Day 1 with Dot Net Nuke

1. Register to DotNetNuke and download the latest version of DotNetNuke Community Edition.
2. Extract it and configure it as a website in IIS. Let’s call it ‘DNN website’. 
3. Open the DNN website in Visual Studio 2008.
4. On running it the installation page appears - http://localhost/dotnetnuke/Install/InstallWizard.aspx.
5. In select installation method, select typical, choose language English, click Next button.
6. On next page, test permissions of the application, when you pass the sufficient permission test, click next.
7. On next page you have to configure database connections. Configure your database here.  Click next.  It will complete the installation itself. On page 'Run Database Installation Scripts' in the textbox when you see 'Installation of Database Complete' click next. Also check-out the database you configured in previous page. You will see many tables and stored procedures created by DNN. Click next.
8. On the next page, 'Configure Host Account' create your SuperAdmin username and password. This username and password you will use to access your website's admin part. Click next.
9. Next page with title ‘Portal title’, provide host username/password and title to your portal. The host username/password will be used to access all the functionality of the portal. Submit the page and done! We have created our Dot Net Nuke portal.
 

Problem: #1

      While accessing the DNN portal using IP or DNS (not localhost) it redirects to http://localhost/...

Solution:

1. Log in as host account. 
2. Then go to the Admin > Site Settings page. 
3. Advanced Settings> Portal Aliases> add a new Http Alias "domain.com/…"

Microsoft Message Queue MSMQ Part-I

Microsoft Message Queue MSMQ
In distributed applications sometimes two applications needs to communicate in an asynchronous manner that is one application shoots a message for another, another application which may not be available at the same time, but could get that message at a later time. This functionality can be achieved by storing the message sent by first application into a central database and then when later application becomes available to process this message, it could receive the message from the database. Let’s look a bit deeper. It is OK to use a central database when you need only two applications to communicate, but how if you have a thousand applications to send messages and only one application to process them?
For example, you want to accept data from multiple users and you have to do some operations on that data, after that you require writing data to some files. Then in this situation you don’t need the data to be stored in database, you just want to do some operations on that data and copy that to some files. Microsoft Message Queue (MSMQ) fills this need by providing a central location or pool where you can place or remove data. An application can place data in the queue and continue with its business while another application grabs the data when it is ready.

What is Message Queuing?
Message queuing is a communication tool that allows applications to reliably interconnect in a distributed environment where one of the applications may or may not be available at any given time. The queue acts as a holding container for messages as they are sent between applications. The applications send messages to and read messages from queues to communicate back and forth. An application writes a message to a queue, which will then be received and processed by another application at some point determined by the receiving application. This type of communication is designed for asynchronous use where the applications involved are not waiting for an immediate response from the other end. The key feature of message queues like MSMQ is the fact that it decouples sender and recipient applications so they do not need to run at the same time. This means that an application can place data in the queue and not deal with whether the item on the queue is delivered to the recipient.
MSMQ is a part of the Windows Server operating system. Originally MSMQ came with a native, COM-based programming interface. But Microsoft has added a.NET wrapper on top of it which makes the development of MSMQ-based systems quite easier.

When to Use Message Queue?
a. Storing insignificant information in the message queue while your database server is busy with other real time processing.
b. Process user input which is given by the user after getting supporting information from other source or applications that are not active or ready at this stage.
c. Because of database server outage, you might require keeping user input in the message queue and processing it as and when the database comes online.
d. Exchanging data with a mainframe system like SAP. Personally, the real time communication with SAP is often a problem. In such cases, the SAP system uses message queue for storing and forwarding information where real time communication is not possible at that time.
So, in MSMQ there are two concepts – the Message and the Message-Queue
• Message: The actual message or data to be shared among applications.
• Message-Queue: The MSMQ message queue that will receive/send messages.

Types of Message Queues
• Outgoing: Used to temporarily store messages before they are sent to its destination.
• Public: Published in the Active Directory. Applications on different servers throughout the network can find and use public queues via Active Directory.
• Private: These queues are local to a server and are not available to other machines (thus, these queues are not published in Active Directory).
• System: Contains journal messages (sent from the system), dead messages, and transactional dead-letter messages. Dead messages are undeliverable.

continued..

