I started to read the NuGet docs to figure out what a NuGet package actually is.

NuGet package

A NuGet package is a file that makes it easy to add, remove, and update libraries and tools in Visual Studio projects that use the .NET Framework. A NuGet package is comprised by these three things:

• tools – The tools folder of a package is for powershell scripts and programs accessible from the Package Manager Console. After the folder is copied to the target project, it is added to the `$env:Path (PATH) environment variable.
• lib – Assemblies (.dll files) in the lib folder are added as assembly references when the package is installed.
• content – Files in the content folder are copied to the root of your application when the package is installed.

The documentation also indicate that NuGet was not designed for a project like Umbraco with so many files and such a complex web.config file. But I wanted to try and see how and if it was actually possible.

The strategy

The Umbraco project consists of libraries/assemblies and content, so it should be rather easy to create the NuGet package.

The first step was to download Umbraco 4.7.1 and go through the required assemblies and web.config. Initially I located assemblies that could already be found on NuGet and added these dependencies to the NuGet package. It later showed, that there would be versioning problems which I was not able to fix.

So instead of using dependencies to other NuGet packages as NuGet was actually intended, I  just added all the assemblies released with Umbraco 4.7.1.

Assemblies

The assemblies that gave me the most trouble was ClientDependency and ICharpCode.SharpZipLib.

ClientDependency was actually already in the NuGet feed, but the configuration transformation made from that NuGet package combined with the web.config transformation from the Umbraco package, yilded an invalid web.config file.  ClientDependency was therefor provided as an assembly directly from the Umbraco package and not as an external dependency.

The assembly ICSharpCode.SharpZipLib was also found in the NuGet feed, but Umbraco 4.7.1 required a specific version (0.85.5.452) that NuGet could not provide, and this assembly was as such also added as a part of the Umbraco package.

Web.config

The web.config configuration file for Umbraco is long and rather complex, and that makes merging of multiple web.config files difficult. The configuration transformation features in NuGet are limited, so you should expect problems when adding the Umbraco package to an existing website. The best results I achieved was when the package was added to an empty website or web application.

But even though a web.config file is almost empty, you should still prepare for some clean up.

Content

The Umbraco 4.7.1 binary release containes more than 1500 files. NuGet was not designed for this number of files and does not handle it very well. A complete package installation can take up to 5-10 min. depending on you machine and SSD/HDD configuration.

Example

The following describes the steps I used to run the Umbraco NuGet package against a web application project and the problems that arose.

1. Open Visual Studio 2010 and create an empty C# web application project

2. Open the NuGet Package Manager Console

3. Write:

Install-Package "Umbraco" -Source "c:\[NuGetPackageFolder]"

NuGetPackageFolder: Replace with the path to the folder containing the Umbraco.4.7.1.nupkg file. Important do not give the full path to the file, just the folder

4. Hit [ENTER] and wait for NuGet to do its work

5. Wait for the following two messages:

Successfully installed 'Umbraco 4.7.1'.
Successfully added 'Umbraco 4.7.1' to WebApplication1.

6. Compile and receive an error from web.config. (Multiple System.Web -> Compilation sections are present)

7. Remove the first and compile and run again

<compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0" />

8. At this point everything worked and I was able to follow the usual Umbraco installation steps

Conclusion

Umbraco is a fantastic CMS and NuGet is very cool, but together is not a good idea.

My goal was to find a way for installing Umbraco to a web project via NuGet, and that is not impossible, but I would not recommend it. I find it a lot easier to simply download the Umbraco released ZIP, and then extract and drag all files to my web application project. So that is what I will do

But if you still wants the Umbraco NuGet file, you can download it here.

Using the “Stack Trace” in NHprof I identified a call being made to GetHashCode() of the class (MyClass) holding the composite id. MyClass looked like this:

public class MyClass
{
    public virtual Key1Class Key1 { get; set; }
    public virtual Key2Class Key2 { get; set; }

    /*
     * Other virtual properties
     * ...
     */

    public override int GetHashCode()
    {
        unchecked
        {
            return ((Key1 != null ? Key1.GetHashCode() : 0) * 397) ^ (Key2 != null ? Key2.GetHashCode() : 0);
        }
    }
}

Note that Key1 and Key2 are both references, and please take a closer look at the GetHashCode method.

