The Hounshells' Website

Real-time code reviews with CommitMonitor

Dan Hounshell — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 06:42:00 GMT

After reading DaveD’s blog post about using CommitMonitor back in March I downloaded it and have been using it since. CommitMonitor is a small tool that lives in your system tray that monitors SVN repositories for new commits. Up until recently, as part of a large dev team (for us) on a large project I used it to just keep an eye on the codebase to have a general idea what was happening. But today I realized that my usage has changed quite a bit and that I use it every day (multiple time per day mostly), really depend on it, and that it has really transformed my development process.

When I’m between tasks and see a notification that a new commit has been made I open up CommitMonitor and check out the details:

If I see a check-in that I’ve been waiting for or something that looks suspicious I can easily and quickly open up the files and view the changes right from the application with a couple of clicks. I’ve got it setup to use Tortoise-SVN, which in turn I have setup to use WinMerge for diffs. Without browsing through my file system or firing up Visual Studio I can do a quick check.

More importantly for me, this doesn’t require me to set aside a specific time to review check-ins each day or to actively search them out. I can take a few minutes right then and there and then not have to worry about it again. Additionally it helps me keep track of which checkins that I have and haven't reviewed - the ones in bold in the top image have not been reviewed yet.

Yes, our CI process publishes build reports and sends out emails – so I could find all the information to get me started in those. But, truthfully, I’m subscribed to so many project builds and get so many build emails that they’re just filed away into folders and I never see them again. The only ones I end up really paying any attention to are failed builds. It would probably take me 3x the amount of time to hunt those emails down, review them, then go back to Tortoise-SVN or Visual Studio and hunt down the files, diff them, etc. YMMV and you may be better off scheduling an hour at the beginning or end of your day to review the latest commits. Personally I’m not that structured and I think that I am more efficient with reviewing them as they come in.

If you’re using Subversion and work as part of a team with more members than just you, you should check out CommitMonitor. If you’re leading a team or a project and are finding it difficult to set aside time to review recent commits then you owe it to yourself to definitely check it out!

Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | kick it! | live it!

What are people saying about me?

Dan Hounshell — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 06:01:15 GMT

I was catching up on some blog posts this evening and one of them sparked an interest in sharing.

Earlier this year a couple of other devs and I were gathered around talking to Jeff Blankenburg while he was cleaning up after doing a presentation for a .NET user group. During our discussion he popped up something like this on his computer screen (well, with his name instead of mine):

He said something like “you guys don’t use Google alerts?” and after the only thing we returned was blank stares he went on to explain how Google Alerts works. Basically you define some terms you want to watch and then Google send you an email when it finds a reference to them. Jeff explained that he likes to use it to track mentions of his name or projects that he’s working on or that he’s interested in.

At the time I thought to myself “I’m not an MS evangelist and I don’t do marketing so what would I need to track?”. On my drive home I realized my initial reaction was wrong. I am in the marketing biz. We’re all in the marketing business – marketing ourselves at the very least. I also blog about the company I work for, the products I work on, my team, my own creations, etc.

Since that time I’ve been using Google Alerts to follow my name and some of my web sites. Being able to read and respond to those references has been a tremendous experience. After doing a presentation at a Day of .NET event I found a blog post a few days later where an attendee of my session said that the material was good and he learned a lot. Awesome! I’ve also used it to leave “Thank you, glad you liked it” comments on blogs that mentioned finding the AspDotNetMVC site and saying that it was a good resource. In fact, one blogger mentioned that the main RSS feed of the site provided way too much information and he had to unsubscribe after a couple of days. As a direct result of reading this feedback I created a second feed for the site that included a lot less “noise” and responded back in a comment to the original blog post that I had done so.

Along with Google Alerts, Jeff provides some other great tips in his Seven Steps to (Shameless) Self Promotion post. It’s definitely worth checking out. Thanks for the reminder about personal business cards, Jeff. I ran out a couple of months ago and need to re-order.

Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | kick it! | live it!

