so that my WS will work.

public Service () {

//Uncomment the following line if using designed components
//InitializeComponent();
}

[WebMethod]
public OperationAnswer Add2Numbers(int number1, int number2)
{
OperationAnswer a = new OperationAnswer();
a.ErrorCode = 0;
a.STBAnswer = "Het Antwoord" ;

return a;
}

#region Answer Classes
//Temp class
public class OperationAnswer
{
private int _ErrorCode;
public int ErrorCode
{
get { return _ErrorCode; }
set { _ErrorCode = value; }
}
private String _STBAnswer;
public String STBAnswer
{
get { return _STBAnswer; }
set { _STBAnswer = value; }
}
}
#endregion

After that I go to the bin directory of my windows service. In here I copy the asmx file and create a directory named App_Code. In this directory I copy the .cs file of the webservice. Now that we have done this, our webservice is hosted in our windows service without using IIS.

But what about the WSDL ? Here for I have created a new project called processingHost. In here we have a method that will create a stringwriter and return the value of this. The content contains the WSDL.

[Serializable]
public class ProcessingHost : MarshalByRefObject
{
public string ProcessRequest(string page, string query)
{
System.IO.StringWriter sw = new System.IO.StringWriter();

HttpRuntime.ProcessRequest(new SimpleWorkerRequest(page, query, sw));

sw.Close();
return sw.ToString();
}

This DLL must also copied to your service. So in the bin dir of your service create a new bin directory and copy the DLL in here.
When using this in your service the moment the client ask the WSDL, you can use this code :

static ProcessingHost SOAPProcessingHost;
static HttpListener SoapHTTPListener;
static HttpListenerContext SoapHTTPListenerContext;

SOAPProcessingHost = (ProcessingHost)ApplicationHost.CreateApplicationHost(typeof(ProcessingHost),"/",Path.GetDirectoryName(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetModules(false)[0].FullyQualifiedName));

//Create a new HTTPListener
SoapHTTPListener = new HttpListener();

string SoapServer = " http://localhost:9999/"

SoapHTTPListener.Prefixes.Add(SoapServer);

//Start the listener
SoapHTTPListener.Start();

while (SoapHTTPListener.IsListening)
{

//Get the SOAP Enveloppe
SoapHTTPListenerContext = SoapHTTPListener.GetContext();
string page = SoapHTTPListenerContext.Request.Url.LocalPath.Replace("/", "");
string query = SoapHTTPListenerContext.Request.Url.Query.Replace("?", "");

if (query.ToUpper() == "WSDL")
{
string Answer = SOAPProcessingHost.ProcessRequest(page, query);
if (Answer != null && SoapHTTPListenerContext.Response.OutputStream.CanWrite)
{
byte[] AnswerAsByteArray = System.Text.UTF8Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(Answer);
SoapHTTPListenerContext.Response.OutputStream.Write(AnswerAsByteArray,0, AnswerAsByteArray.Length);
}
}
else
{
//Do your normal SOAP processing here
}
SoapHTTPListenerContext.Response.Close();

}

Now when your service is running, the developers of the client can create a webreference to the service by using following statement :

http://localhost:9999/Service.asmx?WSDL

You can download here a zipfile which contains a small example project (quick and dirty coding). This project has a Soap client where you can enter 2 numbers, after pressing the "add" button, you get the result back. This soapclient calls the webservice hosted under a winservice without using IIS. The webservice code is also included. The windows service is sending a "heartbeat" (Text to the console) while waiting for SOAP input. This Heartbeat simulates another process that the windows service is doing. You can use this as an example for your project.

I had reinstalled my PC, and I want to add my own code snippets back in VS2005, only they are located on a location that differs from the standard location for code snippets.  So normally you would go to the code snippet manager (Under the tools menu) and you can add your snippets from a different location.

But now the code snippet manager is missing in the tools menu.

You can add the command back by going into Tools/Customize, Click on the Commands Tab, select the Tools Menu, and drag the Code Snippets Manager onto any command bar that you like.