The problem

The problem I was facing… NHibernate called the GetHashCode() of MyClass when doing the query. And the call to MyClass‘s GetHashCode method subsequentily called GetHashCode() of both the Key1 and Key2 classes.

Key1 and Key2 were loaded as proxies and hence a call to something else than theirs Id resulted in a select being fired.

The solution

The solution was to rewrite the GetHashCode method to this:

public override int GetHashCode()
{
    unchecked
    {
        return ((Key1 != null ? Key1.Id : 0) * 397) ^ (Key2 != null ? Key2.Id : 0);
    }
}

Note that both Id’s of KeyClass1 and KeyClass2 are integers.

Now a call to MyClass GetHashCode does not result in individual SELECT statements being fired, even though the Keys area lazy loaded.

IDrive EVS gives you 5GB of free backup space on the IDrive platform. IDrive EVS makes it possible via a kind of web http interface to upload files and more.

The library I have written is called IDriveLibrary and can be found here https://bitbucket.org/ovesen/idrivelibrary. My thought about the project, was to be able to write a backup routine in C# for my servers.

Unfortunately IDrive EVS seems buggy and slow. I have in an earlier review of backup providers deemed IDrive buggy (http://blog.ovesens.net/2010/01/test-of-online-backup-providers/). Nothing has changed.

During the development of the library I have had to contact IDrive 5 times, either because documented features simply did not work or because of errors in the documentation.

My case: I have a windows service and I want to be able to know the internal state of this service and e.g. when an exception was thrown. The obviusl answer for this is logging. But I already use Log4Net, and I want to be able to access this info without having to remote to the server.
Others have solved this issue by making e.g. Kayak part of the service and expose that state as JSON. That do sound tempting, however I am more to some kind of logging mechanism. I know that there exists Twitter Appenders for Log4Net, but by using something existing I will not learn anything
So what I want to implement is custom Twitter logging, and here is how.

1. Register your application with Twitter (http://dev.twitter.com/apps/new)
2. Save your consumerKey and consumerSecret
3. Run TwitterAuthenticator to retrieve the Access token. Save Token and TokenSecret
4. Use the TweetConsole as a sample for Tweeting. Use the consumerKey, consumerSecret and the Access Token details

That is it…

You can find the source code here: https://bitbucket.org/ovesen/twittertest

http://gerardmcgarry.com/blog/creating-a-google-sitemap-aspnet-website

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/GoogleSiteMapProvider.aspx

It is a tough task and the learning curve is quite steep.

You have to get to know the WinDbg. You can start here: http://blogs.msdn.com/tess/pages/net-debugging-demos-information-and-setup-instructions.aspx

Tess Ferrandez has some very nice “Debugging labs”, well take a look at: http://blogs.msdn.com/tess/

If you have a problem with a memory leak, take a look at his one:

http://blogs.msdn.com/tess/archive/2005/11/25/496899.aspx

I have been using Castle Windsor and NHibernate for some months now, so I am a bit new and still learning. But then again, it is learning developers like me, that asks all the questions.

This post is also written because of a simple question: Does the HybridSessionBuilder support multiple configurations?

Why this question? Well, I have a project where some repositories uses one database and some other uses another database.

Original implementation

My little journey started out with my looking original implementation of the HybridSessionBuilder (HSB). You can read about the original implementation here:

http://jeffreypalermo.com/blog/use-this-nhibernate-wrapper-to-keep-your-repository-classes-simple/

But as you can see:

The original implementation used a static session factory and session, so this is does not support multiple configurations.

CodeCampServer/Tarantino

I then found out that the CodeCampServer also was using the HSB. Hoping to find an implementation that supported my request, I then started to read the source code.

But by viewing the source code for CodeCampServer I soon found out that the code, for the HSB, had been updated to support multiple factories and sessions. Yeeeaaaaa

Furthermore I found out that the HSB now is a part of a collection of libraries called Tarantino.

I was happy, the HybridSessionBuilder now supported my requests, and it was ready to be used in my projects. I thought.