Looking at ASP.NET MVC – following my own lead

Dan Hounshell — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:53:00 GMT

Several months ago I posted about one of my newest sites, ASPDotNetMVC.com. One of the main reasons for creating the site was for my own selfish purposes. I had begun digging into ASP.NET MVC and I wanted a site that aggregated all the good ASP.NET MVC news and blog posts so I could keep up to date. Since that time I’ve done a lot of reading but little doing, other than a side trip with Kigg, a Digg clone written with ASP.NET MVC (Upgrading Kigg to ASP.NET MVC Preview 3, How to decouple the ASP.NET Membership database from Kigg and How to use Kigg as a service from another site).

This weekend I finally made some time to get my hands dirty. My first task is to convert the ASPDotNetMVC.com site from web forms to ASP.NET MVC. So far things are going well and I’m actually surprised at how quickly it is progressing. In a couple of hours I was able to get the master page setup and convert all of the static pages and content to controllers/views (things like the About page, some of the home page, etc). The next step, which I’m currently in the middle of, is converting the Contact Us form. Then the more difficult parts: converting existing controls, rss feeds, and the dynamic content (the majority of the site!). It’s been a long time since I’ve had to hit Google for nearly every little piece of code that I write. It’s a bit frustrating, but challenging and invigorating at the same time.

I won’t set a timeline because I don’t know what challenges I will run into yet. I should have time through the holidays to keep plugging away. I’ll be sure to post if I run into anything interesting.

BTW, I updated my Preview 3 version of Kigg to the ASP.NET MVC Beta bits on Friday night and it was a piece of cake. I just followed the Beta Release Notes instructions for “Upgrading and Existing Preview 3 application to Beta” and things went well.

Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | kick it! | live it!

Can I get a Mulligan on the case order?

Dan Hounshell — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:07:00 GMT

This is part 4 in a series about building an Eco-Friendly Economical Windows Home Server.
Part 1: In search of an Eco-Friendly Economical Home Server
Part 2: In search of an Eco-Friendly Economical Home Server 2, Electric Boogaloo
Part 3: A Cheap and Green Windows Home Server
Part 4: Ordered parts for Eco-friendly Economical Windows Home Server

After some post-mortem review of my order I’m feeling some buyer’s remorse. The case that I ordered for my eco-friendly economical Windows Home Server box wasn’t as small as I remembered to be. At 15.4” x 7.1” x 14.8” (HxWxD) it is a little smaller than the case of my Dell Dimension 5150 but it is nowhere near the size of the HP MediaSmart servers at 9.8” x 9.2” x 5.5”. But it was still cheap at $39.99 and free shipping!

If I were looking for something a little more compact and a little more stylish while still fitting into my budget theme (and if I had a Mulligan) I would probably opt for something more like one of these Athenatech cases:

	Athenatech A100SC.200 Black/ Silver Steel MicroATX Desktop Computer Case 230W SFX Power Supply – Retail 13.5” x 5.8” x 14.5" (HxWxD)	$42.99 Shipping: $11.99
	Athenatech Black Steel A100BB.270 Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case – Retail 13.5” x 5.8” x 14.5" (HxWxD)	$49.99 Shipping: $11.99
	Athenatech Silver/ Black Steel A106SB.200 Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case – Retail 14.5” x 5.8” x 15" (HxWxD)	$62.99 Shipping: $15.99

The A100SC and the A100BB are both 2 inches shorter, more than 1 inch narrower, and about the same depth as the CompuCase 6K28BS and I think they look a little sleeker, too. Swapping for either of these would increase the build price by $15-$20. The A106SB is not quite as diminutive as the other two but it still comes in 1” shorter and 1” narrower than the CompuCase 6K28BS, but looks a lot nicer for a $35 price increase. Any of these three cases would look just as good set horizontally or vertically. I like the looks and reviews of these cases, I may keep them in mind for a future budget Media Center/HTPC build. Or I might just go ahead and order one of these now for my WHS box and store the previously ordered case for a future project.

Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | kick it! | live it!

Ordered parts for Eco-friendly Economical Windows Home Server

Dan Hounshell — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 03:33:00 GMT

What a difference six months makes in the price of run-of-the-mill computer desktop hardware. In my last article the cheapest I could get a decently powerful Home Server setup was for about $470 including shipping. By the time I added the $149 cost for Windows Home Server I was in the same ballpark as the HP MediaSmart Home Server setups, though it was a little greener and a little more powerful. Still, it didn’t make a lot of sense to go ahead and do the build.

