GuruStop.NET

If you downloaded Visual Studio 11 Beta, and tried to create a new ASP.NET MVC 4 empty project, looking at the “Scripts” folder, you’ll see this new file “_references.js”:

Which looks like the following:

/// <reference path="jquery-1.6.2.js" />
/// <reference path="jquery-ui-1.8.11.js" />
/// <reference path="jquery.validate.js" />
/// <reference path="knockout-2.0.0.debug.js" />
/// <reference path="modernizr-2.0.6-development-only.js" />

The VS <reference /> Syntax

As you probably know, the `// <reference path=”…” />` syntax was introduced in Visual Studio long time ago to make you able to have intellisense in any JavaScript file to include everything defined in the JavaScript located at this path.

In easier words, if you write the very first line in any JavaScript file, say “my-page.js”, and make sure the path points to the proper jQuery file, when you write code in “my-page.js”, you’ll get intellisense for everything in the jQuery file. The quality of the intellisense will vary based on the referenced jQuery file, whether it’s minified file (least intellisense info, only member names, sometimes), just standard source/debug file, or even one that VsDoc comments (best intellisense, might even have notes on what types you need to pass to methods, when defined in VsDoc comments).

This morning I got a nice little email from a dear Egyptian friend, Ebeid Soliman (@ebeid_soliman) asking the following:

I know this may be something answered by google, but I trust your opinion.

What is the best free automated UI testing framework/tool you used ? or know ?

I actually already have a long draft on the subject showing the framework I use, and how to get basic stuff working on it, since this one is not yet complete, let me for now share my reply to him with you, as raw as possible …

(I have added some titles to make the long reply more readable)

The Reply

Choosing a framework

Look, I haven’t tried many. Only Watin and Selenium, and even Watin didn’t dig it enough.

The people around me all seem to be using Selenium. This is not only the story though…

Introduction

Sqlite

SQLite is a file based database, or an embedded database that you can use without need for any special installation from your side. It’s a bit popular for non-LOB (line of business) desktop applications and even mobile applications like Android apps. It also has an "In-Memory" mode where there is no physical file used as a database, which is usually used in testing.

It has a similar syntax (sort of) to SQL Server. In Microsoft .NET world,, those using NHibernate are usually using the in-memory mode for applying unit testing or trying out NHibernate stuff, although Microsoft has its own embedded database called SQL Compact Edition (CE), which doesn’t seem to support in-memory databases (v4.0).

You can download the latest Sqlite database (v3.0) from:

http://system.data.sqlite.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/downloads.wiki

Since it’s not SQL Server, you need a special ADO.NET provider too. It’s called "System.Data.Sqlite"., which is very similar to the normal System.Data.SqlClient stuff. It’s included in the above download link.

NuGet

If you don’t know what NuGet is, go to www.nuget.org or check my old posts mentioning it, or if you are an Arab maybe check this post in Arabic.

MvcConf

Assuming some of you have attended live or watched the recordings for the past MVCConf conference. It’s a virtual conference concerned (as the name tells) about everything related to Web MVC Frameworks in .NET (ASP.NET MVC, FubuMVC, Spark, …).

Videos from the previous MvcConf event can be found at:

http://www.viddler.com/explore/mvcconf/videos/ and http://tekpub.com/conferences/mvcconf

MvcConf 2

They plan to have a second event after the great success of the first one. And they started a call-for speakers. See:

http://www.mvcconf.com/

Quoting Details

When:

Tuesday Feb 1st 8AM – 5PM CST

Where:

Virtual

Register:

Check back 1/17

Call For Speakers

If you would like to speak at this years conference. Fill out the Speaker Proposal form.

An Awesome Conference

MvcConf is a virtual conference focused on one thing: writing awesome applications on top of the ASP.Net MVC framework. Your brain will explode from taking in so much hard core technical sessions. Sounds fun eh?

This is a community event and we want the best and brightest sharing what they know.

We intend to record each session and make them available online for viewing. We intend to make the videos available free of charge, depending on conference sponsorships.

This is a PowerPoint Presentation (and extraction of the contents) I made as per a couple of friends’ request (@EmadAshi and @AmrEldib) to show how OAuth works along with Twitter and how easy it is to cache OAuth credentials.

As I was doing related work for TweetToEmail. I felt a PowerPoint presentation will be even better than a blog post for this one, but here you get the two.

The Presentation

The Contents

Application Registration

• A Twitter user creates a Twitter Application
  • If the application is web based, it needs to provide a URL. “Localhost” is not accepted as a domain for this URL
• A Twitter Application gets two pieces of information
• Consumer Key
• Consumer Secret
• A Twitter Application will use these in all coming requests.

Initializing The Process

• User comes to the application and it decides to authenticate against Twitter
• Application makes a request using Consumer Key and Secret to obtain “Oauth Request Token”, which consists of two parts
  • Token
  • Token Secret
• Application makes authentication URL including the “Oauth Request Token” parameter, and optionally a “Call-back URL” (if different than default URL in first step)