Introduction

Why do you need them? We could give you a short answer about this.  When developing several projects in a company, you want them to have the same look.  So, just like me, for every new project you copy files, code, etc from a previous project.  The danger is that in the first place you forgot some items and then you have to add them later.

This all takes up a lot of work.  You could help yourself and your team by creating a project template.  When this template is installed you can use it, just like when you start to create a new project with one of the standard templates.

VS2005 templates

First, let’s take a look where all the templates can be found.  The standard templates can be found at this location: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\ProjectTemplates\Web\CSharp\1033 for the CSharp web templates.

If you create your own templates they will be placed under: C:\Documents and Settings\<User>\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Templates.

You can change the location of this.  To do so follow the next steps:

1. Start VS2005
2. Go to Tools/Options
3. Expand Projects & Solutions
4. Click on General
5. Make your changes for Visual Studio user Project Templates location and Visual Studio user Item Templates location

Difference between project and item templates

Item template

An item template is an individual item that a user can add to a project by using the Add New Item dialog box. 

Project template

Project templates contain complete projects and can be added by the user with the New Project dialog box.

Inside a template

With this you could put the templates somewhere on a network drive and everyone connects to this drive.  So you won’t have to deploy the templates to every developer.

When taking a closer look to the standard templates, you see that a template exists of a zip file containing all the files needed to create your project/item.  The most important file is the .vstemplate.  This file contains the definition how your project should look.  This file contains several blocks

• TemplateData
• TemplateContent
• WizardExtension
• WizardData

At this moment I will only focus on the TemplateData and TemplateContent block.  So let’s take a closer look at them.

TemplateDate

This is the definition how the template is displayed in either New Project or Add New Item.
Several attributes can be set.  We list the most used.

Name: Specifies the name of the template
Description: The description of the template
Icon: The icon that will be displayed
ProjectType: the category under which it will be appearing.  A Category could be CSharp, VisualBasic,…

A full list can be found here.

TemplateContent

This block specifies the contents of the template.  This block doesn’t have any attributes, but has a few child elements.  With the child elements you could define your projects, references, project collections and more.

Read the info here.

Create your template

When you have created templates in VS2003, you know it took a long time to go. If you don’t know how this is done, read more info here.

From VS2005 it only takes a few steps to create your template.  We will explain the first steps and then split up in the two types of templates.

First steps

• Create a new project of the type you want to create your template.
• Change the project for your needs by adding your forms, classes, etc.
   
• Save the project
• Go to file/Export template
• A wizard pops up
  
• Now choose your template style and if you have more than one project defined, the project you want to export.

Project template

After choosing the project template you get the next step which leads you to this screen.

Fill in all project items as described above.  If you check the automatically import the template into Visual Studio, you don’t have to copy manually your template in the user template folder.

Press the finish button and your template will be generated.

If you check now the template file, you will see the zip file, containing your exported project.

Item template

If you choose for the item template, you will get the following screen as next step.

Now check the item you want to export.  After pressing next you will get a new wizard screen.

On this screen you can add the references, if needed by your selected item.  Press again next and you will get the item properties wizard screen.

Press finish to create your template.

I don’t see the export template menu item

It seems that sometimes the menu item isn’t visible.  If you follow the next steps the item will be available.

• Right click on the toolbar
• Select Customize
• Click on the command tab
• Under Categories and select File
• Under commands select Export Template
• Drag this under File Menu

Use your templates

Now that we have our templates, we can use them.  Open Visual Studio and choose create new project.  You will get a screen like this

On the right side you will see a section My Templates where you find your project template.  Choose the template, give it a name and press OK. The project will be created.

We also have created an item template.  Add a new item to your project.  You will see next screen. 

-

Also here you will find a section My Templates.  Choose your template, give it a name and press OK.  The item is created in your project.

Customize your templates

All templates support parameters so you could replace class names, namespaces,… on the moment the template is initiated.  These parameters are replaced by the wizard, the moment the user clicks OK on the New Project or Add New Item.

A list of all reserved parameters can be found here.