Fast forward 8 months and with a little tweaking of chosen parts I was able to order a kit with better specs than the $650 version of the HP Home server for just over $300. That price does not include the cost of WHS itself ($149), but I’ll be enjoying a 120-day eval for a couple of months so I can defer that cost. Even if I included it, though, I’d still be at only $450, which is about $200 less than the similarly spec’d (yet still not as much RAM or CPU and not as green as my setup) HP MediaSmart EX 475 at around $650. At $200 less and better specs the timing is right for me to pull the trigger and do it.

Here are the parts I ordered a few nights ago from NewEgg. I should receive everything this week so I plan on putting it together next weekend and then basking in the wonderfulness that is promised with WHS.

	HEC 6K28BS Black / Silver 0.8mm SECC Steel MicroATX Mini Tower Computer Case - Retail	$42.99 Shipping: $11.99
	Antec earthwatts EA380 380W ATX12V v2.0 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply - Retail	$29.99
	Western Digital Caviar GP WD5000AACS 500GB 5400 to 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive – OEM x 2	$64.99 x 2 Free Shipping
	Kingston 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory - Retail	$15.49
	AMD Athlon X2 BE-2400 Brisbane 2.3GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 Dual-Core Processor - OEM	$39.99 Free Shipping
	MSI K9A2GM-F V3 AM2 AMD 740G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail	$52.99 Open Box: $36.76
	MASSCOOL 5F9001B1H3 80mm Ball CPU Cooler - Retail	$9.99

CASE: I wanted a case that was small(ish), looked pretty good, fairly quiet, and could hold 4 internal hard drives. The case I chose has a nice clean look, got good reviews on NewEgg, and it is fairly small: about the same size as the HP MediaSmart boxes. Over the next week I will re-review blog posts and articles I’ve read in the past about building a quiet PC.
POWER SUPPLY: I wanted an 80+ certified power supply in about the 300W range. I had been looking at the 300W Seasonic at about $40. But then I saw the Antec Earthwatts on sale for $30 and I couldn’t pass up the $10 in savings. Plus I’ve read in a couple of places that Seasonic makes those power supplies for Antec. That may or may not be true, but even if it isn’t true the two must be very close in quality for the comparison.
HARD DRIVES: I’m sold on the Western Digital Green Power drives for this application. I got two 500GB drives at $65 each. These things were over a hundred dollars each 8 months ago. With the price of the 1TB versions at just $129 I came very close to going with two of those instead. Personally I would have done that, but the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) played a big part in that specific decision.
RAM: The HP WHS boxes come with just 512MB of RAM, even the higher end box with 1TB of drives, so I figured that is a good place to start with my setup. I could have gone with 2GB of RAM here for $30, but I figure that 1GB is good enough for now and if the box needs more I can easily and cheaply add another 1GB stick later.
CPU: I think that the AMD Athlon X2 BE-2400 may be the perfect CPU for this setup. It is 2.3 GHz, dual core, 512KB L2 Cache AND it’s rated at 45W – the same as the AMD single core processers. Plus it was only $40! So basically for the same price and footprint as a single core 1.8 GHz Sempron (like what is in the HP boxes) I was able to go with faster dual cores and more L2 cache. That is a no-brainer!
MOTHERBOARD: The minimum specs that I wanted for a board were MicroATX, AM2 processor, 4 SATAII connectors, support for at least 4GB of RAM, onboard Gigabit Ethernet, and lots of USB connectors. I chose the cheapest name-brand board that met those requirements and had good reviews. I was also lucky(?) enough to find an open-box version for $15 less. The jury is still out on whether the open box version was a good choice – I’ll let you know the answer to that after I assemble and make sure it isn’t DOA.
CPU COOLER: Since I ordered an OEM CPU it doesn’t come with a cooler. I chose one similar to the OEM style that was cheap and got good reviews. It should meet my needs fine.
OTHER: The reviews I read about the HEC/Compucase case that I selected said that the rear case fan was sufficient and rather quiet (surprising for one that’s included in a case) so I’ll delay purchasing any additional or replacement case fans for now.

