Installing IIS 7.0 on Windows Server 2008

Let me explain my experience on installing IIS 7.0 on windows server 2008. I had a tough time to find a way to install IIS 7.0 on windows server 2008. I thought that it would be same as installing IIS 6.0 on windows server 2003 by going to "control panel" -> "Add or Remove Programs" -> "Add/Remove Windows Components" and install IIS. But I couldn't find this in windows server 2008. After doing a long research I found a link which helped me.

I followed the below steps to install IIS 7.0 on windows server 2008.

1. Go to "Start" -> "Administrative tools" -> "Service Manager".
2. Right click the node "Roles" in the "Service Manager" window and click on "Add Roles".
3. Follow the wizard.
4. Select web server(IIS) in 2nd step of the wizard.
5. You might get the following popup immediately. If you get this please click "Add Required Role Services".
6. You follow the wizard until you get the below step.
7. Follow the wizard until the final step.
8. That's it. You are done with installing IIS 7.0 on windows server 2008.
9. If you face any problems please follow the below link. It has detailed step by step guidelines to install the IIS 7.0 on windows server 2008. http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/29/installing-iis-70-on-windows-server-2008/

C# 4.0 new features: Named and Optional arguments

Microsoft has introduced few new features in C# 4.0. I would like to discuss the below listed new features in this post.

1. Optional arguments

2. Named arguments

Optional arguments: This feature allows you to omit arguments when calling methods. This is done by defining a method with assigning default values to parameters. For better understanding, let's take a look at the below example.

We define a method called "SomeMethod" by proving default values to two of its parameters as shown.

public void SomeMethod(int a, int b = 50, int c = 100);

Now this method can be called in different ways as shown below.

SomeMethod(10, 30, 50); // This is a normal call as 3 arguments were passed

SomeMethod(10, 30); // This call is omitting parameter "c". This call is equalant to SomeMethod(10, 30, 100)

SomeMethod(10); // This call is omitting both "b" and "c". This call is equalant to SomeMethod(10, 50, 100)

As you see, we can omit any number of consecutive parameters from right to left. In the above examples we omitted parameter "c" alone and parameters "b" and "c" together. Do you see a way to omit the parameter "b" in the above example? If you call the method "SomeMethod" by passing one argument as shown below, the compiler assumes that the argument passed was for the first parameter i.e, "a". So we need a way to tell the compiler that this argument was passed to a particular parameter, in this case it is "b". This requirement was fulfilled by c# 4.0's another new feature called "Named Arguments". Let's take a closer look at this feature.

Named Arguments: This feature allows you to pass the arguments by the corresponding parameter names.

For example you can pass the arguments by name as shown below.

SomeMethod(a:10, b:30, c:50);

By this feature, we don't need to pass the arguments in the order of parameters defined in the method. We can rewrite the above method call as shown below.

SomeMethod(c:50, b:30, a:10);

And you can solve the above discussed problem (omitting the middle parameter "b") as shown below.

SomeMethod(a:10, c:50); // This call Omits the parameter "b".

Optional and Named arguments features can also be applied to constructors. This feature is mainly useful where you have methods that have many number of parameters.

Use of "for" attribute of html label

I have noticed many of the html programmers that, they use an attribute called "for" when writing a label tag. And the attribute value is exactly same as the corresponding html input control such as text box, check box, drop down,... But I never tried to know the actual use of this attribute.

Very recently, I have searched in Google to know the use of it. Now I have come to know that, the "for" attribute of label binds the label with the corresponding control. Binding in the sense, when the user clicks on the label it toggles the corresponding control (control id passed as value for "for" attribute). This way the "for" attribute is used for the label. Now onwards I am going to make a good practice of using "for" attribute of the label control.

Let's see an example of the usage of the "for" attribute of label control

<label for="FirstName">First Name:</label>

<input id="FirstName" type="text">

The above code is rendered as shown below. You can test this behavior by clicking on the label "First Name:". You can notice the text box focused.

