Tracking down ScrewTurn Wiki

Back in 2012, the world was shocked by news that ScrewTurn Wiki would not be developed any further.

The universe of .Net-based open-source wikis was small then, and it is even smaller today.

Time to find out what happened to the original STW source code. I tracked down a couple of versions of the original STW3, as well as successors:

• Version 3.0.5.610 by shahab32mohsen (GitHub, 2014)
• Version 3.0.5.629 by ScrewTurn Wiki (Bitbucket, 2012)
• Version 3.0.5.630 by ScrewTurn Wiki (GitHub, 2014)
• Version 3.1.0.0 by MarkZither (GitHub, 2019)
• Version 4.0.5.145 by shahab32mohsen (GitHub, 2013)
• Version 4.0.5.145 by ScrewTurn Wiki (Bitbucket, 2015)
• Version 4.0.5.145 by ScrewTurn Wiki (CodePlex Archive, 2015)
• Version 5.2.0.7 on screwturn.net (binary only, 2016)
• Version 6.0.0.0 by Mikezar (GitHub, 2017)
• Version 6.0.0.0 by Askanio (GitHub, 2018)

Compilation and initial startup showed the following results:

 

Version	.Net Version	VS Version	License	compiled	run test
3.0.5.610	3.5	12 (2013)	GPL V2	VS 2013	ok
3.0.5.629	3.5	11 (2010)	GPL V2	VS 2013	ok
3.0.6.630	4.5	12 (2013)	GPL V2	VS 2013	fails to load sql page provider
3.1.0.0	4.7.2	15 (2017)	GPL V2	VS 2017	fails to load sql provider
4.0.5.145	4.0	11 (2010)	GPL V2	VS 2017 with Azure SDK	ok
6.0.0.0	4.6	14 (2015)	GPL V3	VS 2017 with Azure SDK	ok (run as site)

Comments:

• VS Version is the version of Visual Studio the original code was developed with, while compiled shows the Visual Studio version I used to compile the code.
• Versions 3.0.6.630 and 3.1.0.0 compiled and ran, but did not load the SQL Providers.
• Versions 4 and above reference Azure libraries. Since the Azure SDK from Visual Studio 2010 is not available anymore, I used Visual Studio 2017 with its Azure SDK.
• Version 6 is an ASP.Net MVC application. All previous versions are ASP.Net.
• Version 6 requires ScrewTurn Wiki to run as an IIS site due to lack of application-relative paths in code and markup. All previous versions also run as IIS applications inside an IIS site.

Updating YuJisho: a Unicode CJK Character web dictionary

My online CJK dictionary YuJisho got a facelift again – this time, from ASP.Net MVC3 to the current MVC 5, and from Bootstrap 2 to Bootstrap 4.

I hope this gets rid of the messages in the Google Search Console 😉 :

•  Text too small to read
• Clickable elements too close together
• Viewport not set

There is a little change though: In times of GDPR &co, queries to Wikipedias and Wiktionaries need to invoked by clicking the “Query Wikipedia” button, rather than querying automatically.

click the button “Query Wikipedia”

results in links to various Wikipedias containing an article

If your browser / operating system fails to display certain Chinese characters, there is now a button “Load Glyphs” which tries to load the unsupported characters’ images as .svg from GlyphWiki.

Please check the About page for more information.

Essential NuGet packages for ASP.Net MVC

Here are some useful packages I came across in recent years:

Topic	Package	NuGet	Source
Logging
	log4net	nuget	apache
Error Logger
	elmah.corelibrary	nuget	github
	Elmah.Mvc	nuget	github
	ElmahAppender.log4net	nuget	github
Profiling
	Glimpse	nuget	github
	Glimpse.AspNet	nuget
	Glimpse.Mvc5	nuget
	NHibernate.Glimpse	nuget	github
Minifier, Bundler
	BundleTransformer.Core	nuget	github
	BundleTransformer.Yui	nuget	github
Data Access
	Nhibernate	nuget	github
Identity Management
	NHibernate.AspNet.Identity	nuget	github
Templating
	Handlebars.Net	nuget	github
	RazorEngine	nuget	github
Documents
	EPPlus	nuget	github
	CsvHelper	nuget	github
	PdfSharp	nuget	pdfsharp
	HtmlRenderer.PdfSharp	nuget	github
Other
	DocuVieware Lite HTML5 Document Viewer For ASP.NET		homepage

VS Solution Dependency Visualizer supports .NET Core Project Files

When I tried to analyze an unknown Visual Studio solution in my tool VS Solution Dependency Visualizer, I noticed that the project dependencies were not analyzed correctly. In fact, the dependencies were completely ignored.