The total price for everything that I ordered was right about $310 (I added 2 SATA cables that I may or may not need) and was about $330 after shipping. Had I not added the SATA cables and gone with an AMD single-core Sempron (saving $10) the total price including shipping would have been right around $300.

I’m very pleased with the parts and the value. Hopefully I’ll be just as pleased with the end result. I plan a follow up with notes on the build after next weekend.

I’m excited. I cannot wait for the BBT (Big Brown Truck) to show up at the door with my box(es) of parts.

Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | kick it! | live it!

Sample OpenID ASP.NET Web Site

Dan Hounshell — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 03:31:00 GMT

A couple of months ago I posted how to add OpenID to your existing web site in conjunction with ASP.NET Membership. In the comments a few times I was asked to post the code to the OpenID login user control or to create a sample project to share. Even though there really isn't a lot to the code other than what I shared in that article I said that I would post the sample code. After ScottGu linked to my original post last week I felt compelled to step up the pace of doing so.

Below is a link to the sample solution/project/web application. There is really nothing to the web site itself, just a static home page, a "join" page and a "login" page that use traditional membership controls and the OpenID login user control. Go ahead and check out the code and feel free to use that control and the accompanying utility code in your own projects. Please read the Readme.txt file included in the zip for setup instructions.

Sample OpenID Web Site

Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | kick it! | live it!

Save your Kudos for your Annual Review

Dan Hounshell — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 04:04:06 GMT

Over the last several years I’ve gotten into the habit of saving any “kudos” emails that get sent to me into a folder with the creative name of “Kudos”. I don’t know where I picked up this habit, but from time to time I’ve shared this tip with others. After letting Jose in on my little secret earlier today he suggested that I blog about it and share it with everyone. Good idea, Jose. Hopefully this doesn’t kill my competitive advantage :), but here goes…

When the occasional email comes in that says “Hey Dan, good work staying up late and making sure that foo got fixed. You really went above and beyond this time. You rock!”, I stash it away into my Kudos folder for safe keeping.

No, I don’t keep the “atta boy” emails in one place for an easy pick-me-up when I’m feeling like a dummy – though they do help – that and a beer or two or three. I have a more pragmatic reason for keeping them – for easy access come annual review and/or self-evaluation time. Prior to a review I will thumb through them looking for some good examples and evidence that I am indeed a useful employee.

Because of this evidence rather than just telling my reviewer “I’m a hard worker; I go the extra mile.” and hope he or she takes my word for it, I have proof to back up my claim in the form of a quote or two from those emails. I can then follow up my claim with “… and Willy, your boss, thinks so too – here’s an email I got from him in February where he said so.” Instead of just stopping at saying “I communicate well with others, both co-workers and clients” I can pull a couple of quotes from my stashed emails from a co-worker and a client to support it.

Saving, organizing, and using “kudos” emails has proven to be a good tool for me come review time. Even if you’re not a traditional employee this can still be useful. As an independent contractor having a repository where you can pull “quotes from satisfied clients” might be valuable. Or as a micro ISV it will give you fodder for that “what people are saying about Product X” spot on your web site.

Bonus Tip #1: A lot of written conversation these days take place in mediums other than email. Twitter, instant message clients, and LinkedIn are good examples of this. If you get an IM or other message that contains a special “way to go” message, copy and paste it into an email to yourself (along with who it was from, a date/time, and a note about the circumstances) and move it to your Kudos folder so it will be stored along with everything else.

Bonus Tip #2: The Kudos folder is a good place to store other things besides emails and “atta boy” messages. If I get a good evaluation for a presentation I did at a .NET user group I’ll store the results there. If I write a blog post that shows up on the front page of DotNetKicks I’ll take a screenshot, make a note, and store that in Kudos. If I implement a widget for Client XYZ and they see an immediate 20% increase in traffic I’ll make a note and save that, too. I may not use each and every thing that I put in there for reviews, but if I think it might be useful at some time in the future for some shameful self-promotion I’ll save it. It’s reassuring to know that if I ever feel the need to find some long forgotten piece of information like that I can easily find it in that one folder.