Multi-project templates

Multi project templates are in fact containers for 2 or more projects.  When choosing the template in the New Project dialog box, a solution with all included projects is created.

In common a multi-project template is almost built in the same way as a project template.  It exists out of

• All projects
• Each project has its own .vstemplate file
• 1 root .vstemplate file

The root .vstemplate file differs from a .vstemplate file of a project.  It contains a ProjectCollection element.  This element exists out of 1 or more ProjectTemplateLink’s.  Nice to know is that a multi-project template can contain projects written in different languages.  It will be placed in one category of the New Project by using the ProjectType element.

The creation of the project part is the same as a project template.  What I do is first creating for all the projects the templates.  Unzip them.  Then create your root .vstemplate file.  This file contains your metadata for the multi-project template.  Afterwards right click on the files, select send to and click Compressed (zipped) folder.  Place this zip file in your Visual Studio template folder.

There’s one disadvantage when using multi-project templates. Individual projects cannot be assigned by the New Project dialog box.  Instead, the wizard will use the ProjectName attribute on the ProjectTemplateLink to specify the name of each project.

You can solve this by using the Guidance And Automation Toolkit (GAT).  At this moment this tool isn’t officially released yet.  But you can download the CTP June 2006 here.

I will blog later about this tool.  So stay tuned.

When you want to build your solution in VS 2005, together with TFS as source control it could that you encountered the following error:

Build FAILED.
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Microsoft.Common.targets(2797,9): error MSB3491: Could not write lines to file "obj\project.vbproj.FileList.txt". Access to the path 'd:\builds\project\obj\project.vbproj.FileList.txt' is denied.

The problem is that this file is checked into source control and they are marked as read-only.  Even by setting the read-only flag to off it doesn’t work, because the next build the flag is switched on again.  As they are intermediate files, generated by the build, these should never been checked in.  So to solve the error above, delete the file from SCC, delete the file from your HD and try again.

As always, you want only a single instance running of your program.  To do this you have to make use of the Mutex object.  By using reflection we get the executing name of our application.  We will use it for checking if there’s already an instance.

The Mutex object can be used for interprocess synchronization.  With this we could check if our application is already running.  With the waitone method we can request the  ownership of our mutext object.  If it return false, then there’s already a process running using this mutex object.

Example code :

using System.Reflection;
using System.Threading;

…..

privatestatic Mutex s_Mutex;

/// <summary>
/// The main entry point for the application.
/// </summary>
[STAThread]
staticvoid Main()
{
s_Mutex =new Mutex(true, Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().Name);

if (s_Mutex.WaitOne(0, false))
{
Application.EnableVisualStyles();
Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);
Application.Run(new Form1());
}
else
MessageBox.Show("Already an instance running", "your application", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Warning);
}

The previous post was just about the basic principles of code snippets in VS2005.  Now we will describe the power boost of code snippets: the $name$ notation (or the literal replacement) and the object replacement.

The literal replacement.

When you want to create a code snippet with some customized parts (like variable type, variable name, ...) that must replaced by the developer after inserting the code snippet, you can use a literal.

How do you create this?
In the Snippet element place an element called "Declarations".  In this element you place your literals which can be one or more literals.  The literal element has a few elements:

• ID: The ID of the literal
• Default: The default value for the literal

Optional you can add:

• Function: Function to execute when the literal receives focus in Visual Studio
• Tool tip: short description of the literal

Now you have created your literal, but you have to place it in your code snippet.  This is done by placing the $ sign in front and at the end of your Literal ID element.  Now go to the code element.  Within your code place the $literalID$ notation where you want it.  The next time you add the code snippet you will see a green rectangle.  This is the place where you have added your literal.  If you have inserted a default value this will be filled in the rectangle.

You can have multiple insertions for the same $literalID$ element.  This gives us a nice effect in Visual Studio.  Only for the first entry you will see the green rectangle.  After filling in the rectangle, Visual Studio will automatically replace all the other literals with the same ID with your filled in value.

