TIL - Format Guids to string in C#

Too long to explain, oh yes, it was SharePoint related, but I learnt today about various options for formatting Guids available in the framework:

Shameless copy and paste from this page.

Specifier	Format of return value
N	32 digits: 00000000000000000000000000000000
D	32 digits separated by hyphens: 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
B	32 digits separated by hyphens, enclosed in braces: {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}
P	32 digits separated by hyphens, enclosed in parentheses: (00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000)
X	Four hexadecimal values enclosed in braces, where the fourth value is a subset of eight hexadecimal values that is also enclosed in braces: {0x00000000,0x0000,0x0000,{0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00}}

So crmRecord.Id.ToString("N").ToUpperInvariant() results in : "7AD6FAB54528E411940D005056BC69C8"

TIL - Set EventId when Logging to the Event Log with Log4net

I used to be a fan of the Enterprise Library, but lately I've found myself using Log4net instead, which is not bad.

We wanted to log fatal errors to the event log, which can be easily done by configuring a trace listener, however we also wanted control over the event id displayed in the event log to allow meaningful monitoring

Turns out it's pretty simple:

log4net.ThreadContext.Properties["EventID"] = 1337;log.ErrorFormat("Elite Exception: {0}.",  ex); 

TIL - Create Scheduled Tasks with parameters using schtasks

Today I had to create a couple of schedule task to run this application I wrote, the problem was that when I did this:

schtasks /create /sc daily /tn "Application" /TR "'c:\Program Files (x86)\Application\Application.exe -t'" /ST 00:30:00 /RU user /RP password 

It created a task but then when it started, it would not actually run nor stop, so after a bit of googling and a few tries i came up with this

schtasks /create /sc daily /tn "Application" /TR "'c:\Program Files (x86)\Application\Application.exe' -t" /ST 00:30:00 /RU user /RP password 

Note how the command, in bold, is surrounded by single quotes and the whole, i.e. command and parameters is surrounded by double quotes, so this will run Application.exe with parameter -t @ 00:30 everyday

Hope it helps.

Remove Users from group in SharePoint 2013 from Client Object model.

This is the method that we use to remove users from groups in Sharepoint 2013

It's a bit more convoluted than it needs to be as for some reason Sharepoint 2013 appends the claim provider to the username, which means that rather than having:

 dev\duser1  

we have something like:

i:0#.w|dev\duser1  

so in order to ensure that the it will always find the relevant user, we do the extra call to ResolvePrincipal.

using Microsoft.SharePoint.Client;
using Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Utilities;

     public bool RemoveUser(string url, string groupName, string userName)  
     {  
       using (ClientContext context = new ClientContext(url))  
       {  
         var principal = Utility.ResolvePrincipal(context, context.Web, userName, PrincipalType.User,  
           PrincipalSource.All, context.Web.SiteUsers, false);  
         context.ExecuteQuery();  
         if (principal.Value != null)  
         {  
           string login = principal.Value.LoginName;  
           GroupCollection siteGroups = context.Web.SiteGroups;  
           Group group = siteGroups.GetByName(groupName);  
           var query = context.LoadQuery(group.Users.Where(usr => usr.LoginName == login).Include(u => u.LoginName));  
           context.ExecuteQuery();  
           User user = query.SingleOrDefault();  
           if (user != null)  
           {  
             group.Users.RemoveByLoginName(user.LoginName);  
             context.ExecuteQuery();  
           }
           return true;               
         }  
       }  
       return false;  
     }  

Product Versions in MSI installers created with WIX - part 2

In a previous post I described how to change the version of MSI installers created with WiX.

This post discusses a way of linking the version number of an assembly (library, dll, executable) to the product version.

This is more suited to a library/framework, where you want to ensure that the product version is the same as the library/framework.

1. On the library project, edit the AssemblyInfo.cs file:

Remove these two lines:

[assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.0.0")]
[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion("1.0.0.0")]

2. Create a new File called VersionInfo.cs on the Properties folder.

Contents of file should be:

[assembly: System.Reflection.AssemblyVersion("0.0.0.*")]

3. Edit the project file (you'll need to unload the project if you want to do it from Visual Studio) and at the end, you'll find a commented out section. Get rid of it (everything between <!-- -->) and add the following:

<Target Name="BeforeBuild"> < <WriteLinesToFile Condition=" '$(Version)' != '' " File="Properties\VersionInfo.cs" Overwrite="True" Lines="[assembly: System.Reflection.AssemblyVersion(&quot;$(Version)&quot;)] // Auto-generated by build process" /> </ </Target>

4. On the product.wxs file on your WiX project, just add the following:

<Product Id="12c0deff-c0de-c0de-c0de-123f422c0dea" Name="Name" Language="1033" Version ="!(bind.FileVersion.filAB3D3C60ED5901936249D5C56B6C90A6)" Manufacturer="ManyRootsofallevil" UpgradeCode="fafffaff-c0de-c0de-c0de-123f422c0dea">

Where filAB3D3C60ED5901936249D5C56B6C90A6 is the id of your library file

5. Finally, add the following to the wix project. Make sure this is on the initial PropertyGroup Element:

<Version Condition=" '$(Version)' == ''">0.0.0.1</Version>

You can now build this using:

msbuild solution.sln /p:Version=1.3.3.7