Good luck. Great Job. Kudos!

Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | kick it! | live it!

The double dog dare gets me every time!

Dan Hounshell — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:17:00 GMT

I wondered when some of these pictures from DevLink would surface. Between the dares and doubts of those who said I couldn't fit into a medium t-shirt - I had to do it. A big "thanks" to Dave Giard for capturing the moment. Check out the guns! I should have flexed for the pics!

Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | kick it! | live it!

Sites for Sale

Dan Hounshell — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:11:00 GMT

In an effort to simplify my portfolio I am selling one of my sites and the domain names that go with it. See the full post about the sites for sale here.

Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | kick it! | live it!

My cast-offs may be your treasure

Dan Hounshell — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:08:00 GMT

As a web developer I like building new web sites, web applications, mashups, widgets, etc.

Just like most other men I like shiny new toys and sometimes not-so-shiny older toys tend to become less used, become a little rusty and maybe even feel a little unloved.

If I were able to find a way to graph those two statements we'd see that their intersection occurs at about 9-12 months and afterwards usage drops off dramatically. By that time I've moved on to the next shiny new toy - I've already started working on a new personal project. I like building sites but I don't necessarily like running them over the long haul.

If you're not afflicted with this disease, are interested in leveraging social networking sites or just looking for a good domain name investment or an SEO investment then I have a deal for you. In an effort to simplify my portfolio I am selling the following domains/site(s):

RandomTweets.com (Google Page Rank = 4)
RandomTwitter.com - redirects to RandomTweets.com
RandomTwits.com - redirects to RandomTweets.com

RandomJaikus.com (Google Page Rank = 4)
RandomJaiku.com - redirects to RandomJaikus.com

RandomPownce.com (Google Page Rank = 4)

RandomFlickr.com (Google Page Rank = 3)

The domains, the sites, all source code, etc. will be included - you will have to find your own hosting. I do not plan on splitting them up unless someone makes me an offer I cannot refuse, but I will consider offers for just the domain names themselves (all of them together). Offers for the entire kit will be considered before offers for just the domain names.

For more information about the sites, the code, the domains for sale, traffic history, etc. or to make an offer contact me through my site or email me at: sites4sale AT danhounshell.com.

Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | kick it! | live it!

Telligent Wants You!

Dan Hounshell — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 18:55:00 GMT

I joined Telligent nearly two years ago. Over that time we've grown nearly threefold and we're still growing and going strong.

Scott W, Rob Howard, Dave Donaldson, the Pentonizer and others have already said it but it bears repeating... We need more great developers! We want to do some really great things in the next version of Community Server, but we need more people to help make them happen. Check out Scott's post for the skills we are looking for. If you fit the bill then we want to hear from you.

Do you want to become a member of the Telligent team? Give me a shout at dhounshell@telligent.com.

Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | kick it! | live it!

One Thought: Why Regional Conferences + Open Spaces Rock

Dan Hounshell — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:09:00 GMT

I'm still trying to gather my thoughts after attending DevLink this past weekend. One thing that I want to highlight is how great these regional conferences are and how much they are a perfect fit for Open Spaces. [Much props to Alan Stevens for making the DevLink Open Spaces a huge success]

One thought defines this for me:

How much would you pay to take part in a group discussion with leading-edgers of the .NET TDD movement like Alan Stevens and Steven Harman and ask them anything you want about what they're doing, how they're doing it, why they're doing it and even have them fire up a laptop and give you an example. What if they offered to do some pair programming with you on the spot to help you grok what they are talking about? Did it!

And if you're not interested in TDD then what if the topic was something else you are interested in? Ruby - got you covered by Ruby heavyweights [No pun intended - much love!] like Corey Haines, FallenRogue, and Joe O'Brien. Did it. Want to ask questions about SOA from people who are neck deep into it every day like James Bender and Michael Neel? Covered there, too. Is there anything that you are passionate about that you'd like to talk with others equally as passionate? That is the beauty of Open Spaces - you can and will.