Test web application

Then I build a small test web application project. It used Castle Windsor (for dependency injection) and NHibernate. I quickly configured Castle Windsor and made two NHibernate configuration files.

nhibernate.cfg.xml used this connection string:

Data Source=localhost\sqlexpress;Initial Catalog=DB1;Integrated Security=true

nhibernate2.cfg.xml used this connection string:

Data Source=localhost\sqlexpress;Initial Catalog=DB2;Integrated Security=true

My windsor.config.xml looks like this:

<component id="firstRepository" type="HybridSessionBuilderTest.FirstRepository, HybridSessionBuilderTest">

  <parameters>

    <ConfigurationFile>hibernate.cfg.xml</ConfigurationFile>

  </parameters>

</component>

<component id="secondRepository" type="HybridSessionBuilderTest.SecondRepository, HybridSessionBuilderTest">

  <parameters>

    <ConfigurationFile>hibernate2.cfg.xml</ConfigurationFile>

  </parameters>

</component>

It basically just configures the two repositories with each own configuration.

But to my surprise, it did not work. I made a small page that prints the connection string of each of the repositories:

Only the default NHibernate configuration file was used.

Bug or feature?

That was not the output I was looking for, so to find the problem, I did some more test and dug into the code.

I was expecting an object structure like this:

But I got something like this:

  I identified the following method to be the central, when the session was instantiated:

   1: private ISession getExistingOrNewSession(ISessionFactory factory, string configurationFile)

   2:         {

   3:             if (HttpContext.Current != null)

   4:             {

   5:                 var session = GetExistingWebSession();

   6:  

   7:                 if (session == null || !session.IsOpen)

   8:                 {

   9:                     session = openSessionAndAddToContext(factory, configurationFile);

  10:                 }

  11:  

  12:                 return session;

  13:             }

  14:  

  15:             var currentSession = _currentSessions.ContainsKey(configurationFile)

  16:                                     ? _currentSessions[configurationFile]

  17:                                     : null;

  18:             if (currentSession == null || !currentSession.IsOpen)

  19:             {

  20:                 _currentSessions[configurationFile] = OpenSession(factory);

  21:             }

  22:  

  23:             return _currentSessions[configurationFile];

  24:         }

Patch/solution

The problem I identified is line #5. It returns the existing session based on the default configuration, no matter what you specify in the configurationFile parameter.

I changed it to:

   1: var session = GetExistingWebSession(configurationFile);

And tadaaa:

The second repository now uses the second configuration file

Conclusion

You might ask, why I spend time writing a blog post describing this little change to the HybridSessionBuilder.

First of all, having a HSB that can use multiple configurations is rather important to me and the projects I am working on.

Second of all, as NHibernate and Castle Windsor is still a bit new to me, one of the best ways to learn its capabilities and how to use it, is to dig in deep. And that is exactly what I have done.

And BTW – I have not just learned about HSB, but also CodeCampServer, Tarantino, S#arp and how it handles multiple configurations, and how it all works together.

NHibernateSessionModule

Please note. Before my change is used, you need to also update the NHibernateSessionModule. It does currently not dispose all the sessions that are opened.

I have been using Castle Windsor and NHibernate for some months now, so I am a bit new and still learning. But then again, it is learning developers like me, that asks all the questions.

This post is also written because of a simple question: Does the HybridSessionBuilder support multiple configurations?

Why this question? Well, I have a project where some repositories uses one database and some other uses another database.

Original implementation

My little journey started out with my looking original implementation of the HybridSessionBuilder (HSB). You can read about the original implementation here:

http://jeffreypalermo.com/blog/use-this-nhibernate-wrapper-to-keep-your-repository-classes-simple/

But as you can see:

The original implementation used a static session factory and session, so this is does not support multiple configurations.

CodeCampServer/Tarantino

I then found out that the CodeCampServer also was using the HSB. Hoping to find an implementation that supported my request, I then started to read the source code.

But by viewing the source code for CodeCampServer I soon found out that the code, for the HSB, had been updated to support multiple factories and sessions. Yeeeaaaaa

Furthermore I found out that the HSB now is a part of a collection of libraries called Tarantino.

I was happy, the HybridSessionBuilder now supported my requests, and it was ready to be used in my projects. I thought.

