Visual Studio Tricks

I am going to keep this as an ongoing post with whatever tips and tricks I come across when using Visual Studio.

Show Active File In Solution Explorer

When working with big solutions and projects this is so useful. By default visual studio doesn't highlight the file that is active (i.e the one you are viewing) in Solution Explorer.

To activate this do the following:

Tools – Options – Projects and Solutions – Track Active Item in Solution Explorer

Credit for this tip goes to Ronald Widha's blog .

Use the Command Window to Search for Files

In Visual Studio I really miss the equivalent of Eclipse's CTRL - T shortcut to search for classes.

The next best thing I have found is to open the command window ( View > Other Windows > Command Window ) and type:

>open file you're searching for

and a little drop down will pop up of files that start with whatever you have typed in.

More Tricks

Also check out any of my blog entries tagged with visual studio

Installing flash for firefox in xubuntu

This weekend I was trying to get the flash player installed on XUbuntu and working on firefox. Following the instructions on Adobe's site didn't work , but after a bit of googling this is what I did and it worked.

1. Download Adobe Flash Player from http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/otherversions/. Choose the tar.gz option.

2. Extract the contents of the extracted file to your desktop . The file libflashplayer.so should now be on your desktop

3. Open up a terminal window

4. Enter the following , and replace username with your username.

sudu su

cd /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/

cp /home/username/desktop/libflashplayer.so .

cd /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/

cp /home/username/desktop/libflashplayer.so .

5. Restart firefox (maybe a couple of times)

6. Test out youtube.com

Show delicious saves and tags on blog

This is a useful feature from delicious where you can show how many people have saved your page as a bookmark on delicious and the tags people have used.

You can probably see this at the bottom of this page.

Just go to http://delicious.com/help/tagometer and it has a snippet of javascript to copy and paste into your page.

To add a snippet of html/javascript to blogger have a look at the help site.

Adding ClearCase commands to Visual Studio context menu

If you are using Visual Studio and clearcase this is really useful. This puts clearcase functions like opening the version tree into the menu when you right click on a file in solution explorer.

1. The following link shows you how to add new menu items to the context menu when you select file in the solution explorer:

http://www.sharpregion.com/blog/?p=105&cpage=1

2 . Just add the following bit of code to the module ContextCommads or download the full file from here:




3. Now Repeat steps 7 to 9 from the afore mentioned link Extending the Visual-Studio Context-Menu for the following three subs :

VersionTree - this opens up the clearcase version tree for the selected file
HijackFileCommand - hjacks the selected file (makes it writeable)
ClearCaseAnnotateCommand - calls the clearcase annotate command to show who and when each change was made on the selected file

Thats it. Now right click on a file and you will have these options available

My top tools that every software developer should have

Here's my list of tools that make my day to day work a lot easier as a developer and some tools which are just useful to have on your desktop

Notepadd ++

Now this is the dog's dangly bits on text editors. It has built in syntax highlighters for nearly all formats, you can add your own syntax highlighters. You can open files in multiple tabs , firefox style and a whole host of other useful features. I use it for sql file edits, viewing log files , xml editing , batch file editing , etc , etc.



Free: YES
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

BareGrep

The fastest file searcher I have found that's free! It can search through sub directories and use regexp if you need to. Very useful for search through tons of log files.

Free : YES , but $25 USD version has a few more options
http://www.baremetalsoft.com/baregrep/

BareTail

Acts like a unix tail command but for windows. I.E. it monitors a text file and keeps updating whenever a new line is added. Perfect for log files. A nice feature is that it can highlight particular strings in whatever format you wish

Free : YES , and $25 USD version also has a few more options
http://www.baremetalsoft.com/baretail/

Beyond Compare

Definately the best file (and folder) comparison tool I have used. A perfect replacement to the crappy compare tool in clearcase (See my post Use Beyond Compare in Clearcase).

Free : 30 day evaluation
http://www.scootersoftware.com/

WinMerge

If you don't want to shell out for Beyond Compare , winmerge is a pretty good substitute as it is open source, so yes it is free. One feature it does have that Beyond Compare doesn't is that it does code syntax highlighting in the comparison viewer.

Free : YES
http://winmerge.org/

RocketDock

A thing to place your shortcuts, and makes your windows pc look a bit like a mac. Wow , other geeky developers . See the youtube vid.



Free : YES
http://rocketdock.com/


Executor

A great application to start up any application installed. Very quick and intuitive to use.



Free: YES
http://www.executor.dk/

Fences

Organise icons on your desktop into little areas called fences. Very useful



Free: YES
http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/

FreeUndelete

It does what is says on the tin! It undeletes file you thought you lost! Can be a lifesaver, actually it bailed me out today!.

Free : YES
http://www.officerecovery.com/freeundelete/

Process Explorer

It is a super replacement for windows task manager. Get detailed info on each process and easily see parent child processes.




Free: YES
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

Everything Search Engine

This is a really great tool to search for files . It is really lightweight and superfast. It indexes in the background , so when you search for something it is almost instant.

Free : YES

http://www.voidtools.com/

WinDirStat

If you are always running out of disk space, this is the tool for you. It shows you your big folders and files and has a nice little map of your drive.

