IBlog

Word documents and merging two branches

Himanshu — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:16:43 +0000

Do you create word documents? Do you send them for review to your boss? I think, answers of both of these questions will be “yes” for most people, and I’m not exception! MS Word have a good feature – Track Changes. As it’s name suggests, it tracks the changes while document is being edited, and can show final (edited version) of the document or can show final document with highlighting changes . While changes are highlighted, they are easy to notice and can also navigation across changes easily.

But, if your boss forgot to start the change tracking, then? Well, not to worry, word can do merging of two different branches like a version control. Steps:

Very important! Make sure you are having extra copy (backup) of both the documents (your copy and boss’s copy). Just in case we create mess in the process, you don’t loose your valuable information in these documents.
After making sure both documents (e.g. “My Copy” and “Boss’s Copy”) are closed, open “Boss’s Copy” document in MS Word.
Invoke “Save as“ operation and try and save it over “My Copy” of the document. (Notice already open document name and Save as name in the image)
Word should prompt you for different available option, having one of them to be “Merge changes into existing files” (for example, as depicted in image), select it and continue with “Save as” operation.

In the result of above, “My Copy” document will be updated as if Boss have changed the document while having “Change Track” on.

WaitHandles’ Switch

Himanshu — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 10:27:13 +0000

I will say it again: “I like extension methods”. They provide great way of increase readability of the code in languages like C#.

Anyway this post is not about extension method. Have you ever needed to write code that will wait on different wait handles (WaitHandle) and execute different piece of code depending up on which handle is signaled. Here is one way to implement that:

   1:  public static void WaitSwitch(this WaitHandle[] waitHandles, params Action[] actions)

   2:  {

   3:      waitHandles.DoEmptyOrNullArgCheck("waitHandles");

   4:      actions.DoEmptyOrNullArgCheck("waitHandles");

5:

   6:      if (waitHandles.Length != actions.Length)

   7:          throw new ArgumentException("length of wait handles and actions has to be same");

8:

   9:      var triggerIndex = WaitHandle.WaitAny(waitHandles);

  10:      actions[triggerIndex]();

  11:  }

And then client code will become as:

   1:  (new[] { shutdownTriggeredEvent, updateAvailableEvent }).WaitSwitch(

   2:      () => isShutdownRequested = true,

   3:      DownloadNextUpdate

   4:  );

HTTP 404 while asp.net web forms and spring.net project

Himanshu — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 10:02:22 +0000

While doing some refactoring with the project, I suddenly start getting HTTP 404, and that to for all pages that exists and was working few minutes back. I was amused to get the error, with the fact that pages existed, I could see them and feel them! After a while, I noticed that I have deleted a existing .aspx file from project which I forgot to remove from spring.net configuration file.

If you add any .aspx in Spring.Net config that do not exists, Spring.NET brings you to yellow screen with appropriate message. But not when you delete one from project and forget to remove from config file! At least not all the time.

Scoping the search result in Firefox

Himanshu — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 10:01:11 +0000

Do you know, in Firefox 5 it’s possible to scope the search results. For example if you suffix or prefix search text with *, results will be only from bookmarks! That’s helpful, isn’t it. And there are more such special characters that can be used to scope the search result. More over that, combination of multiple such character is possible as well, that’s more helpful! See details here.

JavaScript, and var

Himanshu — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 08:46:23 +0000

While working in my current project, I re-learned this hard way. And I don’t want to make same mistake again, hence noting it here. Many a times you remember something better when noted somewhere.

I had created a javascript that was similar as below:

   1:  function Type1(){

   2:      _type = "type1";

   3:      this.show = function() { alert(_type); }

   4:  }

   5:  function Type2(){

   6:      _type = "type2";

   7:      this.show = function() { alert(_type); }

   8:  }

   9:  o1 = new Type1();

  10:  o2 = new Type2();

  11:  o1.show();

  12:  o2.show();

And me being ignorant about what I have written, was expecting to see two alerts once with “type1” and another with “type2”.

