Bridge Mode Workaround for Rogers Router CGN2-ROG

1. Log into your CGN2-ROG, normally located at 192.168.0.1
2. Credentials are cusadmin/password by default, because it’s a magical star child who wants to be different.
3. If you can’t log in, factory reset it, or use the usb unlocker they may or may not have been included with the device.
4. Go to 192.168.0.1/user/setup-capability.asp
5. Disable everything, hit apply. This will place the router into bridge mode. You will NOT be able to access the router now. If you need to, I’d recommend factory reset. It’s possible to directly connect a machine to the router, and access the router through it’s external IP, but just…don’t do that.
6. Set up your second router, plug the ethernet cable into the LAN port 1 of the CGN2-ROG, and into the WAN port of the new router. Turn it on.
7. You should be good to go, and can treat your new router as the main router. For all intents and purposes, the CGN2-ROG is now just a fancy internet box.

Custom JQuery Validation Method and Message

Validate forms like you've never validated before! See full documentation here.

List of built-in Validation methods

A set of standard validation methods is provided:

    required – Makes the element required.
    remote – Requests a resource to check the element for validity.
    minlength – Makes the element require a given minimum length.
    maxlength – Makes the element require a given maxmimum length.
    rangelength – Makes the element require a given value range.
    min – Makes the element require a given minimum.
    max – Makes the element require a given maximum.
    range – Makes the element require a given value range.
    email – Makes the element require a valid email
    url – Makes the element require a valid url
    date – Makes the element require a date.
    dateISO – Makes the element require an ISO date.
    number – Makes the element require a decimal number.
    digits – Makes the element require digits only.
    creditcard – Makes the element require a credit card number.
    equalTo – Requires the element to be the same as another one

For example:

<input id="yourEmail" name="yourEmail" class="required email" />
<input id="confirmEmail" name="confirmEmail" equalTo="#yourEmail" />

Now let's implement our custom validation method "naPostal" to validate Canada/US postal code:

<script type="text/javascript">

        jQuery.validator.addMethod("naPostal", function (postal, element) {
            if (this.optional(element)) return true;
            var ctyField = $(element).attr("countryField");
            if (ctyField && $(ctyField).val() == "CA") return postal.match(/[a-zA-Z][0-9][a-zA-Z](-| |)[0-9][a-zA-Z][0-9]/);
            if (ctyField && $(ctyField).val() == "US") return postal.match(/^\d{5}(?:[\s-]\d{4})?$/);
            return postal.match(/^\d{5}-\d{4}$|^\d{5}$|^[a-zA-Z][0-9][a-zA-Z](| )?[0-9][a-zA-Z][0-9]$/gm);
        }, "Invalid postalcode");

        jQuery.extend(jQuery.validator.messages, {
            //Custom error message
            required: "Required field",
            email: "Please enter a valid email address."
        });

</script>

So we can use this method in our HTML code:

<input id="postalCode" name="postalCode" class="required naPostal" countryField="#countryCode" />
<select id="countryCode" name="countryCode">
    <option value="CA">Canada</option>
    <option value="US">USA</option>
</select>

Memcached in MVC projects

1. Install Memcached server in Windows

The latest Memcached version is 1.4.5, but the application doesn't support "-d install" parameter to install itself as Windows service.

So right now the 1.4.4 is still the option to go under Windows. Get a package from memcached 1.4.4 for Windows 32-bit from http://downloads.northscale.com/memcached-win32-1.4.4-14.zip.

Unzipped to a folder, then run the following command to install as win services
memcached.exe -d install

Start the server from the Microsoft Management Console or by running one of the following commands:
memcached.exe -d start

2. Check Memcached installation

You can telnet to the default port 11211 to check the status:
telnel localhost 11211

Then use the command stats to check status
stats
flush_all

3. Enyim Memcached client

EnyimMemcached is a .NET client library for memcached written in C#. You can get the source code from https://github.com/enyim/EnyimMemcached

Then it's simple to use the cache:

private static IMemcachedClient _cache = new MemcachedClient();

_cache.Store(StoreMode.Set, key, value);

object r = _cache.Get(key);

Of course you need some setting in the app/web.config:

You don't need log section if you are not doing the detail logging. Also the transcoder section is added here because I'm using the DataContractSerializer for my entities.

4. Some notes

On Azure, window only support the default protocol (Text).
 
The Enyim source code getting from Github is using log4net 1.2.10.0 targeting at .Net framework 3.5. If you are using log4net 1.2.12.0 (targeting at .Net framework 4.0) then there are some dll binding issue.

In order to re-compile the project to reference log4net 1.2.12.0 and targeting .Net framework 4.0, I end up disable the sign and removing the strong name sign public key file public_key.snk from the project, also remove the reference part in the CommonProperties.targets file under build folder.

