.NET stuff
Amazing how graceful Martin Fowlers can talk about patterns.
I rediscovered with pleasure one of its books:
http://www.martinfowler.com/books.html.
Also, I would like remember here my favorite site about
patterns:
http://www.dofactory.com/Patterns/Patterns.aspx
Happy design patterns :)
NUnitForms is an NUnit extension for unit
and acceptance testing of Windows Forms applications.
Your NUnit tests can open a window and
interact with the controls. Your tests will automatically manipulate and verify
the properties of the GUI. NUnitForms takes care of cleaning up your forms
between tests, detecting and handling modal dialog boxes, and verifying that
your expectations for the test are fulfilled.
See below the first NUnitForms test. It
shows a form, write a test in textbox control and then it clicks a button.
[TestFixture]
public class BatchSecurityTester: NUnitFormTest
{
[Test]
public void
AddNewGroup()
{
//Show
the form
MyForm
form = new MyForm();
form.Show();
//Enter
text 'NewGroup' in txtGroupName control
TextBoxTester
txtGroupName = new TextBoxTester("txtGroupName");
txtGroupName.Enter("NewGroup");
//Press
btnOK control
ButtonTester
btnOK = new ButtonTester("btnOK");
btnOK.Click();
}
}
Automate testing is a powerful tool complementary to unit tests.
Happy (extreme programming) coding!
P.S. NUnitAsp is the correspondent for ASP.NET application.
Today my boss asked me to add
a new feature to the application I work on: to make a database backup every time
the application is closed.
I was very surprised to do
this in less then 1 hour using SQLDMO library which is shipped with SQL Server
2000. The dll itself is a COM object and you must reference it from your
.net project as such. The IDE will create the necessary COM wrappers
needed to use the library.
using
SQLDMO;
//Necessary
declarations
SQLServer2Class server = new SQLServer2Class();
Database2 database;
Backup2Class backup = new
Backup2Class();
//Connect to server
server.LoginSecure = true;
server.Connect(“server”, “user”, “pass”);
//Select database you want to backup
database = (Database2) databases.Item(“database_name”,
null);
backup.Database
= database.Name;
//Specify
the place where backup to be saved.
backup.Files = “C:\mydb.bak”;
//Effective backup of the database
backup.SQLBackup(server);
//Disconnect, don’t forget it
server.DisConnect();
As you can see, this is a
much easier alternative when SQL information or control is needed.
In
this post I’ll present you 2 ways to get existing databases on a SQL Server.
First
solution is to use sp_databases system procedure. Calling this procedure is
made like calling any other stored procedure. Please find below the code
snippet.
//Create and
open the connection
SqlConnection cn = new SqlConnection(CONNECTION_STRING);
cn.Open();
//Create and
execute the command
SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand();
cmd.Connection = cn;
cmd.CommandType =
CommandType.StoredProcedure;
cmd.CommandText =
"sp_databases";
SqlDataReader myReader =
cmd.ExecuteReader();
//Shows all
databases
while(reader.Read())
{
Console.WriteLine(reader.GetString(0));
}
The
second solution is to use SQL-DMO library. As you may have been maybe expecting,
the code is much simpler. You just need to connection to SQL Server, and use
SQLServerClass.Databases property. Be aware to add reference to SQLDMO.dll. It
might be found at the following path:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft
SQL Server\80\Tools\Binn\SQLDMO.dll
SQLDMO.SQLServer server = new SQLDMO.SQLServerClass();
server.Connect(".","sa","sa");
foreach(SQLDMO.Database db in server.Databases)
{
Console.WriteLine(db.Name);
}
One way to compare files is to use hashing. A hash value (also called a
message digest) is a number generated from a text. The hash is
substantially smaller than the text itself, and is generated by a
formula in such a way that it is extremely unlikely that some other
text will produce the same hash value.
Please have a look to the following code snippet to see implementation of files comparing with hash mechanism.
using System.IO;
using System.Security.Cryptography;
...
private bool AreFilesIdentical(string source, string target)
{
//create the hashing object.
HashAlgorithm alg = HashAlgorithm.Create();
//Calculate the hash for the first file
FileStream fsA = new FileStream(source, FileMode.Open);
byte[] hashA = alg.ComputeHash(fsA);
fsA.Close();
//calculate the hash for the second file
FileStream fsB = new FileStream(target, FileMode.Open);
byte[] hashB = alg.ComputeHash(fsB);
fsB.Close();
//compare the hashes
return BitConverter.ToString(hashA) == BitConverter.ToString(hashB);
}
Another solution would be to use file metadata information. But you
can’t count on it every time. E.g. if you based on file time
modification stamp, you might have surprises in case of file originate
on system with different time zones.
I’m waiting your suggestions.
Refactoring is a disciplined technique for restructuring an existing
body of code, altering its internal structure without changing its
external behavior. Its heart is a series of small behavior preserving
transformations. Each transformation (called a 'refactoring') does
little, but a sequence of transformations can produce a significant
restructuring. Since each refactoring is small, it's less likely to go
wrong. The system is also kept fully working after each small
refactoring, reducing the chances that a system can get seriously
broken during the restructuring.
Here it is a list of possible refactorings in Alphabetical Order. Read
this carefully and don’t hesitate to refactor your code when you have
the opportunity. http://www.refactoring.com/catalog/
ReSharper is a refactoring plugin for Visual Studio to support C#
development. It's developed by the same people who built IntelliJ Idea
for Java and brings much of its development style to C#. http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/