A bit of research turned up that the solution in question was partly migrated to .NET Core, and the .csproj project files have a slightly different structure than good old .Net project files.

First, the classic .Net project files use a namespace

<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">

whereas .NET Core project files come without XML namespace, and have the root attribute Sdk:

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">

Also, files are not compiled if they are explicitly contained in the .csproj file, but rather by a rule-based Default Compilation mechanism which decides whether files in or below the project directory are compiled, embedded, or ignored.

For a detailed documentation of .NET Core project files, see MS docs or the dotnet GitHub docs.

The latest version of VS Solution Dependency Visualizer with support for .NET Core projects is available for download here.

BTW: In previous versions of this tool, I tried to register VS Solution Dependency Visualizer as an External Tool in all installed versions of Visual Studio.

However, things change all the time, and VS 2013 was the first version that did not support registration via registry, and with VS 2017 things got even more different, and finally I had to give up.

Instructions on how to add VS Solution Dependency Visualizer as an External Tool in your version of Visual Studio can be found in the readme file that comes with the installer.

Solving SignalR $.connection.HubName is null or undefined

I added support for SignalR to one of the ASP.Net MVC applications I develop, mainly following this Microsoft tutorial.

I was surprised by the fact that you cannot install the SignalR package from the NuGet GUI (in VS 2013 at least), but need to switch to the Package Manager Console and type

install-package Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR

It worked nevertheless.

I also copied the JS initialization code from there

 $(function () { 
    // Declare a proxy to reference the hub. 
    var chat = $.connection.chatHub;
    chat.client.broadcastMessage = function (name, message) { ... };
}

(adjusted, of course, to the hubs defined in my project), only to find that the JavaScript console in Chrome Developer Tools displays the error message

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'client' of undefined
 at HTMLDocument. (38024:10393)
 at fire (jquery-1.12.4.js:3232)
 at Object.fireWith [as resolveWith] (jquery-1.12.4.js:3362)
 at Function.ready (jquery-1.12.4.js:3582)
 at HTMLDocument.completed (jquery-1.12.4.js:3617)

The error is raised by the line

chatHub.client.broadcastMessage = function (name, message) {

with chatHub being undefined.

I stepped through the JavaScript code and found that the (automagically generated) JavaScript file

< script src="@Url.Content("~/signalr/hubs")" >< /script>

defines the hubs correctly, but somehow the hub definitions are lost when the

$(function() {

is being executed.

It turned out to be a question of JavaScript scopes, and I moved the client callback definition out of the jQuery $(function(){}) directly into the

Debugging Ajax’ed JavaScript and jQuery val() calls

I develop a web application which displays data in a read-only form, and loads the edit form upon pressing a button

$(function () {
  $(".btnEdit").click(function () {
    $.ajax({
      url: '@Url.Action("Form", new { id = Model.ID })',
      type: 'post'
    });
  });
});

Now I needed to debug the JavaScript code loaded by the call to $.ajax(), but Chrome does not seem to display the loaded response in its tree of Sources.

An answer on SO provided me with the solution: Simply add the line

//# sourceURL=@Url.Action("Form", new { id = Model.ID })

inside a <script> block in the AJAX-loaded HTML. This will add the requested URL under the (no domain) node

Now that I have access to the source file, I needed to find all invocations of the jQuery val() function, since I was tracking down a wrong value in an <input>.

Again SO provided a solution, which I added to my code

(function($){
  var originalVal = $.fn.val;
  $.fn.val = function(){
    var selectorPath = $(this).parents().map(function () {return this.tagName;}).get().reverse().join("->");
    console.log("val( #" + $(this).attr("id") + " " + selectorPath + " , " + JSON.stringify(arguments) + ")");
    var result =originalVal.apply(this,arguments);
    return result;
  };
})(jQuery);

Now that the calls to val() were logged to the Console, it was easy to find where the wrong value was set.

Adding Dropdown Arrow for Chosen Plugin in Multiselect Mode

I use the jQuery Chosen plugin in a web application, and recently got the request to display a dropdown arrow in multiselect mode.