Wait, so what is the cost? Because it's a regional conference it is affordable. How affordable? How does less than $100 for two days sound? How about even $50 for two days? Truly a bargain in my book.

We WILL be carrying on what we've learned about Open Spaces over the last year in the Heartland District to CodeMash in January in Sandusky, OH. I hope to see you there.

UPDATE: A very similar post by inetmac (Doug "Mac" Fowler) : http://macfowler.com/post/47352009/devlink-open-spaces

Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | kick it! | live it!

Community Server does "Am I ___ or Not?"

Dan Hounshell — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:05:00 GMT

We're always working on something cool at Telligent, whether it be an entirely new product or some type of addition or extension to Community Server. Some good examples are some of the things we came up with in Hackathon II, including the couple of IM clients that work with Community Server messaging. If you haven't already read about some of the thing we came up with you can see them here and here.

Recently over a late night IM session with Dave Donaldson, we pondered the benefits of certain types of social bookmarking functionality as well as other Web 2.0-like features. After our talk my thoughts turned to even more features and functionality and eventually settled on "Am I Hot or Not?". No, I'm not a perv - well not most of the time. However, a long time ago I built a clone called "Am I Dan Hounshell or Not?" in about an evening and ran it as part of my site for a while. My friends and I had a lot of fun with it.

I began wondering what it would take to to build the same type of application on top of Community Server. CS has a media gallery, right? It shouldn't be too difficult to build the rest of the needed functionality on top of the media gallery, right? As I began looking into it I realized that my initial assumptions were wrong. Everything for Am I ___ or Not? is already there. In fact if you look at the screen shot at right you'll see a mini Am I Hot or Not application running right inside of Community Server! That's with a bone stock installation of Community Server 2008 running on my local PC right now, with no modifications, no skin changes, nothing. Everything is built in :). [Editor's Note: Maybe in the case of the jokers in the screenshot it should be "Am I Nerdy or Not?"]

Community Server already has a Media Gallery which allows for uploading and viewing images, among other things. But it also has ratings and comments for each image/file built-in as well. You can also sort by Most Recent, Most Downloads, Most Popular and Most Comments. You can view all the images as a slideshow and there is even RSS! What more do you need for an Am I ___ or Not site? The only thing I needed to do was create a new Media Gallery, named "Am I Hot or Not?" (of course) and then give Registered Users permission to upload files to that gallery. If you want you could even add a link to the gallery in your site's main navigation.

I doubt that most people and organizations running Community Server need or even want an Am I ___ or Not? application as part of their site (or give all registered users the ability to upload files to a gallery), but for the one or two of you out there who do - look no further than the Community Server platform you already have!

And if you're wondering what else you can do with Community Server, come join us at in.telligent 2008 in Dallas October 20-22 and take part in some of the great workshops, including theming and extending Community Server.

Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | kick it! | live it!

Lan and Deon #3

Dan Hounshell — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:33:00 GMT

Lan and Deon go to their local .NET User Group meeting...

Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | kick it! | live it!

I like VisualSVN

Dan Hounshell — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:39:00 GMT

I'm not a big fan of Source Code Management integration with Visual Studio. I don't know, maybe VSS soured me years ago. When using Vault in the past I installed the Visual Studio integration tools once and uninstalled them a few days later. While using Subversion almost exclusively over the last three years I've been more than happy using TortoiseSVN in an explorer window. The separation of SCM and programming IDE has been refreshing and actually lends itself well to the way Subversion works by default, not requiring a checkout or lock when editing a file.

A few months ago, however, I won a license for VisualSVN at the Indy Code Camp. The license sat on a table beside my desk for about a month before I finally decided to give it a spin. I have to admit that I'm growing fond of it. I still don't run updates and commits inside VS using VisualSVN (even though it just defaults to TortoiseSVN), but I really like the visual indicators that it provides. Showing me which files I've added or modified with the yellow icon greatly reduces any chance of me forgetting files when I make a commit. Or it helps me quickly find any files that I may have forgotten to commit.

The other cool thing is that when I add any new files to a project via Visual Studio, VisualSVN automatically adds the file to SVN. I don't have to remember to browse to the file in Windows Explorer, right click the file, choose TortoiseSVN and then click Add. That may not seem like much of a time saver, but I always forget to manually add the files until after I've done commit (and maybe broken the build).

