In this example I setup a directory to host my application (I will get to what files and how later) I placed these files in the ‘/srv/http/mysite’ folder.

1. Install mono, lighttpd and fcgi on the box

pacman -Sy
pacman -S mono lighttpd fcgi

2. Setup lighttpd to use FastCGI edit the ‘/etc/lighttpd.conf’ file and modify this line;

server.document-root    = "/srv/http/mysite"

3. Add this line to the end of your ‘/etc/lighttpd.conf’ file;

include "fastcgi.conf"

4. Put this into your ‘/etc/lighttpd/fastcgi.conf’ file;

include "mono.conf"
server.modules += ( "mod_fastcgi" )
fastcgi.server = (
        "" => ((
                "socket" => mono_shared_dir + "fastcgi-mono-server4",
                "bin-path" => mono_fastcgi_server,
                "bin-environment" => (
                        "PATH" => "/bin:/usr/bin:" + mono_dir + "bin",
                        "LD_LIBRARY_PATH" => mono_dir + "lib:",
                        "MONO_SHARED_DIR" => mono_shared_dir,
                        "MONO_FCGI_LOGLEVELS" => "Standard",
                        "MONO_FCGI_LOGFILE" => mono_shared_dir + "fastcgi.log",
                        "MONO_FCGI_ROOT" => mono_fcgi_root,
                        "MONO_FCGI_APPLICATIONS" => mono_fcgi_applications
                ),
                "max-procs" => 1,
                "check-local" => "disable"
        ))
)

5. Put this in your ‘/etc/lighttpd/mono.conf’ file;

index-file.names += ( "index.aspx", "default.aspx", "Default.aspx" )
var.mono_dir = "/usr/"
var.mono_shared_dir = "/tmp/"
var.mono_fastcgi_server = mono_dir + "bin/" + "fastcgi-mono-server4"

### The root of your applications
# For apps installed under the lighttpd document root, use:
var.mono_fcgi_root = server.document-root

### Application map
# A comma separated list of virtual directory and real directory
# for all the applications we want to manage with this server. The
# virtual and real dirs. are separated by  a  colon.
var.mono_fcgi_applications = "/:."

Make sure you didn’t fat monkey up the conf files by doing this;

$ lighttpd -t -f /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

Should return a “OK”

Now go into your ASP.NET MVC app and setup the references to be “Copy Local” True on these assemblies (if you don’t have the assembly reference by the project add it, you might need to look in “Assemblies -> Extensions” to find some of these) ;

System.Web.Helpers.dll
System.Web.Helpers.xml
System.Web.Mvc.dll
System.Web.Mvc.xml
System.Web.Razor.dll
System.Web.Razor.xml
System.Web.WebPages.Deployment.dll
System.Web.WebPages.Deployment.xml
System.Web.WebPages.dll
System.Web.WebPages.Razor.dll
System.Web.WebPages.Razor.xml
System.Web.WebPages.xml

Make sure you DO NOT have the Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.dll file, it doens’t work with Mono and causes errors.

Now just publish your project to a folder somewhere, then go into that folder and get the entire contents to the ‘/srv/http/mysite’ folder. Sure you can setup FTP and all that fanciness but I just use WinSCP and copy directly from my publish folder into the ‘/srv/http/mysite’ folder.

Now start lighttpd on the box and you should have the joy of ASP.NET MVC 3.

Enjoy!

References;

So searching around and I found how to delete it; Change the owner the admin, change the acl’s, then use rmdir from cmd line.

Like so (to whack folder “D:\delete_damnit”);

• Right-click on folder -> Properties -> Security Tab
• Click on Advanced button -> Owner tab
• Edit.. button
• Select Administrators in ‘Change owner to’, check ‘replace owner on subcontainers and objects’
• Open cmd.exe as administrator
• Run ‘cacls D:\delete_damnit /T /e /g Administrators:f’
• Run ‘rmdir /S D:delete_damnit’

Enjoy!

Well getting minidlna setup on Arch via Yaourt is super simple, just a “yauurt -S minidlna” and boom installed. Yay for just works! yay!

So onto getting the Blu-Ray player hooked up to stream pictures, music and video from the dlna server, should be easy enough to get a dlna certified player and, ah, it just happen, right? Pffft.

Off to NFM to pick up a Sony BDP-S470 seems they have it on sale for around $125 and from the manufacturer site it has evertyhing and then some.

I set it up and sure it sees the dlna server, plays the pictures and the music but does not see any movies – no avi, mkv, wmv – nothing. Grrrr. I Make sure the dlna server is working by playing movies via the Xbox 360; works fine indeed.

So return that player and then pick up the Panasonic DMP-BD65, heck its on sale for around $90 and from my cursory search on the net it is dlna certified.

Get it home, hook it up. Humm. Where is the dlna part? Look around the web and find out that the dlna part is only for the European market; not available in the US models. Good grief.

Then off to pick up the LG BD-570 its the most expensive one in my adventure, around $165, but it seems to have Wifi built in and it does have the dlna sticker on the box.

Get it home, hook it up. Endure looks from the wife that I am losing my mind and working on becoming some sort of Blu-Ray exporter. Aha! Eureka right off the bat it sees my dlna server and, wait for it …. Yes! it plays the movies, pictures and music just fine.

