I wanted to get my Windows Home Server configured correctly for web so I have valid certificate by Microsoft and I can use subdomain service they are offering. As my home network is not default that is expected by Windows Home Server (no direct access to router that is connected to web) I had to trick my WHS a little bit. In this posting I will show you how to get Windows Home Server work with Microsoft address (http://something.homeserver.com) if it is not connected directly to router that has access to web.

In one of my applications I have to use week numbers as properties of business classes that are persisted to database using NHibernate. Week numbers are used in UI and users can filter and sort data by week numbers. In this posting I will show you how to make SQL Server deal with week numbers and how to use them in your domain model.

When running some of your Windows Azure applications when storage emulator is not configured you may get the following error: "Windows Azure Tools: Failed to initialize Windows Azure storage emulator. Unable to start Development Storage. Failed to start Storage Emulator: the SQL Server instance ‘localhost\SQLExpress’ could not be found. Please configure the SQL Server instance for Storage Emulator using the ‘DSInit’ utility in the Windows Azure SDK.". Here’s how to solve this problem.

In one of my current projects I have to show reports based on SQL Server views. My code should be not aware of data it shows. It just asks data from view and displays it user. As WebGrid didn’t seem to work with DataTable (at least with no hocus-pocus) I wrote my own very simple view that shows contents of DataTable.

.NET Framework 4.0 introduced new class called Lazy and I wrote blog post about it: .Net Framework 4.0: Using System.Lazy. One thing is annoying for me – we have to keep lazy loaded value and its value loader as separate things. In this posting I will introduce you my Lazy wrapper for complex to get system parameters that uses template method to keep lazy value loader in parameter class.

When using Jira web service methods that operate on work logs you may get the following error when running your .NET application: Object of type System.Xml.XmlNode[] cannot be stored in an array of this type. In this posting I will show you solution to this problem.

Some of our business classes are used to fill dropdown boxes or select lists. And often you have some base class for all your business classes. In this posting I will show you how to use base business class to write extension method that converts collection of business objects to ASP.NET MVC select list items without writing a lot of code.

My last posting about ASP.NET 4.5 introduced how to use strongly typed controls to display data. Using strongly typed presentation layer templates is not the only thing that model binding is good for. From ASP.NET MVC we know how convenient it is when model binders are also able to update our objects when they are modified. In this posting I will show you how to use strongly typed FormView to save data that user modified. (more…)

ASP.NET Forms 4.5 Preview introduces us model binding for web forms. Web developers who are familiar with ASP.NET MVC already know what model binding is and how powerful it is. Model binding means framework ability to construct objects of known types using values from presentation layer. In this posting I will show you how to use model binding with ASP.NET Forms 4.5.

One new features of ASP.NET MVC 4 is support for display modes. This means that you can conditionally show different output to different user agents like desktop and mobile browsers. Of course, you can define your own custom rules too. In this posting I will show you how display modes work and explain how to use them in your ASP.NET MVC applications.