Even it you don't like mixing your chocolate and peanut butter, um... I mean SCM tools with your IDE, you may like some of the features that VisualSVN provides. Give it a try, they offer a 30-day trial and the licenses start at $49 per seat.

Okay, that probably came off sounding like a commercial for VisualSVN. I am in no way affilated with the product or company and I stand to make no money from a couple more licenses being sold. I simply like the product and I thought I'd pass on my experiences with it. Besides, "if I can change and you can change, we all can change!" :)

Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | kick it! | live it!

Adding OpenID to your web site in conjunction with ASP.NET Membership

Dan Hounshell — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 02:17:00 GMT

I recently added membership, accounts, login, etc. to the AspDotNetMVC site. While doing so I decided I wanted to support OpenID, too. However, I didn't want to go with only OpenID because I needed ASP.NET Membership in place to work in conjunction with another application, a Kigg site used as a service for rating content on the AspDotNetMVC site. I could have probably converted the Kigg code base to use OpenID but I also wanted to allow people who may not have OpenID to create traditional accounts on the site without signing up for OpenID. Following are the steps I took to implement an OpenID login and integrate it with "traditional ASP.NET" membership. Follow these six steps and you can do the same.

1. Download the awesome C# OpenID library, DotNetOpenId from Google Code, and add it as a reference in your project. This is a great open source library developed by Andrew Arnott, Jason Alexander, Scott Watermasysk, Scott Hanselman, Joe Brinkman and others. It seriously does all the heavy lifting, comes with some good examples, and Andrew Arnott is doing a great job of making posts about fringe cases on his blog.

2. Add some nice usability features to your OpenID login. Go to ID Selector, create an account and grab the couple of lines of JavaScript to create the cool OpenID service selector shown in the image at right.

Did I mention that this is so easy that I don't know why everyone isn't supporting OpenID? Going forward I will be doing so in every new site that I create and I'll retrofit existing sites when I get the chance.

3. Read the following articles:

How to add OpenID to your ASP.NET web site (in C# or VB.NET) - Andrew Arnott
Add OpenID login support to your ASP.NET MVC site - Andrew Arnott
Enhancing the ASP.NET MVC OpenID login experience - Andrew Arnott
How to add OpenID to your ASP.NET forms web site without using ASP.NET Controls - Andrew Arnott
How to use DotNetOpenId's Attribute Exchange extension - Andrew Arnott
The Weekly Source Code #35 - OpenID Edition - Scott Hanselman

After reading the above you will have a pretty good understanding of how to add OpenID to your site. Some of the code examples in the earlier 3 posts by Andrew are a little out of date. As of the writing of this post the code provided in Hanselman's blog post are the most up to date. Go ahead and read the two "MVC" posts by Andrew even if you are not interested in ASP.NET MVC. The concepts displayed in those posts can be used anywhere. In fact, it was in of those posts where I found my inspiration for overcoming my next hurdle.

The only thing that was missing for me was integration with ASP.NET membership. I actually found very little information for accomplishing this. I found quite a lot of questions asking how to do it, but most of the answers were just more questions asking why you would want to do it.

4. Create your login form (or user control or composite server control or whatever you prefer). In my case I created a user control that holds just the fields necessary for OpenID login and the logic behind them. Doing so allows me to drop that control into any existing login page (shown in image above) or my existing create account page or anywhere else I want to use it. Make sure you add the javascript for the ID Selector.

For allowing traditional ASP.NET membership login and user account creation I just dropped the basic out of the box controls on the page.

5. Wire up the login submit button. I did something like below, which is very similar to examples that Andrew and Scott Hanselman provided. Basically I'm just telling the OpenID provider that I need the user's email and nickname (for use in the next step):

protected void loginButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {

   if (!openidValidator.IsValid) return; // don't login if custom validation failed.