Sure the WiFi part stutters a bit playing back some 1080p video (Big Buck Bunny ftw!) but connected on the wired it seems to be excellent in both video and audio.

After some more checking the NetFlix and Vudu works as well. Woot!

Enjoy!

An example of the page in the search database;
www.dvdcrate.com/viewdvd.aspx?upc=5027035006161

And I need it to go to the new MVC controller and action like this;
www.dvdcrate.com/Media/Detail/5027035006161

So I did it this way, I put this in the Global.aspx.cs file;

        protected void Application_BeginRequest (object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            var requestUrl = Request.Url.ToString().ToLower();
            if (requestUrl.Contains("/viewdvd.aspx"))
            {
                var equalPos = requestUrl.LastIndexOf("=") + 1;
                var upc= requestUrl.Substring(equalPos, requestUrl.Length - equalPos);
                Context.Response.StatusCode = 301;
                Context.Response.Redirect("/Media/Detail/" + upc);
            }
       }

Probably not the most elegant, but it does work.

Enjoy!

Download the themeswitcher.js and save it locally wherever you like.

Now add the “cookieName” below this to the options defition in the file;

    var options = jQuery.extend({
        loadTheme: null,
        initialText: 'Switch Theme',
        width: 150,
        height: 200,
        buttonPreText: 'Theme: ',
        closeOnSelect: true,
        buttonHeight: 14,
        cookieName: 'jquery-ui-theme',
        cookieExpires: 365,
        onOpen: function () { },
        onClose: function () { },
        onSelect: function () { }
    }, settings);

Now modify where the cookie gets made to use this new “cookieExpires” option (line 49);

        $.cookie(options.cookieName, themeName, { expires: options.cookieExpires });

Know you can either use the default set here (365) or set your own in the initializer in your calling script;

    $('#switcher').themeswitcher({ cookieExpires: 365, path: '/', loadTheme: "Sunny"});

Enjoy!

Put this into the web.config;

Now put this into your global.asax, up top (before all the other routing) is best;

            routes.IgnoreRoute("admin/elmah.axd");
            routes.IgnoreRoute("admin/{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");

You don’t have have any controller action setup, the handler builds this on the fly to handle the incomding axd request. Nice and simple.

Enjoy!

So the problem is I wanted to take the View Model and update the ORM model with the modified values from the post, kind of a reverse AutoMapper (or BLToolkit.Mapper).

So a ORM class like this;

    public class Contact
    {
         public int Id { get; set; }
         public string Firstname { get; set; }
         public string Lastname { get; set; }
         // Loads of other properties
    }

And a View Model like this (note the type and name should be “EXACTLY” the same;

    public class ContactModel
    {
         public int Id { get; set; }
         public string Firstname { get; set; }
         public string Lastname { get; set; }
    }

Then with this generic Extension method;

        public static void MergeWith(this T1 primary, T2 secondary)
        {
            foreach (var pi in typeof(T2).GetProperties())
            {
                var tpi = typeof(T1).GetProperties().Where(x => x.Name == pi.Name).FirstOrDefault();
                if (tpi == null)
                {
                    continue;
                }
                var priValue = tpi.GetGetMethod().Invoke(primary, null);
                var secValue = pi.GetGetMethod().Invoke(secondary, null);
                if (priValue == null || !priValue.Equals(secValue))
                {
                    tpi.GetSetMethod().Invoke(primary, new object[] { secValue });
                }
            }
        }

So you make the magic in the Controller (for example) like this;

[Authorize]
[HttpPost]
[ValidateAntiForgeryToken]
[ValidateInput(false)]
public ActionResult EditContact(ContactModel model)
    Contact c = Repo.Get<Contact,long>(model.Id);
    c.MergeWith<Contact,ContactModel>(model);
    Repo.Update<Contact>(c);
}

Yea its cheesy, but it works for me

Enjoy!

To my surprise once you setup your user account to have at least the “Editor” role in WordPress  and then you enable the “XML-RPC” Remote Publishing option – your done.

Super nice. Got to say that so far WordPress is an extremely polished project, there aren’t many open source projects on the same finish. The plug-in architecture and operation is something other projects should envy.

Enjoy!

I personally don’t like getting 80-100 emails a day from those damn Payday Loan losers, I guess the BlogEngine.NET folks like that sort of stuff.

At any rate I figured WordPress should have lots of plugins for me to mess with and getting Live Writer integrated should be rather simple.

If your looking for some old posts, the search engine on WordPress is pretty good; most likely the page your looking for got moved around. I need to clean up the tags and slugs and all that bloggy stuff; perhaps tomorrow – perhaps.

Enjoy!

But of course then I tried it; Using VS210 (10.0.30319.1 RTMRel) and ASP.NET MVC 2 I get this lovely error once I get past the setup.aspx page;

The view at '~/Views/Home/Index.aspx' must derive from ViewPage, ViewPage, ViewUserControl, or ViewUserControl.

Humm I figure its something I am doing so I go out and get my Google fu on, I find its a common problem with VS2010 + ASP.NET MVC + Win7 64 Bit. Ah Joy.

So download the VS2008 template, using VS2008, run through the setup.aspx and viola it works like a charm. No funky errors with the template and the redirect they are doing.

Thought I would share as I was kinda sad to see that a VS2010 bug with ASP.NET MVC persisted past QA. So sad.

Enjoy!