PDC 09 Session 2

Session 2 was right after lunch and was only okay, very abstract as none of it was really real yet. Still some interesting stuff that we will be able to do.

- Session 2: Microsoft ASP.NET Futures with Jonathan Carter and Scott Hunter
- DTA
- SEO stuff in .NET 4
- oooo scheduling in future version of ASP.NET
- what is routing? something related to SEO
- ASP is trying to get Common activities into one line of code (resize an image, scheduling, etc.)
- image maipulation.
- File upload with progress (not a poor man's progress)
- my class in VB.NET? Research
- Good idea, I have way too many apps that need something done every x mins that I do the poor man's way.
- Maybe the guy last time wasn't so short maybe that table is really tall.
- oh Routing I get it. This could be good for events.
- SmartyRoute check for the last "directory" on disk (foo/bar search for bar) if it does not exist goto the next one (foo) and if that exists pass the first one (bar) to the page that exists
- would remove extensions. This would be good for Sitecore.
- Demo fail....
- All this stuff is planned for the future too bad not now
- ASP is looking into implementing HTML5 items into the ASP standard (I think that was vague)
- losing focus.
- hehe the Microsoft guy is using firefox instead of scourge of the software world (IE)
- Microsoft has a cool zoom tool for presentations
- Everyone with a laptop out is surfing the internet
- Velocity - distributed cache platform.
- save anything you want I think got distracted
- works for webfarms one cache for all web servers
- meh
- css sprites and minification
- minimizing http requests for the lifecycle of the page
- sprites put everything in one file so the kbs don't change but the number of requests goes down.
- I really want to work at microsoft now. This shit looks facinating.
- definatly not ready yet, but a really cool idea. All images are done via CSS, slick as all hell.
- Everything will be controled by convention (folders in the correct place and different names etc.
- Active Record - use this as a prototype before creating DB
- neat this will create a database for you as well. With forgein keys and pks
- wow, that's neat, Active record does all the heavy lifting for your DBs
- These view things look pretty neat too.
- Okay you're done now, move on.
- easier, that is good cause web programmers don't get enough flak for not being real programmers :P

PDC 09 Session 1

My Notes from the first session at PDC 09. I hope to take some notes in every session so that I can continually update here.

- Sat next to a guy constantly tweeting during the keynote. I would have unfollowed him.
- Good keynote, lots of interesting stuff about VS and Windows Azure.
- Stumbled (read: limped) into the wrong session now learning about: "Software + Services Identity Roadmap Update" instead of "Future Directions for C# and Visual Basic"
- I should research STS for single sign on with all our web apps
- The head guy for MS Dynamics is about to speak (Andrew Bybee)
- Claims Authentication, interesting idea. Similar to the idea on certs. Trusted providers authenticate "claims"
- Working in Dynamics working inside outlook as well.
- There is a moth in here, California is awesome
- Spiderman quote, Andrew is a cool guy
- Sharepoint Developer now to talk about claims. Shortest person ever (Venky Veeranghavan)
- Multiple hops to different servers, you lose auth after the first hop. Claims fixes this.
- mmm slow internet
- I want to code all the time, I love coding mmm coding.
- Empty room, really neat talk though crapy abstract
- Quest software guy talking now. (Dmitry Sotnikov)
- Lots of demos.
- This is a cool technology, solves a lot of our single sign on problems.
- Quest software has a cool domain backup thing.
- Looks like you can use this with Google and Yahoo IDs as well as AD and .NET
- .NET ACS
- OpenID - used by Google, Yahoo and Soon LIVE
- Information Card system
- (Gert Drapers) Claims guy
- Relationship information for each "party" inside of AD
- use AD to get information (BRILLIANT!)
- neat, AD could be super powerful, with this claims stuff.

The Code is Killing Me

And now I want it to kill you... Okay I don't want it to kill you.

This is a neat bit of code, I had to create a new local user in Windows XP. Then I had to change two things, I had to add it to the administrator's group and flag it so that the user's password never expires. As you may or may not know the local users and computers on Windows XP is very similar to Active Directory (I still owe you the Authenticate through AD post). However, there are enough differences that all the AD code I found was just the vaguest of hints as to what I needed to do.

