P: is for Path and is less than 260 characters

TF10128: The path contains more than the allowed 260 characters. Type or select a shorter path.

I have run into this issue a number of times over the past year for some reason engineers just want to name a project, class or solution what it is without having to think about string lengths and file systems. I like to keep my projects folder in my user profile because that's where everything else is... neat and tidy. Thankfully a solution, something that hearkens back to the of flannel, blue jeans and birkenstock sandals with socks possibly where this limitation all started.

After solving this now for the 4th time the following works the best. Take the code below paste it into notepad and change the path to your source location. Remember to keep two \\ slashes for every one in the reg file or it wont work. You will have to reboot your computer for the change to take effect.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\DOS Devices]
"P:"="\\??\\D:\\Path\\To\\Your\\Code"

To solve the problem I simply add a batch file to my start up folder that creates a drive substitution.

@ECHO OFF 
SUBST P: "%USERPROFILE%\My Projects"

How the characters limitation is calculated:

 Path length + 1 (separator) +
   Solution name length + 1 (separator) +
   Project name length + 1 (separator) +
   Project name length +
   80 (Reserved space)

Dude where is my admin?

1. Create a shortcut to the batch/cmd file
2. Right click on properties
3. Replace the Target with: %windir%\System32\cmd.exe /c "Map Projects.cmd"
4. Click "Advanced..."
5. Check "Run as administrator"

This method works more reliably and allows for drive substitution on the system user (Debugging windows Service)

1. Create a scheduled task that runs on login of your user account or system startup
2. Set the task to run under the user you want P for
3. Enter SUBST as the program name
4. Instead of %USERPROFILE% use the full path
5. Enter P: "C:\Users\{Your Account Name Here}\My Projects" in the arguments box
6. Run the task manually if you get a 0 result you have successfully configured P

Unity, Injection and the surprise InvalidCastException of System.Type

Chances are if you have run into this message you might be trying to inject your constructor, property or method with a type as a type. The reason? Default behavior of unity is to resolve a type to an instance and inject it for you. This feature applies to all injection and is not terribly clear in the Unity documentation. It also comes up quite frequently on the stackoverflow unity channel.
An example of the full error message in all it's glory:

Resolution of the dependency failed, type = \"MyNamespace.IMyInteface\", name = \"(none)\".\r\nException occurred while: 
Resolving parameter \"myConstructorParameter\" of constructor MyNamespace.MyClass.Logger(System.Type myConstructorParameter).
Exception is: InvalidCastException - Unable to cast object of type 'MyActualInstanceOfTypeProvidedToConstructor' to type 'System.Type'.
-----------------------------------------------
At the time of the exception, the container was:

Resolving MyNamespace.MyClass,(none) (mapped from MyNamespace.IMyInterface, (none))\r\n  Resolving parameter \"myConstructorParameter\" of constructor MyClass(System.Type myConstructorParameter)

Solving this issue is not as complicated as the error message may seem... for unity. Microsoft did left some flexibility for us, it simply involves wrapping the type argument as an injection parameter:

new ParameterOverride("typeParameterArgument",new InjectionParameter(typeof(Type),typeof(MyNamespace.MyClassUsedAsInjectedTypeArgument)))

Why? if you dive into the reflection tool of your choice you will eventually come across "InjectionParameterValue.ToParameter" this little gem will show you that unity is checking to see of the value is an InjectionParameterValue if it is no and the value is a type return a new ResolveParameter using the argument as a type.
References:

• ParameterOverride failing on System.Type parameter
• http://kozmic.pl/2008/12/03/unity-framework-and-the-principle-of-the-least-surprise/

MVC3 controller action model argument is null

After re-naming some controller action arguments I recently discovered a method that was previously working, unexpectedly returning null for the controller action argument. The action used the default model binder pulling data from both the query string and route values. Consider the following code:

public class Search
{
  public string Name {get;set;}
  public string Query {get;set;}
}
public ActionResult Results(Search query)
{
....
}
....
///results/{Name}
....
///results/monkeys?Query=12-of-them-jumping

The default model binder rather than binding to the object is trying to take your "Query" and plug it into the action method as an argument. Since string is not "Search" it results in a null value, the short lesson to take from this puzzle is to avoid naming properties on your object the same name as arguments you are passing into the controller action.

TSQL SELECT Convert or Cast DateTime but WHERE fails

Can a select return when a where fails?

This zen like question came up this afternoon while digging through some rather raw varchar table data. The answer is yes, and part of answer is coming up with the right question. While googling around I ended up settling on "CONVERT fails in where clause but not in select".

Consider the following problem:

SELECT * FROM dbo.MyTable
WHERE ISDATE(value)=1 AND AND  CAST(Value AS datetime) > GETUTCDATE()

--OR

SELECT * FROM dbo.MyTable
WHERE ISDATE(value)=1 AND CONVERT(datetime,Value) > GETUTCDATE()

Value
-----------------------
2012-01-02 00:00:00.000

--BUT

SELECT CONVERT(datetime,Value) FROM dbo.MyTable
WHERE ISDATE(value)=1

--OR

SELECT CAST(Value AS datetime) FROM dbo.MyTable
WHERE ISDATE(value)=1

Msg 241, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
--HUH?
Conversion failed when converting date and/or time from character string.

To paraphrase the above, SQL Server may evaluate rows outside of the expected WHERE clause based on how the optimizer decides to limit the result set. This left me with three solutions:

1. Create an index to persuade the optimizer to avoid the plan that evaluates non-date columns... perhaps not.


2. Reload cast or converted data into a #temporary table, yes this will work but really?


3. My solution below compliments of the path of least resistance, add some case logic around the value column

SELECT Value FROM dbo.MyTable
WHERE CASE ISDATE(value)=1 THEN CONVERT(datetime,Value)
ELSE NULL END > GETUTCDATE()
--OIC ~(:o)

When you think about how SQL Server has to discover the table data it makes sense. If you haven't run into the condition before it may cause a little head scratching. The better solution would be to use a date time column in the first place if possible, but hopefully with this post and the corresponding stackoverflow post you can save a few extra hairs on your head.

Azure Security Certificate Names Are Case Sensitive

If you receive the following error and are not using a proxy, and do not have Fiddler open, you might have some mixed case somewhere in your certificate name configuration settings:

1:55:36 PM - Warning: There are package validation warnings.

1:55:36 PM - Preparing...

1:55:36 PM - Connecting...

1:55:38 PM - Uploading...

1:56:25 PM - Creating...

1:56:42 PM - HTTP Status Code: 500/nError Message: The server encountered an internal error. Please retry the request./nOperation Id: {GUID}

1:56:43 PM - Deleting Quality Assurance Debug Only - Website

1:56:44 PM - There was no endpoint listening at https://management.core.windows.net/{GUID}/services/hostedservices/website/deploymentslots/Staging that could accept the message. This is often caused by an incorrect address or SOAP action. See InnerException, if present, for more details.

1:56:44 PM - Deployment failed

Windows Azure Multi-Site Single Role Using Host Headers With Config Transforms

I was excited to find out that Azure supported multiple sites with a single worker role with a few simple configuration changes thanks to Wade Wegner's Example. I was a little disappointed that the process of building the package did not include the XDT transforms on the config. Neither is the website packaged for deployment which strips out all non essential files references in the web application before deploying. After a number of google searches and some trial and error I came up with the following solution:

In my example I created a single website and associated it to my azure project as the only worker role.

In the worker role pre-build event I have placed the following for each website that needed to be packaged and transformed:

Cloud Project Pre Build Event

rmdir ..\Deploy.Cloud\Website.Mvc /S /Q
"%systemroot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe" "$(ProjectDir)..\Website.Mvc\Website.Mvc.csproj" "/p:Platform=AnyCPU;PackageAsSingleFile=False;Configuration=$(ConfigurationName);DesktopBuildPackageLocation=..\Package\Website.Mvc;PackageAsSingleFile=False;IntermediateOutputPath=..\Deploy.Cloud\Website.Mvc\\" /t:Package

*You must remove the intermediate location before it creates the package otherwise debug/release configurations will not differ

*Note the extra slash at the end yes that is intentional if you do not add it you will get some interesting error messages about properties with no value

ServiceDefinition.csdef

<Site name="Website.Mvc" physicalDirectory="Website.Mvc\Package\PackageTmp">

What's going on here

Every time the cloud project builds it will copy and package the website in the cloud project's project root folder as the website name. Next step is to update the ServiceDefinition.csdef use the intermediate path location for the physicalDirectory. Why? because the package directory contains all of the assets to be deployed as a web deployment project which is not needed when deploying using a web role.

References

http://www.wadewegner.com/2011/02/running-multiple-websites-in-a-windows-azure-web-role/

http://www.digitallycreated.net/Blog/59/locally-publishing-a-vs2010-asp.net-web-application-using-msbuild

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

Windows Azure Accelerator for Web Roles Missing Trace Logging By Default

After upgrading our applications to Windows Azure Accelerator for Web Roles I found that the trace messages disappeared. Windows Azure Accelerator for Web Roles default project does not enable trace logging by default. To fix this simply add the following lines to the WebRole.cs of the Windows Azure Accelerator for Web Role project.

private static void ConfigureDiagnosticsMonitor()
{
//... Omitted from example
   // Trace Logs
   diagnosticMonitorConfiguration.Logs.ScheduledTransferLogLevelFilter = LogLevel.Undefined;
   diagnosticMonitorConfiguration.Logs.ScheduledTransferPeriod = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1);
//... Omitted from example
}