Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - A great day/night of coding...best one in years

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A great day/night of coding...best one in years

Posted 2003-09-27 12:38 AM in ASP.NET | Internationalization | XML.

It's 12:18am and I'm hopped up on at least 96 ounces of Diet Pepsi and vibrating with the excitement that you only get after a 15-hour-marathon-coding-just-one-more-method session. Having a blast, or hooked on crack? You decide.

Here's what I'm hip deep in and did today:

Cookieless Forms Authentication - You may have noticed that FormsAuthentication still makes Cookies even when SessionState is set to Cookieless=true. No longer, for me at least.
ASP.NET Internationalization - I completely refactored LocalizedPage with input from Chris Kinsman, Chris Brooks, Bradley McLain and Alex Ginos. Thanks guys!
With inspiration from Clemens, I'm all over SOA and trying to reconcile those things about OOP that don't jive in a SOA world.
XmlSerialization - I am consistantly imressed with how slick XmlSerialization is in .NET for a "1.0" attempt.
Log4net - Very sweet. I'm glad I took the time to set it up. I encapsulated it and will be writing some Corillian-specific Appenders, but it got me 90% of the way there. It's the cat's pajamas.
ObjectBinding - Binding objects to ASP.NET DataGrids is a hassle, but if you put the effort into it by making Strongly Typed Collections (Thanks QuickCode.NET!) and including public properties for those things you wish to bind, it DOES make life easier for the UI Programmers. Also, I've decided I really prefer dealing with strongly typed objects instead of DataSets (strongly typed or otherwise).
XSD.exe - is nice, but just not smart enough. For a fairly complex Xml InfoSet I still have to put about 15-30 minutes of just typing to get the autogenerated .CS files to include property getters for DataBinding, better XmlElement andn Variable naming choices and the whole [XmlIgnore] strongly-typed-collection-with-parallel-array trick. It's time to move this crap to a code generator. I'd like to either:
- Find a smarter XSD.exe
- Write an uber-xslt that takes XSDs and gen the code
- Perhaps CodeSmith?
- Geez, I can't wait until Templates. Oy.

What current code generator is the best for taking XML input and making code? Comments please...

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Saturday, September 27, 2003 6:39:52 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Guess what... I am looking for the exact same thing right now, an xsd.exe replacement or at least an extensibility model for it. Rotor has the wrong license and Mono isn't far enough along, so looking there yielded no result.

Clemens Vasters

Saturday, September 27, 2003 7:12:42 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Hi Scott,

I have had a lot of success with CodeSmith.

QuickCode.NET also rocks, but I have been useing CodeSmith as well for all of the strongly typed collections in .Text.

Scott Watermasysks

Saturday, September 27, 2003 9:58:40 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

besides the fact that you got digging into all of those technologies, I'm really envious at your (and so many's) ability to work all night. Once in a while, I'll work till 1 or 2. Even more rarely, I'll wake up at 4 am with something nagging so badly at me that I'll get up and start working. But usually at about 10p, my eyes are so exhausted that there is just no more hope of continuing. Maybe if I wore my new glasses more often. Caffeine? Rather not. But I want more more more hours in my day.

re: xml - I remember the day I finally realized it was what I needed and that was the time I chose to try to really learn it. I'm fortunate to have LOTS of books, many that sit and wait for such a moment. I must have pored through chapters and sections and msdn for hours and hours just trying to soak it all up. There's just nothing like it, eh?

julie

Saturday, September 27, 2003 7:10:36 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

check out: XmlArrayItemAttribute
the help says it all: "The XmlArrayItemAttribute supports polymorphism--in other words, it allows the XmlSerializer to add derived objects to an array."

Jim

Sunday, September 28, 2003 12:40:23 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

(that's xmlSerializer!)

julie

Monday, September 29, 2003 4:21:05 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Try Ruby.

Give http://www.rubycentral.com/book/intro.html a read to get intrigued ;). Then check http://martinfowler.com/bliki/MovingAwayFromXslt.html