Case that I had was more complex , hence I took more time to understand the problem, and then note that I haven’t have “var”! The code should be as:

   1:  function Type1(){

   2:      var _type = "type1";

   3:      this.show = function() { alert(_type); }

   4:  }

   5:  function Type2(){

   6:      var _type = "type2";

   7:      this.show = function() { alert(_type); }

   8:  }

   9:  o1 = new Type1();

  10:  o2 = new Type2();

  11:  o1.show();

  12:  o2.show();

Note and Remember, “var” defines the scope of variable as local!

Separate domain and Runas

Himanshu — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 08:15:17 +0000

Have you ever wonder how can you run a specific application having awareness of different domain’s credentials? We have VPN setup between our different offices, and all offices are having complete separate windows domain tree. I’m in Pune office, that is having domain, which has not direct relation to our US office (e.g. it’s not welcomed in networking terms) – and believe me there is a good reason to be it that way.

While being in Pune, I needed to run an application on my machine (that is in Pune domain), with is aware that I also have valid credentials in our US office. And Runas worked well in that case as well. Runas.exe can be found in %WINDIR%\System32, checkout its short help by: %windir%\system32\runas.exe /? on command prompt.

I had used it as %WINDIR%\System32\runas.exe /netonly /user:\ “”

Upgrading XP by SP3 on Laptop

Himanshu — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 14:04:11 +0000

I was trying to apply Windows XP SP3 through windows auto updates. Auto update repeatedly reported that it couldn’t apply SP3 update. After digging further, I found that update was failing because laptop was not on AC supply.

Two points to note:

On laptop, shouldn’t apply windows update while battery powered
Interesting to understand that either xp auto update do not have way to report correct problem and instead just say “Could not apply following updates”, or maybe SP3 installer is not rightly coded for auto update.

Thought, Suggestion, Quote,

Himanshu — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 08:50:46 +0000

Bad news is better than no communication

Aggregation by rolling week

Himanshu — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 12:07:45 +0000

In my current project, we had interesting problem, customer wants to see few data aggregation by rolling week and not year week. Rolling week mean say today is ‘Saturday’, data should aggregate by all week ending ‘Saturday’, but if it was ‘Tuesday’, data should aggregate by by all week ending ‘Tuesday’. When I heard this for first time, I thought this going to end up real big and complex procedure. But to my surprise it’s not:

   1:  select customerId, bSaleDate as SaleDate, SUM(Amount) as Amount

   2:  from

   3:  (

   4:      select distinct

   5:          SaleByCustomerAndDate.customerId,

   6:          SaleSevenDayRange.SaleDate as bSaleDate,

   7:          SaleByCustomerAndDate.SaleDate as aSaleDate,

   8:          SaleByCustomerAndDate.Amount as Amount

   9:      from

  10:      (

  11:          select

  12:              customerId,

  13:              SaleDate,

  14:              SUM(Amount) as Amount

  15:          from

  16:              Sale

  17:          group by

  18:              customerId,

  19:              SaleDate

  20:      )

  21:      as SaleByCustomerAndDate inner join

  22:      (

  23:          select

  24:              customerId,

  25:              SaleDate,

  26:              DATEADD(DAY,-6,SaleDate) as LastSevenDay

  27:          from Sale

  28:      ) as SaleSevenDayRange on SaleByCustomerAndDate.SaleDate

  29:          between

  30:              SaleSevenDayRange.LastSevenDay

  31:              and

  32:              SaleSevenDayRange.SaleDate

  33:      and SaleByCustomerAndDate.customerId = SaleSevenDayRange.customerId

  34:  ) as c

  35:  group by

  36:      customerId,

  37:      bSaleDate

  38:  order by customerId, SaleDate

ASP.NET Postback on table row click

Himanshu — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 03:04:37 +0000

When you need to go back to the server for further processing on clicking of a html element, for example on html table row click, below code may help you provide such functioning in ASP.NET.