Test web application

Then I build a small test web application project. It used Castle Windsor (for dependency injection) and NHibernate. I quickly configured Castle Windsor and made two NHibernate configuration files.

nhibernate.cfg.xml used this connection string:

Data Source=localhost\sqlexpress;Initial Catalog=DB1;Integrated Security=true

nhibernate2.cfg.xml used this connection string:

Data Source=localhost\sqlexpress;Initial Catalog=DB2;Integrated Security=true

My windsor.config.xml looks like this:

<component id="firstRepository" type="HybridSessionBuilderTest.FirstRepository, HybridSessionBuilderTest">

  <parameters>

    <ConfigurationFile>hibernate.cfg.xml</ConfigurationFile>

  </parameters>

</component>

 

<component id="secondRepository" type="HybridSessionBuilderTest.SecondRepository, HybridSessionBuilderTest">

  <parameters>

    <ConfigurationFile>hibernate2.cfg.xml</ConfigurationFile>

  </parameters>

</component>

 

It basically just configures the two repositories with each own configuration.

But to my surprise, it did not work. I made a small page that prints the connection string of each of the repositories:

Only the default NHibernate configuration file was used.

Bug or feature?

That was not the output I was looking for, so to find the problem, I did some more test and dug into the code.

I was expecting an object structure like this:

But I got something like this:

  I identified the following method to be the central, when the session was instantiated:

   1: private ISession getExistingOrNewSession(ISessionFactory factory, string configurationFile)

   2:         {

   3:             if (HttpContext.Current != null)

   4:             {

   5:                 var session = GetExistingWebSession();

   6: 

   7:                 if (session == null || !session.IsOpen)

   8:                 {

   9:                     session = openSessionAndAddToContext(factory, configurationFile);

  10:                 }

  11: 

  12:                 return session;

  13:             }

  14: 

  15:             var currentSession = _currentSessions.ContainsKey(configurationFile)

  16:                                     ? _currentSessions[configurationFile]

  17:                                     : null;

  18:             if (currentSession == null || !currentSession.IsOpen)

  19:             {

  20:                 _currentSessions[configurationFile] = OpenSession(factory);

  21:             }

  22: 

  23:             return _currentSessions[configurationFile];

  24:         }

Patch/solution

The problem I identified is line #5. It returns the existing session based on the default configuration, no matter what you specify in the configurationFile parameter.

I changed it to:

   1: var session = GetExistingWebSession(configurationFile);

 

And tadaaa:

The second repository now uses the second configuration file

Conclusion

You might ask, why I spend time writing a blog post describing this little change to the HybridSessionBuilder.

First of all, having a HSB that can use multiple configurations is rather important to me and the projects I am working on.

Second of all, as NHibernate and Castle Windsor is still a bit new to me, one of the best ways to learn its capabilities and how to use it, is to dig in deep. And that is exactly what I have done.

And BTW – I have not just learned about HSB, but also CodeCampServer, Tarantino, S#arp and how it handles multiple configurations, and how it all works together.

I have been using Castle Windsor and NHibernate for some months now, so I am a bit new and still learning. But then again, it is learning developers like me, that asks all the questions.

This post is also written because of a simple question: Does the HybridSessionBuilder support multiple configurations?

Why this question? Well, I have a project where some repositories uses one database and some other uses another database.

Original implementation

My little journey started out with my looking original implementation of the HybridSessionBuilder (HSB). You can read about the original implementation here:

http://jeffreypalermo.com/blog/use-this-nhibernate-wrapper-to-keep-your-repository-classes-simple/

But as you can see:

The original implementation used a static session factory and session, so this is does not support multiple configurations.

CodeCampServer/Tarantino

I then found out that the CodeCampServer also was using the HSB. Hoping to find an implementation that supported my request, I then started to read the source code.

But by viewing the source code for CodeCampServer I soon found out that the code, for the HSB, had been updated to support multiple factories and sessions. Yeeeaaaaa

Furthermore I found out that the HSB now is a part of a collection of libraries called Tarantino.

I was happy, the HybridSessionBuilder now supported my requests, and it was ready to be used in my projects. I thought.

