5 posts tagged “automation”

Easier Svn Version Tasks

Nov 20, 2009
Post a comment

Suppose you don't want to modify any of your projects in your solution. Create a new msbuild.proj file and run msbuild on this with your configuration. Instantly you have all your assembly info files updated for any project in a directory.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003" DefaultTargets="build">
<Import Project="$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />
<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\SvnTools.Targets\SvnTools.Tasks.VersionManagement.Tasks" />
<Target Name="build">
<CreateItem Include="/Properties/AssemblyInfo.cs;/AssemblyInfo.cs">
<Output TaskParameter="Include" ItemName="AssemblyInfoFiles" />
</CreateItem>
<UpdateVersion AssemblyInfoFiles="@(AssemblyInfoFiles)" />
<MSBuild Projects="MySolution.sln" Properties="Configuration=Debug" />
<RevertVersionChange AssemblyInfoFiles="@(AssemblyInfoFiles)" />
</Target>
</Project>

http://svnversiontasks.codeplex.com

Automating your certificate installation

Apr 28, 2009
Post a comment

When was the last time you decided you needed to deploy a product of yours. How often is it that you run into a situation where configuration and the manual to installation of your projects becomes a royal pain in the neck? Well, for most, maybe not all that often, but for the few in the corporate world - this may happen all too often.

It's nice having ClickOnce features to do a lot of the work for us. But unfortunately ClickOnce can't handle all the nitty gritty components we would like it to.

Tool Number 1: Automated Installation of Certificates into the Certificate Store

You can use the CertMgr.exe to automate the use of importing certificates into a certificate store. The CertMgr comes with the .NET Framework SDK Tools and is typically located in %ProgramFiles% \Microsoft SDKs\ Windows\ v6.0A\bin\certmgr.exe. Executing the following will import a certificate into the localmachine personal certificate store.

certmgr /add MyCertificate.pfx /r LocalMachine /s My -all

certmgr /del /n "My CertSubject Name" /r LocalMachine /s My -c

This makes it especially useful when you are working with services that require use of certificates. Believe it's a pain :/

Unfortunately, this method will not work for certificates that are password protected. For that, you can write up a little C# program that will take care of those password protected situations.

using System;
using System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates;

namespace AddCert
{
   class Program
   {
   static void Main(string[] args)
   {
   if (args.Length != 7 && args.Length != 5)
   Console.WriteLine("Usage: addcert cert.pfx /r LocalMachine /s My /pass mypass");

   string path = args[0];
   StoreLocation sl = (StoreLocation)Enum.Parse(typeof(StoreLocation), args[2]);
   StoreName sn = (StoreName)Enum.Parse(typeof(StoreName), args[4]);

   X509Store store = new X509Store(sn, sl);
   store.Open(OpenFlags.ReadWrite);
   if (args.Length == 5)
   store.Add(new X509Certificate2(path));
   else if (args.Length == 7)
   store.Add(new X509Certificate2(path, args[6]));
   store.Close();
   }
   }
}

To use that, you can simply compile to the exe, and run that from a batch file like anything else you can do.

Enjoy :)

Leveraging Post Builds to do your bidding

Apr 28, 2009
Post a comment

Every now and then it's always nice to have a little system of automation to ease your way into deployment, packaging and all sorts of interesting things. To do so, all you have to do is dance dance! :D

Just kidding, but seriously, let's take a few looks at how you can automate those visual studio projects of yours.

Lesson 1: Post Build Packaging

In every single project in your solution you can add post and pre-build events. What are these? Whenever you do a CTRL+SHIFT+B you are doing a build. When the C# Compiler (CSC) and Visual Studio come to your project, pre-build events will fire off before it starts to compile it, after it compiles it to the executing folder the post-build events will fire.

You can setup your post-build events to occur on every successful build or to just when the build updates the output.

You can run anything that the command prompt can run here. Some useful things I've done up to the latest projects I've been working on include:

Copying the target directory to a deployment folder: copy "$(TargetDir)" "$(SolutionDir)Deployment\"
Copying the target path to the deployment folder: copy "$(TargetPath)" $(SolutionDir)Deployment\"

Running a script to cleanup the leftovers:
Within a bat file you can select all the directories within a directory where the given name appears:

FOR /F "tokens=*" %%G IN ('DIR /B /AD /S bin') DO RMDIR /S /Q "%%G" FOR /F "tokens=*" %%G IN ('DIR /B /AD /S obj') DO RMDIR /S /Q "%%G"

Running a script to stop a service, uninstall it and then re-install it, and finally start it.
net stop MyServiceName
installutil -u Location\To\MyService.exe
installutil Location\To\MyService.exe
net start MyServiceName

The nicer part of build events are the macros that are available. Click edit Post-build (or pre-build), then select macros on the dialog. You can then use those for those forementioned scenarios I listed. As long as the things you want to leverage from the command line are on the Path then you can execute them as needed. If they're not, well then you can always just add them in a script file :)

Meeko Analytics - Network Monitoring

Aug 13, 2008
Post a comment

Network monitoring is a pain in the neck. The major reason this is that way is party because it is a manual job for the most part. Writing scripts to automate, log and track information. But on the other hand, if we were to have a simple tool that shows the most important alerts front and center with a nice user interface - it is possible that network monitoring could be easier. Like this:

Here we can create an alert system on the right (always visible and automatically updating) and on the left hand side we can create column views. As an alternative to this, I was thinking of a canvas like area that we can zoom in and out of for context.

Here you can represent the monitoring objects of interest by icons and should there be any issues you add error, critical or warning icons to show that there is an issue. We could create different types of icons to represent things like servers, server applications, websites, clients, network routers, printers, fax machines and more. Best of all, we can maintain this is a small space since we are only displaying the most important information first.

Custom Ajax Test Automation

Feb 6, 2007
Post a comment

Dr. James McCaffrey has a very nice way to perform testing automation on Custom Ajax driven websites. The testing automation works really simply since everything is executed and logged via client-side javascript code.

The popularity of Web applications that use AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) technology has increased steadily over the past year. When written correctly, AJAX can yield significant improvements in performance and user experience compared with non-AJAX Web applications. However, because AJAX Web applications work asynchronously, traditional synchronous test automation techniques generally don't work. In this month's column, I present a technique that allows you to write lightweight test automation to verify the functionality of AJAX Web applications.
More after the jump.