If you want something to work cross platform see some other suggestions from lifehacker:

http://lifehacker.com/219058/geek-to-live--visualize-your-hard-drive-usage

Free : YES

http://windirstat.info/

Facebook Connect on Blogger

This post is to test out using facebook connect on blogger using disqus.

So leave a comment and see what happens.

I followed the instructions from:

http://manofmanywords.blogspot.com/2008/12/do-you-have-blog-on-blogger-wordpress.html

Export SQL Server tables to Excel in c#

This piece of code executes a sql query on a sql server database and returns the result into a excel workbook (with column headings included).

Remember to add the following references (Project > Add Reference > COM)

Microsoft Excel 12.0 Object Library (or an older version)

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Data.SqlClient;

using Excel = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel;
using System.Reflection;

namespace ExportDBTablesToExcel
{
 class ExportToExcel
 {

     private Excel.Application app ;

     private Excel.Workbook workbook;
     private Excel.Worksheet previousWorksheet;

     private Excel.Range workSheet_range;

     private string folder;

     private static string CONNECTION_STR = "Data Source=(local);Database=DATABASE_NAME;"
                                                      + "Integrated Security=SSPI;";


     public ExportToExcel(string folder)
     {

         this.folder = folder;

          this.app = null;
          this.workbook = null;

          this.previousWorksheet = null;
          this.workSheet_range = null;

       

          createDoc();
     }

     private void createDoc()

     {
         try
         {
             app = new Excel.Application();

             app.Visible = false;
             workbook = app.Workbooks.Add(1);

          
         }
         catch (Exception e)
         {
             Console.Write(e.ToString());

         }
         finally
         {
         }
     }

     public void shutDown()

     {
         try
         {
             workbook = null;

             app.Quit();
         }
         catch (Exception e)

         {
             Console.Write(e.ToString());
         }

         finally
         {
         }
     }

     public void ExportTable(string query,string sheetName)

     {
         SqlConnection myConnection = new SqlConnection(CONNECTION_STR);

         SqlDataReader myReader = null;

         try
         {

             Excel.Worksheet worksheet = (Excel.Worksheet)workbook.Sheets.Add(Missing.Value, Missing.Value, 1, Excel.XlSheetType.xlWorksheet);

             worksheet.Name = sheetName;

             previousWorksheet = worksheet;



             myConnection.Open();

         
             SqlCommand myCommand = new SqlCommand(query,
                                                      myConnection);

             myReader = myCommand.ExecuteReader();

             int columnCount = myReader.FieldCount;

             for (int n = 0; n < columnCount; n++)

             {
                 Console.Write(myReader.GetName(n) + "\t");

                 createHeaders(worksheet, 1, n + 1, myReader.GetName(n));

             }

             int rowCounter = 2;
             while (myReader.Read())

             {
                 for (int n = 0; n < columnCount; n++)

                 {
                     Console.WriteLine();
                     Console.Write(myReader[myReader.GetName(n)].ToString() + "\t");

                     addData(worksheet, rowCounter, n + 1, myReader[myReader.GetName(n)].ToString());

                 }
                 rowCounter++;
             }


         }

         catch (Exception e)
         {
             Console.WriteLine(e.ToString());

         }
         finally
         {
             if (myReader!=null && !myReader.IsClosed)

             {
                 myReader.Close();
             }

             if (myConnection != null)

             {
                 myConnection.Close();
             }

             myReader = null;
             myConnection = null;
         }

     }


     public void createHeaders(Excel.Worksheet worksheet,int row, int col, string htext)

     {
         worksheet.Cells[row, col] = htext;

     
     }

     public void addData(Excel.Worksheet worksheet,int row, int col, string data)

     {
         worksheet.Cells[row, col] = data;

     } 


     public void SaveWorkbook(){
      
         String folderPath = "C:\\My Files\\" + this.folder ;

         if (!System.IO.Directory.Exists(folderPath)) {

             System.IO.Directory.CreateDirectory(folderPath);

         }

         string fileNameBase = "db" ;
         String fileName = fileNameBase;
         string ext = ".xlsx" ;
         int counter = 1 ;

         while (System.IO.File.Exists(folderPath+fileName+ext)){

             fileName = fileNameBase + counter;
             counter++ ;
         }

         fileName = fileName +ext ;

         string filePath = folderPath + fileName ;

         try
         {
             workbook.SaveAs(filePath, Excel.XlFileFormat.xlWorkbookDefault, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Excel.XlSaveAsAccessMode.xlNoChange, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value, Missing.Value);

         }
         catch (Exception e)
         {
             Console.WriteLine(e.ToString());

         }
     }


     static void Main(string[] args)

     {

         ExportToExcel export = new ExportToExcel(args[0]);

         export.ExportTable("SELECT * FROM t_table1","t_table1");
         export.ExportTable("SELECT * FROM t_table2","t_table2");
         export.ExportTable("SELECT * FROM t_table3","t_table3");
         export.SaveWorkbook() ;

         export.shutDown();
     }





 }

}

This code is based on the following links:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/Excel_and_C_.aspx
and
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/database/sql_in_csharp.aspx?fid=16002&df=90&mpp=25&noise=3&sort=Position&view=Quick&fr=26&select=1490011