Test web application

Then I build a small test web application project. It used Castle Windsor (for dependency injection) and NHibernate. I quickly configured Castle Windsor and made two NHibernate configuration files.

nhibernate.cfg.xml used this connection string:

Data Source=localhost\sqlexpress;Initial Catalog=DB1;Integrated Security=true

nhibernate2.cfg.xml used this connection string:

Data Source=localhost\sqlexpress;Initial Catalog=DB2;Integrated Security=true

My windsor.config.xml looks like this:

<component id="firstRepository" type="HybridSessionBuilderTest.FirstRepository, HybridSessionBuilderTest">

  <parameters>

    <ConfigurationFile>hibernate.cfg.xml</ConfigurationFile>

  </parameters>

</component>

<component id="secondRepository" type="HybridSessionBuilderTest.SecondRepository, HybridSessionBuilderTest">

  <parameters>

    <ConfigurationFile>hibernate2.cfg.xml</ConfigurationFile>

  </parameters>

</component>

It basically just configures the two repositories with each own configuration.

But to my surprise, it did not work. I made a small page that prints the connection string of each of the repositories:

Only the default NHibernate configuration file was used.

Bug or feature?

That was not the output I was looking for, so to find the problem, I did some more test and dug into the code.

I was expecting an object structure like this:

But I got something like this:

  I identified the following method to be the central, when the session was instantiated:

   1: private ISession getExistingOrNewSession(ISessionFactory factory, string configurationFile)

   2:         {

   3:             if (HttpContext.Current != null)

   4:             {

   5:                 var session = GetExistingWebSession();

   6:  

   7:                 if (session == null || !session.IsOpen)

   8:                 {

   9:                     session = openSessionAndAddToContext(factory, configurationFile);

  10:                 }

  11:  

  12:                 return session;

  13:             }

  14:  

  15:             var currentSession = _currentSessions.ContainsKey(configurationFile)

  16:                                     ? _currentSessions[configurationFile]

  17:                                     : null;

  18:             if (currentSession == null || !currentSession.IsOpen)

  19:             {

  20:                 _currentSessions[configurationFile] = OpenSession(factory);

  21:             }

  22:  

  23:             return _currentSessions[configurationFile];

  24:         }

Patch/solution

The problem I identified is line #5. It returns the existing session based on the default configuration, no matter what you specify in the configurationFile parameter.

I changed it to:

   1: var session = GetExistingWebSession(configurationFile);

And tadaaa:

The second repository now uses the second configuration file

Conclusion

You might ask, why I spend time writing a blog post describing this little change to the HybridSessionBuilder.

First of all, having a HSB that can use multiple configurations is rather important to me and the projects I am working on.

Second of all, as NHibernate and Castle Windsor is still a bit new to me, one of the best ways to learn its capabilities and how to use it, is to dig in deep. And that is exactly what I have done.

And BTW – I have not just learned about HSB, but also CodeCampServer, Tarantino, S#arp and how it handles multiple configurations, and how it all works together.

Until now, I believed that publishing a website application was a manual task, performed from Visual Studio.

But it is actually possible to perform publishing from the command line. Take a look at this Build.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003" ToolsVersion="3.5">

  <PropertyGroup>

    <OutputFolder>$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\..\Published\</OutputFolder>

    <LibDir>..\Lib\</LibDir>

  </PropertyGroup>

  <Import Project="$(MSBuildBinPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />

  <Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v9.0\WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" />

  <Import Project="$(LibDir)\msbuild\MSBuild.Community.Tasks.Targets"/>

  <Target Name="Publish">

    <RemoveDir Directories="$(OutputFolder)"

               ContinueOnError="true" />

    <MSBuild Projects="..\Core\bmv3.org.oxweb.csproj"

             Targets="ResolveReferences; _CopyWebApplication"

             Properties="WebProjectOutputDir=$(OutputFolder); OutDir=$(WebProjectOutputDir)\" />

  </Target>

</Project>

If you want to read more about using MSBuild, then take a look at this tutorial:

http://codingcockerel.co.uk/2008/04/15/automating-the-build-with-msbuild/

Are you interested in reading more about the publishing using MSBuild, then read here:

http://codingcockerel.co.uk/2008/05/18/how-to-publish-a-web-site-with-msbuild/

http://blog.m.jedynak.pl/2008/03/publishing-web-application-with-msbuild.html