Well, actually to allow control to support bubbling of the events, and allow user of the control to specify CommandName and CommandArgument while being used in template controls, there is some extract effort, essentially will need to implement IButtonControl. Let’s see the code below that I have implemented to provide function of selecting row when clicked on it.

   1:  [ToolboxData("<{0}:ListViewRowClickCommand  CommandName=\"Select\" runat=\"server\">")]

   2:  public class ListViewRowClickCommand : HtmlTableRow, IButtonControl, IPostBackEventHandler

   3:  {

   4:      public bool DisableCommand { get; set; }

   5:      protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)

   6:      {

   7:          writer.WriteBeginTag("tr");

   8:          if (ID != null)

   9:              writer.WriteAttribute("id", ClientID);

  10:          if (!DesignMode)

  11:          {

  12:              if (!DisableCommand)

  13:                  writer.WriteAttribute("onclick", "javascript:" +

  14:                      Page.ClientScript.GetPostBackEventReference(this, CommandArgument));

  15:          }

  16:          Attributes.Render(writer);

  17:          writer.Write(HtmlTextWriter.TagRightChar);

18:

  19:          RenderChildren(writer);

  20:          writer.WriteEndTag("tr");

  21:      }

22:

  23:      public bool CausesValidation

  24:      {

  25:          get { return (bool)(ViewState["CausesValidation"] ?? true); }

  26:          set { ViewState["CausesValidation"] = value; }

  27:      }

28:

  29:      public string CommandArgument

  30:      {

  31:          get { return (string)ViewState["CommandArgument"]; }

  32:          set { ViewState["CommandArgument"] = value; }

  33:      }

34:

  35:      public string CommandName

  36:      {

  37:          get { return (string)ViewState["CommandName"]; }

  38:          set { ViewState["CommandName"] = value; }

  39:      }

40:

  41:      public string PostBackUrl

  42:      {

  43:          get { return (string)ViewState["PostBackUrl"]; }

  44:          set { ViewState["PostBackUrl"] = value; }

  45:      }

46:

  47:      public string ValidationGroup

  48:      {

  49:          get { return (string)ViewState["ValidationGroup"]; }

  50:          set { ViewState["ValidationGroup"] = value; }

  51:      }

52:

  53:      public event EventHandler Click;

  54:      public event CommandEventHandler Command;

55:

  56:      public void RaisePostBackEvent(string eventArgument)

  57:      {

  58:          if (CausesValidation)

  59:          {

  60:              if (Page.IsPostBack)

  61:                  Page.Validate();

  62:              if (!Page.IsValid)

  63:                  return;

  64:          }

65:

  66:          OnClick(EventArgs.Empty);

  67:          OnCommand(new CommandEventArgs(CommandName, CommandArgument));

  68:      }

69:

  70:      protected virtual void OnCommand(CommandEventArgs eventArgs)

  71:      {

  72:          if (Command != null)

  73:              Command(this, eventArgs);

74:

  75:          RaiseBubbleEvent(this, eventArgs);

  76:      }

77:

  78:      protected virtual void OnClick(EventArgs eventArgs)

  79:      {

  80:          if (Click != null)

  81:              Click(this, eventArgs);

  82:      }

  83:  }

Above control can be used as below:

   1:  ...

2:

   3:  "listViewOfSomething" runat="server" OnSelectedIndexChanging="OnSelectedIndexChanging">

4:

   5:          id="htmlTableOfSomething" >   6:              
   7:                  "itemPlaceholder" runat="server" />
   8:              
   9:

10:

11:

  12:          "ListViewRowClickCommand" runat="server"

  13:              CommandName="Select" Class="SomeCssClassForRow" >

  14:              class="CssClassForColumn">

15:

  16:  ...

Feel free to put comments in case if things are not clear.