Saving image from binary stream

In a project I encountered a problem where I needed to capture binary stream of an image which was drawn on flash and was sent to an ASPX page to handle the stream, convert it into the same image that was drawn and save it to disk (on the server) or throw it out of the browser as a download.
Google got exact place for me here, but the food was not yet ready to be fed. It is really annoying to see large number of GDI+ System.Drawing Exceptions. So, here is what I stopped at fighting the those exceptions-

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        //Get the stream
        Stream input = (Stream)Request.InputStream;

        Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(input);

        // Clear current content and set returned content type
        Response.Clear();
        Response.ContentType = "image/jpeg";
        
        // Save to the Response.OutputStream object
        bmp.Save(Response.OutputStream, ImageFormat.Jpeg);

        bmp.Dispose();
        Response.End();
    }

Displaying Warning Messages in ASP.NET page- II

Displaying Web Warning Messages: Technique 2
There are times when you want to draw attention to an important message, without being overly loud. Sometimes, all you want to say is... "Thank you! Your information has been stored" or "Finished: all your outstanding reviews have been completed."
In these situations, a message box is a little overkill. Slightly more placid is the technique of displaying a whole Web page with just your core message at its center. I also prefer to add automatic redirects on such pages, so that after a few seconds, the user gets taken back to the previous page, or through to the next.
There are two ways to achieve this goal. First, create a separate page in your application that accepts a message in its query string, and then send your user across to that page.
Alternatively, you can do it wholly in code—which is just what we're doing here. I've created a small method holding a core HTML Web page, which you could perhaps load from a file. Inside that page, we have numerous variables (such as a message description) that get replaced by the method. Then, we push the modified HTML down the wire as a response to our client.
The HTML also contains a HTTP Refresh command, which by default takes the user back to the previous page. So, in brief: When you call the function, it displays a message for a number of seconds, and then returns to the issuing page.
Here's the function you'll need:

public void DisplayMessage(string MsgTitle, string MsgDetails, string PageTitle, int DelayInSeconds)
    {
      PageTitle = "Attention!";
      DelayInSeconds = 2;
      string strResponse = "<html><head><title>%page-title%</title><META HTTP-EQUIV='Refresh' "  
        "CONTENT='%delay%; url=javascript:history.back();'>"  
        "</head><body><div align='center'><center>"  
        "<table border='0'cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' width='100%' height='100%'><tr> "  
        "<td width='100%'> <p align='center'><b> <font face='Arial' size='6'>%message-title%"  
        "</font></b></p><p align='center'><font face='Arial' size='3'><b>%message-details%</b>"  
        "</font></td></tr></table></center></div></body></html>";

      strResponse = strResponse.Replace("%page-title%", PageTitle);
      strResponse = strResponse.Replace("%message-title%", MsgTitle);
      strResponse = strResponse.Replace("%message-details%", MsgDetails);
strResponse = strResponse.Replace("%delay%",   DelayInSeconds.ToString);

      Response.Clear();
      Response.Write(strResponse);
      Response.End();
    }
protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
DisplayMessage("Thanks", "You are being redirected now", 
"Thanks!!!", 3);
}

Displaying Warning Messages in ASP.NET pages- I

Thought of a situation when you need to call javascript alert from your server side code that might include some server side decision logic to handle the alert. Most of us know a straight way- "Page.ClientScript.RegisterStartupScript" method to accomplish this. Althoght accidentally, I came to know another approach to do the same without -   "Page.ClientScript.RegisterStartupScript".

Switch to the HTML view of your Web form and add the following immediately after the close of the <body> tag:

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >
<head runat="server">
    <title>Untitled Page</title>
</head>
<body>

</body>
<script>
<asp:Literal id="ltlAlert" runat="server" EnableViewState="False">    </asp:Literal>
 </script>
</html>

Switch back to Design view and save your Web form. This has set up your Literal server control manually—due to the surrounding <script> tags; we couldn't do this using the designer
Add the following code snippet behind your Web form. This takes a string and incorporates it into a JavaScript 'alert' command, which is then placed on the Web page as pure HTML:

private void Say(string Message)
    {
        // Format string properly 
        Message = Message.Replace("'", "\\'");
        Message = Message.Replace(Convert.ToChar(10).ToString(), "\\n");
        Message = Message.Replace(Convert.ToChar(13).ToString(), "");
        // Display as JavaScript alert 
        ltlAlert.Text = "alert('" + Message + "')";
    }

Whenever you want to display an in-your-face message, simply call this Say function in your code—as the following snippet demonstrates:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        Say("this is error msg\n next line");
    }

Thats it!!