You obviously have to use this in Windows form mode. I'll post a screen shot of the form and then the code.


Sorry I've forgotten all the sites and searches I did.

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Now for the Code

The formatting (I hope) will be okay. However I don't think you'll be getting colours. If anyone reads this and knows of a program I can use to convert code to html with formatting and colours I would love an e-mail.

Form

Code Behind

namespace AddLocalUser
{
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
}

private void BtnOK_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (TxtUserName.Text.Length > 0 && TxtPassword.Text.Length > 0)
{
if (TxtPassword.Text.Equals(TxtConfirmPassword.Text))
{
try
{
DirectoryEntry AD = new DirectoryEntry("WinNT://" + Environment.MachineName +_ ",computer");
DirectoryEntry NewUser = AD.Children.Add(TxtUserName.Text, "user");
NewUser.Invoke("SetPassword", new object[] { TxtPassword.Text });
NewUser.Invoke("Put", new object[] { "Description", "Computer owner" });

//Insert the User.
NewUser.CommitChanges();
//Now change the "UserFlags" so that the password never expires
int iUserAccountControl = (int)ADS_USER_FLAG.ADS_UF_DONT_EXPIRE_PASSWD;
NewUser.Properties["UserFlags"].Value = iUserAccountControl;
NewUser.CommitChanges();
DirectoryEntry grp;

grp = AD.Children.Find("Administrators", "group");
if (grp != null) { grp.Invoke("Add", new object[] { NewUser.Path.ToString() }); }

}
catch(Exception ex)
{
MessageBox.Show("Error: " + ex.Message);
}
}
else
{
LblMessage.Visible = true;
LblMessage.Text = "The Password fields must match";
LblMessage.ForeColor = System.Drawing.Color.Red;
}
}
else
{
LblMessage.Visible = true;
LblMessage.Text = "All fields must be filled out";
LblMessage.ForeColor = System.Drawing.Color.Red;
}
}

(BAH Sorry about the formatting I tried really hard..okay sorta hard)

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Explanation

This is an easy bit of code to write. I'll go through it real quick.

DirectoryEntry AD = new DirectoryEntry("WinNT://" + Environment.MachineName +_ ",computer");
DirectoryEntry NewUser = AD.Children.Add(TxtUserName.Text, "user");
NewUser.Invoke("SetPassword", new object[] { TxtPassword.Text });
NewUser.Invoke("Put", new object[] { "Description", "Computer owner" });

//Insert the User.
NewUser.CommitChanges();

This bit is pretty similar (If I'm not mistaken) to the AD version of adding a user. The big difference is using "Environment.MachineName" instead of using your AD server address.

Two DirectoryEntries are used, one for the Directory on your computer. One for the user that you are adding. The CommitChanges() slaps it into the local directory.

//Now change the "UserFlags" so that the password never expires
int iUserAccountControl = (int)ADS_USER_FLAG.ADS_UF_DONT_EXPIRE_PASSWD;
NewUser.Properties["UserFlags"].Value = iUserAccountControl;
NewUser.CommitChanges();
DirectoryEntry grp;

grp = AD.Children.Find("Administrators", "group");
if (grp != null) { grp.Invoke("Add", new object[] { NewUser.Path.ToString() }); }

This is the more interesting part. This changes the user options that we wanted to change. The ADS_USER_FLAG is obtained by referencing ActiveDS, and then of course adding "using ActiveDs;" to the top of your form code.

Your NewUser Directory entry is used again here. Change the .Property["UserFlags"] to the UserControl int you declare above. Here is a big change from AD code, in Active Directory you would use NewUser.Properties[attribute name]. Here we are changing the UserFlags instead.

After that we create a new Directory entry that will represent the group we want to add the user to. "Find" the group we are looking for (Administrators) and then check to see if that group came back to our object correctly. If it did, simply invoke the add function from AD and point it at the path of our NewUser DirectoryEntry.

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WOW I hope that made sense, I did not enjoy writing that i must say. I will try to edit it before I post but my brain may liquefy before I finish that.

Have fun Everyone

This comes in in all sizes