Send HTML confirmation email with image part

CreateMail function:

        

        private MailMessage CreateMail(EmailArchive emailArchive, bool useCCAddress, bool isBodyHtml)
        {
            MailMessage mailMsg = new MailMessage();

            // From
            MailAddress mailAddress = new MailAddress(emailArchive.FromAddress, emailArchive.FromName);
            mailMsg.From = mailAddress;

            // Subject and Body
            mailMsg.Subject = emailArchive.Subject;

            //mailMsg.Body = emailArchive.Body;
            EmbedImages(mailMsg, emailArchive.Body);

            mailMsg.IsBodyHtml = isBodyHtml;

            // To

            if (useCCAddress)
            {
                if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(emailArchive.CCAddress))
                    mailMsg = null;
                else
                    mailMsg.To.Add(new MailAddress(emailArchive.CCAddress, emailArchive.CCName));

            }
            else
            {
                mailMsg.To.Add(new MailAddress(emailArchive.ToAddress, emailArchive.ToName));
            }

            return mailMsg;
        }

The following pattern will match all img tag in the html source code:

string pattern = "<img.+?src=\"(.+?)\".+?/?>";

EmbedImages function:

        /// 

        /// The function only deal with src like "/image/file.jpg"
        /// 
        /// 
        /// 
        public static void EmbedImages(MailMessage mailMessage, string body)
        {
            // Check config file
            string path = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["WebSiteRootFolder"];
            AlternateView av;
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(path))
            {
                ShopLogging.Warn("Can not find [WebSiteRootFolder] setting in config file!!!");

                //path = "D:\\User\\up\\";
                av = AlternateView.CreateAlternateViewFromString(string.Format("{0}", body), null, MediaTypeNames.Text.Html);
                mailMessage.AlternateViews.Add(av);

                return;
            }


            if (path.Right(1) == "\\")
                path = path.Left(path.Length - 1);

            List links = new List();
            LinkedResource res;
            string file, id, ext, cid;
            int i = 1;

            // Find all image tag
            // 
            string pattern = "";

            body = Regex.Replace(body, pattern, delegate(Match tag)
            {
                string v = tag.Value;
                file = tag.Groups[1].Value;

                // The function only deal with src like "/image/file.jpg"
                // If the src is not absolute path to "/", skip
                if (file.Left(1) != "/")
                    return v;

                // Replace virtual path to physical path
                file = file.Replace('/', '\\');
                ext = Path.GetExtension(file);
                if (ext.Left(1) == ".")
                    ext = ext.Substring(1);

                // Generate mail path ID
                id = Path.GetFileName(file);
                id = i.ToString() + "_" + id.UrlClean().Replace('.', '_');

                // Add root folder
                if (file.Left(1) == "\\")
                    file = file.Substring(1);
                file = path + "\\" + file;
                cid = string.Format("cid:{0}", id);

                // Add Linked Recource
                res = new LinkedResource(file, string.Format("image/{0}", ext));
                res.ContentId = id;
                links.Add(res);

                //body = body.Replace(tag.Groups[1].Value, string.Format("cid:{0}", id));
                i++;
                v = v.Replace(tag.Groups[1].Value, cid);
                return v;
            });

            av = AlternateView.CreateAlternateViewFromString(string.Format("{0}", body), null, MediaTypeNames.Text.Html);
            links.ForEach(l => av.LinkedResources.Add(l));
            mailMessage.AlternateViews.Add(av);

        }

SessionState using SQL Server

1. Install database scheme

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319>

aspnet_regsql.exe -sstype c -ssadd -d DatabaseName -U username -P password  -S xx.xx.xx.xxx



2. Config

    < sessionState mode="SQLServer" sqlConnectionString="data source=DatabaseName ;user id=username ;password=password" cookieless="UseCookies" timeout="20"/>

Remember to give the user dbowner permission.

3.  ASP.NET Universal Providers

 ASP.NET Universal Providers that will extend Session, Membership, Roles and Profile support to SQL Compact Edition and SQL Azure. Other than supporting additional storage options, the providers work like the existing SQL-based providers.

    < sessionState mode="Custom" customProvider="DefaultSessionProvider" allowCustomSqlDatabase="true">
      < providers>
        < add name="DefaultSessionProvider" type="System.Web.Providers.DefaultSessionStateProvider, System.Web.Providers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" />
      < /providers>
    < /sessionState>

See here for detail about Azure config.

Rendering ASP.NET MVC Views to String

Rendering ASP.NET MVC Views to String

A nice post by Rick Strahl.

WCF Notes

Instance Management

WCF supports three types of instance activation: per-call/Sessionful/singleton service.

[ServiceContract]
interface IMyContract
{...}

[ServiceBehavior(InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.Single)]
[ServiceBehavior(InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.PerSession)]
[ServiceBehavior(InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.PerCall)]
class MyService : IMyContract
{...}

Operations

WCF supports three invocation model: Request-Reply/One-Way/Callback.

[ServiceContract]
interface IMyContract
{
   [OperationContract(IsOneWay = true)]
   void MyMethod( );
}

[ServiceContract(CallbackContract = typeof(ISomeCallbackContract))]
interface IMyContract
{
   [OperationContract]
   void DoSomething( );
}

Fault Contracts

The client can actually encounter three types of errors when trying to invoke the service: communication errors, errors related to the state of the proxy, service-thrown exceptions.

By default, any exception thrown by the service reaches the client as a FaultException.

Transactions

Transaction Flow: Allowed, NotAllowed, Mandatory.

Transaction Protocols

Transaction management protocols: Lightweight, OleTx(RPC), WS-Atomic Transaction (WSAT).

Transaction Managers

The three transaction managers are the Lightweight Transaction Manager (LTM), the Kernel Transaction Manager (KTM), and the Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC).