*\bin* *\obj* *.suo *.user *.bak **.ReSharper** **\_ReSharper.** StyleCop.Cache
Edward Wilde
Developer | Diver
Author Archives: Edward Wilde
SharePoint Page layout throws “Parser Error Message: Only Content controls are allowed directly in a content page that contains Content controls” during provisioning.
If you see something like this:
|
This could be (it was in my case) caused by a very obscure behaviour of the web part manager during provisioning. Namely it doesn’t like your <asp:Content tags to be defined in lower case.
Wrong: Error prone page layout
</p>
<p><asp:content…</p>
<p>
Correct
</p>
<p><asp:Content…</p>
<p>
Yet another SharePoint time waster! 🙂
XslCompiledTransform !♥ the UTF-8 BOM : System.Xml.XmlException: Data at the root level is invalid. Line 1, position 1.
Recently I came across a rather annoying issue with the XslCompiledTransform class. Namely it really doesn’t like having a BOM (byte order mark) shoved down it’s load method.
I got a the follow error message and stack trace
System.Xml.XmlException: Data at the root level is invalid. Line 1, position 1. at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(Exception e) at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(String res, String arg) at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseRootLevelWhitespace() at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseDocumentContent() at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Read() at System.Xml.Xsl.Xslt.XsltInput.ReadNextSiblingHelper() at System.Xml.Xsl.Xslt.XsltInput.ReadNextSibling() at System.Xml.Xsl.Xslt.XsltInput.MoveToNextSibling() at System.Xml.Xsl.Xslt.XsltInput.Start() at System.Xml.Xsl.Xslt.XsltLoader.LoadDocument() at System.Xml.Xsl.Xslt.XsltLoader.LoadStylesheet(XmlReader reader, Boolean include) System.Xml.Xsl.XslLoadException: XSLT compile error. at System.Xml.Xsl.Xslt.XsltLoader.LoadStylesheet(XmlReader reader, Boolean include) at System.Xml.Xsl.Xslt.XsltLoader.Load(Compiler compiler, Object stylesheet, XmlResolver xmlResolver) at System.Xml.Xsl.Xslt.Compiler.Compile(Object stylesheet, XmlResolver xmlResolver, ref QilExpression qil) at System.Xml.Xsl.XslCompiledTransform.CompileXsltToQil(Object stylesheet, XsltSettings settings, XmlResolver stylesheetResolver) at System.Xml.Xsl.XslCompiledTransform.LoadInternal(Object stylesheet, XsltSettings settings, XmlResolver stylesheetResolver) at System.Xml.Xsl.XslCompiledTransform.Load(XmlReader stylesheet)
Viewing the input data to the XslCompiledTransform in debug mode showed a perfectly valid and lovely XSLT file. Visual studio does not display the BOM in the visual representation of the string. Saving the string to disk and examining it in a hex editor revealed that the first 3 bytes were indeed the BOM for UTF-8: EF BB BF
I wrote a little extension method for the bytes class to get rid of the BOM if it’s present
///
///
///
The bytes.
///
public static byte[] RemoveByteOrderMark(this byte[] bytes)
{
if (!bytes.StartsWithByteOrderMark())
{
return bytes;
}
byte[] results = new byte[bytes.Length – 3];
Array.Copy(bytes, 3, results, 0, bytes.Length – 3);
return results;
}
///
///
///
The bytes.
///
public static bool StartsWithByteOrderMark(this byte[] bytes)
{
if (bytes == null)
{
return false;
}
if (bytes.Length < 3) { return false; } return bytes[0] == 0xEF && bytes[1] == 0xBB && bytes[2] == 0xBF; } [/sourcecode]
Performance profiling SharePoint sites using Redgate ANTS Profiler
I used the 5.0 evaluation copy of RedGate ANTS profiler tool on a standard Windows Sever 2003 R2 / SharePoint 2007 virtual machine.
To get profiling working with my SharePoint code base I made the following adjustments:
- Allow site collection administrator to “Act as part of the operating system” and “Impersonate a client after authentication” and to Administrators group – All this was already the case.
- Run “ANTS Performance Profiler 5 Service” and “ANTS Memory Profile 5 Service” under the site collection administrator account
- Copied my applications dll’s and pdbs from GAC to web application bin folder, as I was previously using the GAC.
A complete guide to setting up ANTS profiler with SharePoint
The ANTS profiler is extremely easy to use and it quickly helped me narrow down some issues using XlstCompiledTransform objects.
Roy Osherove is giving an hands-on TDD Masterclass in the UK, September 21-25
Roy Osherove is giving an hands-on TDD Masterclass in the UK, September 21-25. Roy is author of “The Art of Unit Testing” (http://www.artofunittesting.com/), a leading tdd & unit testing book; he maintains a blog at http://iserializable.com (which amoung other things has critiqued tests written by Microsoft for asp.net MVC – check out the testreviews category) and has recently been on the Scott Hanselman podcast (http://bit.ly/psgYO) where he educated Scott on best practices in Unit Testing techniques. For a further insight into Roy’s style, be sure to also check out Roy’s talk at the recent Norwegian Developer’s Conference (http://bit.ly/NuJVa).
Full Details here: http://bbits.co.uk/tddmasterclass
bbits are holding a raffle for a free ticket for the event. To be eligible to win the ticket (worth £2395!) you MUST paste this text, including all links, into your blog and email Ian@bbits.co.uk with the url to the blog entry. The draw will be made on September 1st and the winner informed by email and on bbits.co.uk/blog
Why I Want a Job at Songkick.com
I hate missing gigs, I hate ebay touts more
The last two gigs I went to were
- Scott Matthews bloomsbury theatre 10/06/09, with a face value price of £15, luckily I was able to pay £50 to ebay.
- Next up, Metric at the electric ballroom, again it was my pleasure to pay way over the odds and help kick start the ecomony over on ebay.
Last.fm knows quite a few of the artists I like, and Windows Media Player knows all of them – why can’t they just email me when the tickets go on sale. Hmmm business idea perhaps?
Market review
Who’s doing this? Surely someone in these heady days of Web 2.0.42.1, if not i’m building it this weekend.
At first glance no one is: http://www.google.com/search?q=gig+alerts = a bunch of random, not very useful and decidedly web 0.9 sites. I know, pretty extensive research. However after a bit more digging and some moaning on twitter, fellow music buddy Nick pointed me over to Songkick. Now we’re talking. Quickly pop-in my last.fm profile and we’re off to the races:
Sales Pitch
Why would Songkick want to hire me?
Let’s tackle the HTTP part first. I’ve been creating things using HTTP, JavaScript, CSS and HTML since 1997 and really enjoy creating usable and efficient websites.
Songkick is great, but it could be improved HTTP-Wise
Homepage
Performance is pretty slick on the home page (logged out). Main improvements would be adding expires headers and gzip-ing plain text assets i.e. html/css/jscript
Internal pages
Again nice performance, but some room for performance tweeks
- Reduce number of HTTP request, by combining small images into a single sprite using the CSS sprite technique, This tool I’m told eases that pain: http://spritegen.website-performance.org/.
- Configure static assets to have an expiration date set far into the future.
- GZIP-ing text assets.
- Host images off sub domains i.e. images1/2.songkick.com to increase parallel downloading. For example to comply with RFC 2068 Internet Explorer 5-7 limits 2 concurrent downloads per host.
- Use CDN‘s (Content delivery network) for all static assets. This is already done to some extend on the javascript files, referencing them as you do to Google hosted jquery files.
- There are lots of 301’s being generated from beta-static.songkick.com redirecting to http://www.songkick.com, causing unnecessary HTTP chatter. I guess this is a temporary thing moving out of beta -but it’s not helping performance.
I ❤ Programming
In 1999 I started a web design consultancy with my brother Andy. To start with I did the programming, he did everything else. We sold the company in 2003 and I stayed on to help build the team from 5 to 10 whole people by 2007.
Continuous integration, TTD, Scrum, lean, kanban and pair programming all sound pretty odd but are really rather useful. I enjoy practicing these techniques at least twice a day! I’ve been a .Net programmer on the server for quite sometime but more on the Alt.Net side than in the MSDN camp.
I learnt Smalltalk at university, then Java, later moving to .Net. Recently I’ve been lapping up Objective-C and IPhone development, thanks to the good folks at Stanford.
I’m MVC literate and ready for my next challenge 🙂
P.S. Learning new languages / platforms not a problem – can do it on the QT
My rather rambling C.V. full of recruitment-agent-compatible (think grep) buzzwords can be found on my imaginatively titled about page.
P.P.S My code is better than my prose.
Search google code using firefox search plugin
Why isn’t there a google code search addon that uses the FireFox search toolbar? Well here’s one that I made until they publish it on the addon’s site.
<searchplugin xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/" xmlns:os="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/"> <os :shortname>Google Code</os> <os :description>Search Google Code</os> <os :inputencoding>UTF-8</os> <os :image height="16" width="16">data:image/png;base64,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</os> <updateinterval>7</updateinterval> <searchform>http://www.google.com/codesearch</searchform> <os :url template="http://www.google.com/codesearch?q={searchTerms}" method="GET" type="text/html"> </os> </searchplugin>Download
google code search plugin for FireFox
Installation
Put just downloaded XML file to the directory under the next path:
in Windows – %AppData%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\%FirefoxProfile%\SearchPlugins\
in Liunx – ~/.mozilla/firefox/%FirefoxProfile%/SearchPlugins/
in Mac – ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/%FirefoxProfile%/SearchPlugins/
where
%AppData% – current user Application Data directory under his home directory, e.g. C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\ in Windows XP, Server 2003 and C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\ in Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Server 2008
%FirefoxProfile% – current Firefox profile directory, e.g. 1ab2cdef.default
Reference: http://godfather.net.ru/software/firefox/search/Installation.aspx
The template you have chosen is invalid or cannot be found.
I lost 3 hours of my life to a stupid collision of template ID’s. Creating a site collection or child web based on one of my custom templates kept failing with the following UI error message
"The template you have chosen is invalid or cannot be found."
The SharePoint logs were less than helpful:
02/15/2009 14:32:22.97 output.exe (0x10CC) 0x1E14 Windows SharePoint Services General 72k2 High Failed to apply template "xxxxxx#0" to web at URL http://xxxxxx/sites/test2, error The template you have chosen is invalid or cannot be found. 0x81071e44
02/15/2009 14:32:22.97 output.exe (0x10CC) 0x1E14 Windows SharePoint Services General 8kh7 High The template you have chosen is invalid or cannot be found.
Solution:
Make sure all of the site definition configurations located in %programfiles%\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\12\TEMPLATE\1033\XML have a unique IDs. Microsoft suggests ID values above 10000 to avoid conflicts with future Microsoft supplied site definitions (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms441616.aspx). Most custom site definitions therefore use 10001 and if two site definitions have the same ID you wind up wasting several hours trying to figure out why it’s not provisioning your site definition.
Unit testing for SharePoint
Typemock are offering their new product for unit testing SharePoint called Isolator For SharePoint, for a special introduction price. it is the only tool that allows you to unit test SharePoint without a SharePoint server. To learn more click here.
The first 50 bloggers who blog this text in their blog and tell us about it, will get a Full Isolator license, Free. for rules and info click here.
Strategy Pattern
Over the next couple of months I hope to cover some of the common software design patterns. I’m going to cover them in the order they are written about in the book Head First Design Patterns.
Motivation
The desire to model varying implementations of the same core behaviour and to decouple this behaviour from the consuming client.
Solution
The Strategy pattern defines a family of behaviours or algorithms. Each type of algorithm is encapsulated in a separate entity. The client can consume different types of algorithm interchangeably.
Edward Wilde 