First Name:

Easy way to strip time part in sql date time

Most of the times we wouldn't want the time part of the dates to be stored or retrieved when dealing with only days. But the data type "datetime" in sql always includes the time even though you don't want it. There is no other data type in sql to store or retrieve the date without time. In this case we need to strip the time part from the date and store the remaining in database. To do this favor, I have come up with the below sql code which strips the time part from the date time.

declare @date datetime;
set @date = getdate();
select cast(convert(varchar, @date, 101) as datetime) --Strips time element from the date time

The above code will work like this:
If you have the date time 25/09/2009 12:36:40:654 then this will be converted as 25/09/2009 00:00:00:000

Find common elements in c# generic list

The following code demonstrates how to get the common elements in
given 2 lists using Intersect method of System.Collections.Generic.List.

using System;
using System.Linq;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
static class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        int[] elementSet1 = { 5, 1, 6, 3, 8 };
        int[] elementSet2 = { 3, 7, 8, 6, 5 };

        foreach (int element in elementSet1.Intersect(
                           elementSet2))
        {
            Console.WriteLine(element);
        }
        Console.Read();
    }
}
}

How to find an element in c# Generic List

The following sample code demonstrates you how to find a matching element in the object list.

Let's say we have an object called Person with public properties PersonID, Name, Age, Gender as defined below.

using System.Collections.Generic.List;

public class Person
{
public int PersonID {get; set;}
public string Name {get; set;}
public int Age {get; set;}
public bool Gender {get; set;}
}

class program
{
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
// Let's say we have a method defined as dbAccess.GetPersons() to
//return all the records from Person table and populates the
//list object "persons" as shown below.
List persons = dbAccess.GetPersons();

int personIDToFind = 1234;
//Find person in persons list by PersonID using predicate
//"p=>p.PersonID == personIDToFind"
Person personByFindOperation = persons.Find( p=>p.PersonID == personIDToFind );

string personName = "Kiran"
//Find person in persons list by Name using predicate
//"p=>p.Name == personName"
Person personByFindOperation2 = persons.Find( p=>p.Name == personName );

}
}

Note: The Find method of List returns the first occurrence of the exact match within the entire System.Collections.Generic.List.

How to create a windows service in dot net framework

Windows service is an application which always runs in background. We can view all the installed windows services in ControlPanel/Administrativetools/Services. Sql server, Oracle, ... are the good examples of windows service.

Using visual studio it is very easy to create windows service. Please follow the below steps to create a windows service.

1. Open visual studio and create a new project of template "Windows Service" as shown below
2. After you click OK in the above step you will see a new solution named "WindowsService1" created as shown below.
3. Right click on the above screen and click "Add Installer". This will create an installer component which helps us in installing this service.
4. You can notice a new component "ProjectInstaller.cs" added and opened as shown below. It has 2 controls "ServiceProcessInstaller1" and "ServiceInstaller1".
5. You can set whether this service is manual, automatic, or disabled by changing the StartType property of "ServiceInstaller1" (Right click -> Properties).
6. Change the "ServiceProcessInstaller1"'s property "Account" to "LocalSystem"
7. Right click on Service1.cs in solution explorer and click "View Code"
8. In code you will see the service event handlers "OnStart", "OnStop".
9. Write code that initiates a thread in OnStart event handler.
10. Write code that stops execution of the thread in OnStop event handler.
11. Please see below for sample code
12. Build the solution. You have the windows service built ready.
13. But until we install this service we cannot see it is running or not.
14. To install this service you need to open the Visual Studio 2005/2008 Command prompt in Start->Visual Studio 2005/2008->Visual Studio Tools
15. Run the command : InstallUtil.exe Windows_Service_EXE_Full_Path
16. Here Windows_Service_EXE_Full_Path is the exe generated for the WindowsService1 project. Let's say the full path of the exe is C:/WindowsService1/Bin/Debug/WindowsService1.exe then our command to install it would be like this.
17. InstallUtil.exe C:/WindowsService1/Bin/Debug/WindowsService1.exe
18. If the above command is successful then you will notice a new service named "Service1" is shown in Control Panel->Administrative Tools/Services
    
19. To uninstall a service, InstallUtil.exe -u C:/WindowsService1/Bin/Debug/WindowsService1.exe
20. To make the life easier to install/uninstall windows services we can create a setup project which will let people easily install/uninstall with a wizard Please read this link. http://cherupally.blogspot.com/2009/09/how-to-create-setup-project-to-install.html