Two examples:
Example 1: One literal

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<CodeSnippets xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/2005/CodeSnippet">
<CodeSnippet Format="1.0.0">
<Header>
<Title>My MessageboxSnippet</Title>
<Shortcut>mmbs</Shortcut>
<Description>My Snippet for messagebox in c#</Description>
<Author>
</Author>
</Header>
<Snippet>
<Declarations>
<Literal Editable="true">
<ID>YourMessage</ID>
<ToolTip>Place your message here</ToolTip>
<Default>Place your message here</Default>
<Function>
</Function>
</Literal>
</Declarations>
<Code Language="csharp"><![CDATA[MessageBox.Show("$YourMessage$");]]></Code>
</Snippet>
</CodeSnippet>
</CodeSnippets>

Example 2 : More literals and used more than one time

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<CodeSnippets xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/2005/CodeSnippet">
<CodeSnippet Format="1.0.0">
<Header>
<Title>My MessageboxSnippet</Title>
<Shortcut>mmbs</Shortcut>
<Description>My Snippet for messagebox in c#</Description>
<Author>
</Author>
</Header>
<Snippet>
<Declarations>
<Literal Editable="true">
<ID>YourMessage</ID>
<ToolTip>Place your message here</ToolTip>
<Default>Place your message here</Default>
<Function>
</Function>
</Literal>
<Literal Editable="true">
<ID>Title</ID>
<ToolTip>Place your message title here</ToolTip>
<Default>Place your message title here</Default>
<Function>
</Function>
</Literal>
</Declarations>
<Code Language="csharp"><![CDATA[MessageBox.Show("$YourMessage$","$Title$");
MessageBox.Show("$YourMessage$");]]></Code>
</Snippet>
</CodeSnippet>
</CodeSnippets>

As you can see, code snippets in VS2005 give some great power to developers.  I have created or downloaded and changed them to our needs, several good code snippets. Every developer has installed them locally.

Code snippets can make the life of a developer a lot easier.  Already in VS2003 you had the possibility to add code snippets to your toolbox or make use of a third party tool.  In VS2005 Microsoft has added a code snippet manager.  We will explain in short how to create such a code snippet.

The format of the code snippet is XML base.  An example of a code snippet file:

<CodeSnippets
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/2005/CodeSnippet">
<CodeSnippet Format="1.0.0">
<Header>
     <Title>My MessageboxSnippet</Title>
     <Description>My Snippet for messagebox in c#</Description>
     <Shortcut>mmbs</Shortcut>
</Header>
<Snippet>
<References>
<Reference>
<Assembly>System.Windows.Forms.dll</Assembly>
</Reference>
</References>
<Code Language="VB">
<![CDATA[MessageBox.Show("My first own snippet")]]>
</Code>
</Snippet>
</CodeSnippet>
</CodeSnippets>

We have several parts:

• Header
  • Title: Name of the snippet
  • Description : Description of the snippet
  • Shortcut : Shortcut to access the snippet
• Snippet
  • Reference: references to DLL's needed when implementhing the snippet.  Be aware that this is only supported by VB.Net snippets.  Snippets for other code needs to add the reference manually in your solution.
  • Code language: the language of the code
    • VB
    • CSharp

The only thing left now is to save the snippet as a .snippet file and place it in the snippet directory.  By default your snippet directory can be found here : My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Code Snippets\ and then the language and then the directory "My Code snippets".

A complete course can be found in the MSDN.

But there is an easier way.  The VS Editor Team has released a PowerToy named Snippy.  This is a very handy tool for creating your own snippets.  Click here for more info.

Some interesting code snippets:
Microsoft: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/downloads/codesnippets/default.aspx
NUnit: http://codebetter.com/blogs/scott.bellware/archive/2006/02/28/139446.aspx
Public property: http://weblogs.asp.net/jeffwids/archive/2005/09/08/424679.aspx

I also found a great tool for world wide snippet sharing: http://www.codexchange.net/
And like gotdotnet there's also a gotcodesnippet site: http://gotcodesnippets.com/