I found an answer on SO regarding styling of the dropdown arrow, but that covered only singleselect mode. At least a starting point 😉

Within minutes, I had a CSS-only solution for this particular problem:

<style type="text/css">
.chosen-container-multi.chosen-container .chosen-choices::after {
    background: url(@Url.Content("~/Content/chosen-sprite.png")) no-repeat 3px 4px;
    width: 16px;
    height: 100%;
    content: " ";
    position: absolute;
    right: 0;
    background-color: lightgray;
}
</style>

(Note that this is an ASP.Net MVC application, and @Url.Content() computes the URL relative to application root.)

Only after I solved this, I found that there is a closed (and unresolved) issue on github from 2011, with comments up to 2016, but no solution to a valid feature request…

Emoticon Selection in ASP.Net MVC

I had to implement a good/bad/neutral selection UI in an ASP.Net MVC application.

This simple task turned out to be rather cumbersome, given different browsers implementing different things differently, and the MVC framework restricting access to generated markup.

I first thought about a DropDownList (i.e.) rendering a set of emoji, only to find

• you cannot pass a C# emoji as SelectListItem.Text

new SelectListItem {Text = "\u1F60A" }

• you cannot add the emoji HTML entity 😊 astext (at least not in Chrome)
• you cannot add a @class parameter to SelectListItem
• you cannot add a background-image:url() definition to an
• you cannot add HTML tags inside an(
  except for Firefox

  )

However, I found code to overcome the limitations of SelectListItem, either by copying and extending code from the MS MVC framework, or by XML manipulation of the built-in HTML generator.

Maybe the dropdown list was just the wrong path to follow, so I searched for ways to style radiobuttons, and found this nice demo on codepen.

I modified the demo to fit my needs, and voilà, here’s my first codepen:

A radiobutton-based emoji selector

Update: Apparently, IE does not render an <img> inside a <label> clickable, unless you specify pointer-events: none.

Problems using anti-forgery token

ASP.Net MVC provides an anti-forgery mechanism using the methods @Html.AntiForgeryToken() and the [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] attribute.

I developed a web application using this mechanism for login, as the MVC template automatically provides this code. It worked fine using Chrome, but when I tried out the application in Internet Explorer, a couple of errors occurred relating to it:

Anti-forgery token is meant for user “” but the current user is “username”

The provided anti-forgery token was meant for a different claims-based user

The different answers on SO and various blogs offered no solution:

• setting AntiForgeryConfig.SuppressIdentityHeuristicChecks to true
• exchanging the anti-forgery token
• changing AntiForgeryConfig.UniqueClaimTypeIdentifier

The solution that finally worked destroys the current ASP.Net session and signs out if the user is currently logged in:

[AllowAnonymous]
public ActionResult Login(string returnUrl)
{
  Session.Abandon();
  if (AuthenticationManager.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated)
    AuthenticationManager.SignOut();
  ViewBag.ReturnUrl = returnUrl;
  return View();
}

Viewing ELMAH Logs of multiple applications

I recently added ELMAH and ELMAH.Mvc to a couple of web applications, and configured them to log into the same MSSQL database.

The table ELMAH_Error distinguishes the source of error in the columns Host (storing the host name of the web application) and Application (storing the IIS Configuration Path of the web application, for explanations see e.g. here).

By default, the /elmah handler only displays the error messages of the current application.

However, I wanted to see the errors of all ELMAH-enabled applications.

After some research into the C# code and the MSSQL database, the solution is surprisingly simply:

• Create a new database, e.g. “elmah-read”
• Create synonyms to the original table and the logging SP (we won’t really need this SP)

CREATE SYNONYM ELMAH_Error FOR Elmah.dbo.ELMAH_Error 
GO

CREATE SYNONYM ELMAH_LogError FOR Elmah.dbo.ELMAH_LogError 
GO

• Copy the stored procedure [dbo].[ELMAH_GetErrorXml] and remove the @Application from the WHERE clause

WHERE [ErrorId] = @ErrorId
 --AND [Application] = @Application

• Copy the stored procedure [dbo].[ELMAH_GetErrorsXml], removing the @Application from the WHERE clauses, and extending the selected [host] column

 SELECT 
  errorId = [ErrorId], 
  application = [Application],
  host = [Host] + ' ' + 
    RIGHT( [Application], CHARINDEX( '/', REVERSE( [Application] ) + '/' ) - 1 ),

• Create an empty ASP.Net Web Application in VS, add Elmah Core Library and Elmah.Mvc from NuGet, and configure the connection string as in the original web applications
• To allow remote access to the log viewer, add in web.config:

<elmah>
      <security allowRemoteAccess="true"/>
</elmah>

• Don’t forget to properly configure the Authentication feature of the log viewer application in IIS
• Run