Secure asp.net website URL with global.asax

Once any one has installed SSL certificate in their server, there is need to redirect old http url to https protocol. If we don’t write any custom code for redirection it will continue to browse by both of url.

There are many ways to redirection of page, we are going to take a look on global.asax file. We all are much familiar with Global.asax file in asp.net application, it handles out most of application related events.

We can use following code snippet to redirect http to https

protected void Application_BeginRequest(Object sender, EventArgs e)

{

if (HttpContext.Current.Request.IsSecureConnection.Equals(false))

{

HttpContext.Current.Response.Redirect(HttpContext.Current.Request.Url.AbsoluteUri.Replace("http://", "https://"));

}

}

Sharepoint Core Classes

Sharepoint is collaborative product developed by microsot, many organizations adopting this product for their business activity. There are many benefits to use and implement to it. It becomes around 10 years of this product, one can say it become matured product for business automation.

Today I am going to give you brief development core classes and it’s structure in sharepoint environment.

Basically, any sharepoint environment can have one or more SharepointFarm, SharepointFarm can have one or more WebApplication, WebApplication have one or more SiteCollection, Sitecollection have one or more SubSite.

This SubSite is called your end where most of items are manipulated and shown to users.

At the Site level we can have List, Document Library.

Furthermore List is can have or more list items and Document Library can have files and Folder.

Above all are the basic terms one should know before they start to develop or implement sharepoint in their business.

For the development in sharepoint, we should understand classes being used in each of entity I told above.

For the Sharepoint Fam SPFarm

Farm’s WebApplication SPWebApplication

WebApplication’s SiteCollection SPSite

SiteCollection’s WebSite SPWeb

WebSite’s List SPList

List Item SPListItem

WebSite’s Document Library SPDocumentLibrary

WebSite’s Folder SPFolder

WebSite’s file SPFile

NOTES: I have considered that you have development machine for sharepoint and you are going to develop in it, to access above all classes you require to have sharepoint on your machine.

Redirect old page to new page with use of web.config

Recently we found that some of our old links were broken as we have changed our page name to make it seo friendly. Suddenly, over the night our site’s page rank was down. It was really embarrassed situation for all of us.

There were below reason for it.

As we have moved our server from linux to windows platform and there were no idea of page rename, and lack of technical availability to use htaccess redirection in windows platform.

After some work around it, finally I came across following things which is very good and needs to use when we rename any page and don’t want old link should be break.

Here, please not that following things will work on IIS 7.0+

First block will resolve canonical issue of prefix www before any domain name.

Second block will redirect my old page link to new mapped page.

<rule name="Redirect to WWW" stopProcessing="true">

<match url=".*" />

<conditions>

<add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^mydomain.com$" />

</conditions>

<action type="Redirect" url="http://www.mydomain.com/{R:0}" redirectType="Permanent" />

<rule>

<rule name="redirect to new java page" stopProcessing="true">

<match url="^javadeveloper.html" />

<action type="Redirect" url="java-development-services.html" redirectType="Found" />

</rule>

Which datatype is good for my database field?

Every time at the designing of new database table we stuck for the choosing right datatype for the particular field.

It has been said that if there is right database design have been done, it’s easy to accomplish changes in the application. If you require to change database field type or require to add new field in the table, it costs a lot at later stage.

So with this confusion of choosing right database, I have some check list what to use for the string type field.

Consider following points for your string data field.

àWhat will be max size of field, how many characters could be there?

àIs there any fix length I will have?

àDoes field require using Unicode character?

There are basic for three types of datatype are supported.

Char : this datatype can be used when we know our field’s data. We have prior idea of value. It will be good to use this type.

Varchar: when we are not firm about the value come in the field, this can be the choice.

Now one interesting datatype

Nvarchar: this is same as varchar expect it stores value as Unicode character.

Unicode character are especially useful when we would like to support Multilanguage in application else there is not much reason to use it without any purpose.

Nvarachar datatype occupies double space than the varchar, it should be considered when there will be large amount of data will be feed in the system.