   OpenIdRelyingParty openid = new OpenIdRelyingParty();

   try {

      IAuthenticationRequest request = openid.CreateRequest(openid_identifier.Text);

      ClaimsRequest fetch = new ClaimsRequest();

      fetch.Nickname = DemandLevel.Require;

      fetch.Email = DemandLevel.Require;

      request.AddExtension(fetch);

      request.RedirectToProvider();

   } catch (OpenIdException ex) {

      // The user probably entered an Identifier that

      // was not a valid OpenID endpoint.

      openidValidator.Text = ex.Message;

      openidValidator.IsValid = false;

6. Handle the response from the OpenID provider. This snippet of code is part of the login process and expands upon examples from Andrew Arnott's and Scott Hanselman's posts linked to previously.

Here I'm pulling the alias and email address that I requested in the previous step. With that information I check to see if the user already exists in the ASP.NET membership datastore. If not I will create a Membership account for them using their OpenID URI as their username. When I create the account you can see that I'm generating a random string for the user's password field and password answer field. You'll also see that I'm adding "This is an OpenID account. You should log in with your OpenID." as the password question. That way if a user forgets they used OpenID and tries to login through the traditional username/password login form and selects that they forgot their password when the login doesn't work, he or she will get a reminder about their OpenID in the form of the password question. I know it's a hack, but it works for now for my modest needs and I'm happy with it.

Next you'll see that after I create the Membership User I then set the user's "comment" field to their Nickname. This is because the "Hello, Username. Welcome back to the site." message at the top of the page would normally display the user's "username". In the case of OpenID users their username would be their OpenID URI - something like: http://danhounshell.openidprovidername.com/. That's a bit ugly and I'd rather use the Nickname that I asked from then when they logged in with OpenID. By shoving the Nickname into the comments field I can first check to see if it has a value and if so use it in the display rather than their username. If it doesn't have a value then I can default to the username. So now using my previous example it will say "Hello, DanHounshell. Welcome back to the site." This same thing could be accomplished in a couple of other ways. Throwing the nickname into the session object or putting it in a cookie are other reasonable alternatives. In my case I don't use the comments field for anything else so once again - I know it's a hack, but it works for now for my modest needs and I'm happy with it. Plus it's easy to get to by just writing "user.Comment". Thinking about it, it might be nice to write an extension method for MembershipUser called DisplayName that determines whether to use the user.Comment property or the user.Username property.

Finally, I just call FormsAuthentication.RedirectFromLoginPage() passing in their OpenID URI that they provided, logging them into the site.

case AuthenticationStatus.Authenticated:

   ClaimsResponse fetch = openid.Response.GetExtension(typeof(ClaimsResponse)) as ClaimsResponse;

   string alias = fetch.Nickname;

   string email = fetch.Email;

   if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(alias))

      alias = openid.Response.ClaimedIdentifier;

   if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(email))

      email = openid.Response.ClaimedIdentifier;

   //Now see if the user already exists, if not create them

   if (Membership.GetUser(openid.Response.ClaimedIdentifier) == null)

      MembershipCreateStatus membershipCreateStatus;

      MembershipUser user = Membership.CreateUser(openid.Response.ClaimedIdentifier,

         Common.GetRandomString(5,7),

         email,

         "This is an OpenID account. You should log in with your OpenID.",

         Common.GetRandomString(5,7),

         true,

         out membershipCreateStatus);

       if (membershipCreateStatus != MembershipCreateStatus.Success)

          loginFailedLabel.Text += ": Unsuccessful creation of Account: " + membershipCreateStatus.ToString();

          loginFailedLabel.Visible = true;

          break;

       user.Comment = alias;

       Membership.UpdateUser(user);

    // Use FormsAuthentication to tell ASP.NET that the user is now logged in,

    // with the OpenID Claimed Identifier as their username.

    FormsAuthentication.RedirectFromLoginPage(openid.Response.ClaimedIdentifier, chkRememberMe.Checked);

    break;

That's all there is to it. Now you can allow your user's to choose whether they'd like to create an account on your site by creating a new username and password or by using their new or existing OpenID. The bonus with this method is that it allows you to add OpenID support to an existing site that already has traditional membership without breaking anything.

Enjoy and let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Update: October 09, 2008 - I posted a sample web application that uses the OpenID login control described in this post.

Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | kick it! | live it!