How to add custom nuget package repository in Visual Studio

Introduction

Most of the .NET developers used nuget packages from Microsoft's nuget package repository which is set as default for the Visual Studios. But sometimes we need to create our own custom nuget packages when we need to manage large applications. Again many .NET developers used nuget packages from third party package repository like MyGet package repository. Recently Microsoft also hosted some of their nuget packages there like .NET Core library, Entity Framework 7 etc in there. So in that case we need to add those package repository at our Visual Studio to use them in our applications. You can configure both file system(local and network) or web repository to get nuget packages. In this tutorial I would like show the process of adding nuget package repository.

Prerequisite

In this tutorial I have used Visual Studio 2015 and Nuget Package Manager to show the process. But the steps should be same for other Visual Studios also.

Steps

1. Go to Tools>Nuget Package Manager>Package Manager Settings. This will open the option window for the visual studio.
   
2. From the option window expand Nuget Package Manager option and select Package Sources. This will option will show the available package sources form where Visual Studio will get the nuget packages. Click the Add button "+".

Casting or Parsing a variable in generic type member variable in C#

Microsoft .Net already has a bunch of great string conversion routines you can use! A TypeConverter can do most of the heavy lifting for you. Then you don't have to worry providing your own parsing implementations for built-in types. Note that there are locale-aware versions of the APIs on TypeConverter that could be used if you need to handle parsing values expressed in different cultures. The following code will parse values using the default culture:

public object Convert(string member, string value)
{
    Type type = typeof(T).GetProperty(member).PropertyType;
    var converter = TypeDescriptor.GetConverter(type);
    return converter.ConvertFromString(value);
}

The best way to compare two objects by value in C#

To compare to object by value we can use the following code snippet.

private static bool CompareValue(object o1, object o2)
{
    return o1.GetType() == o2.GetType() && Object.Equals(o1, o2);
}

This method compare the types of two object and then check their value.

Whats New in ASP.NET and Web Tools for Visual Studio 2013

Microsoft recently released the new version of Visual Studio 2013 and web tools. Here are the summary of the new features for the web developers in Visual Studio 2013.

• New release focuses on One ASP.NET, which steps toward to unifying the ASP.NET technologies so core features can and web tools work the same  across the platforms (e.g. adding ASP.NET MVC controllers to a Web Forms application).
• Enhance Authentication and Identity feature.
• New version of ASP.NET, which includes ASP.NET MVC 5, Web API 2, Razor 3, Entity Framework 6 and SignalR 2.0
• New Browser link feature that lets you to connect multiple browsers to Visual Studio and refresh them all by clicking a button in the toolbar.
• New core features include new templates based on Bootstrap, a new scaffolding system.
• Awesome editor for web tools, including HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript,  jQuery, AngularJS, Ember, LESS, CofeeScript etc.
• New Project Readme.html page.
• New and enhance Web publish features like easily automate Web.config file encryption, automate taking an application offline during deployment.
• Visual Studio 2013 released with a new NuGet 2.7 for package management.

SPDY: Let's make the web faster

Introduction

SPDY (Pronounced as "SPeeDY") is an open networking protocol similar to HTTP, with particular goals of reducing web page load latency and improving web security. SPDY achieves reduced latency through compression, multiplexing, and prioritization. 

Background: web protocols and web latency

Today, HTTP and TCP are the protocols of the web. TCP is the generic, reliable transport protocol, providing guaranteed delivery, duplicate suppression, in-order delivery, flow control, congestion avoidance and other transport features. On the other hand, HTTP is the application level protocol providing basic request/response semantics.

Get property value from C# dynamic object by string using reflection

In Generic Class, it is quite common to get the value for a specific property dynamically. C# refection provides ways to get the Property value dynamically. If the IDynamicMetaObjectProvider can provide the dynamic member names, you can get them. See GetMemberNames implementation in the apache licensed ImpromptuInterface (which can be found in nuget), it works for ExpandoObjects and DynamicObjects that implement GetDynamicMemberNames and any other IDynamicMetaObjectProvider who provides a meta object with an implementation of GetDynamicMemberNames without custom testing beyond is IDynamicMetaObjectProvider.

Resolve the Visual Studio 2012 issue after updating or installing Visual Studio 2013

If you have already installed VS2012 and at a later Update to new a Service Pack or Installing VS2013, when you load any project, you may get the following error:

---------------------------
Microsoft Visual Studio
---------------------------
The 'ProviderPackage' package did not load correctly.

The problem may have been caused by a configuration change or by the installation of another extension. You can get more information by examining the file 'C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\ActivityLog.xml'.

Continue to show this error message?
---------------------------
Yes   No   
---------------------------

Change Local Path after download files from Source Control

If you want to change the local path for the working directory of the Team Foundation Server (TFS), you should follow the following steps:

1. Go to File -> Source Control -> Advanced->Workspaces, 
   

Attach a Database File to The SQL Server

You can attach a database file to an instance of SQL Server by using the SQL Server Management Studio tool. For example, if you have existing database files from an old installation of SQL Server, you can attach these files to a new installation or another instance of SQL Server. Likewise, if you want to restore a corrupt database from a backed-up copy, you can attach the backed-up database file.This topic describes how to attach a database in SQL Server 2012 by using SQL Server Management Studio or Transact-SQL. You can use this feature to copy, move, or upgrade a SQL Server database.

Prerequisites 

• When you attach a database, all data files (MDF and NDF files) must be available. If any data file has a different path from when the database was first created or last attached, you must specify the current path of the file.

Add Custom Message to Unit Test Result

If you are using MS test for the Unit test of your code you may need to print some output on the Output window. You can use

System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("Hello World!!!!!");

To output whatever you'd like. It will show up in the full results of the test runner.