You can check it with following sample

After running query you will notice that varchar datatype takes less space compared to others.

declare @na char(30)

SET @na = 'shailesh'

declare @nam nvarchar(30)

SET @nam = 'shailesh'

declare @name varchar(30)

SET @name = 'shailesh'

select datalength(@na)

select datalength(@nam)

select datalength(@name)

LightSwitch the new approach for RAD

Light Switch is the new technology or you can say new development IDE provided by the Microsoft. It’s based on the .net framework seats on the silverlight, through which you can build out desktop as well as web application.

Currently it’s available in the beta version and you can download it from here.

All the required software and hardware configuration are listed out on the page.

Languages Supported: Currently light switch support vb.net and c#.

Core parts of Light Switch

Data: this is one of the very basic parameter we use for any light switch application. During the development we should use any of the data store to be used in the application.

Screen: As it names implied it deals with the User interface of the application. In light switch user interface can be created from the underlying data structure. We can also customize the screen at the runtime. This would be best features so far we get facility at the runtime.

Queries: in the data store we can use customized query too. It’s not necessary to use plain data for the application, we can attach query that is created from more than on data store.

Code: As we have told that we can built out application without writing single line of code, but sometime it requires to change basic functionality provided by framework. We can do it so. It includes adding customize list from the code, different validation as per the business needs.

User Permission: in application we can place role based security and only authorized user can have access to system. There are so many types of user permission we could use in it.

Office Integration: many of the office features are integrated and we can directly use it. We don’t require writing custom code for it.

Deployment: Light switch application can be deployed on desktop as well as on the remote server as per the need. Light switch screen is built on the silverlight so there would be no extra item we require apart from silverlight when we use it on the web.

Apart from above mentioned parts there are so many features are available like we can place different validation on the input fields without writing any code, can customize look of application, can export data to the excel sheet, can search data in the grid, different look for the editing of record, tab panel layout for the data objects and screens.

Where it can be useful?

Light switch could be the one the best choice when we require to develop in very short period of time and for the small scale industry. It also supports various data sources behind the scene. You can use any of the data source including SQL Azure, SQL server etc.

We can say now with use of light switch developer can totally focus on the business logic and they don’t need to spend time in the insert/update and other basic coding. Even they don’t need to design screen layout.

After all business needs to have solid business logic and security.

Some useful resources

http://www.lightswitchtutorial.com/

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lightswitch/ff938857

Pass CSV parameter in SQL Stored procedure

Recently, I have been asked to prepare query that accept CSV value and parse that value in stored procedure.

In early, I didn’t give much attention as I thought it was just like the Where clause with IN. If we prepare dynamic query and execute it works well. But we don’t want to do that, we want some solution that should work every time when we pass CSV value.

The solution was to create function and it returns list of value. Here is the function; I have found this function during my search.

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.CSVToList (@CSV varchar(3000))

RETURNS @Result TABLE (Value varchar(30))

AS

BEGIN

DECLARE @List TABLE

(

Value varchar(30)

)

DECLARE

@Value varchar(30),

@Pos int

SET @CSV = LTRIM(RTRIM(@CSV))+ ','

SET @Pos = CHARINDEX(',', @CSV, 1)

IF REPLACE(@CSV, ',', '') <> ''

BEGIN

WHILE @Pos > 0

BEGIN

SET @Value = LTRIM(RTRIM(LEFT(@CSV, @Pos - 1)))

IF @Value <> ''

INSERT INTO @List (Value) VALUES (@Value)

SET @CSV = RIGHT(@CSV, LEN(@CSV) - @Pos)

SET @Pos = CHARINDEX(',', @CSV, 1)

END

END

INSERT @Result

SELECT

Value

FROM

@List

RETURN

END

Now say for example you want to create stored procedure that should return you all state name where we passed id with CSV,

We can pass any number of state id in the @StateId parameter.

CREATE PROCEDURE State_Search

@StateId nvarchar(2000)

AS

BEGIN

SELECT * FROM tblState

WHERE tblState.StateId IN (SELECT * FROM dbo.CSVToLIst(@StateId))

END

Allowing special character in xml with .net in built class

Recently I was finding solution to allowing special character in xml, it can be done by replacing with replaced code. You can check here

But if you are using .net then we have one inbuilt class that replaces all of the special character with replaced code and you don’t need to worry for every special character replacement.

Code sample:

XMLstring = System.Security.SecurityElement.Escape(XMLstring)