Blog

Posts written in August 2011.

  • For a news site I am currently working on, I needed to display the last time a news article was last published. I wanted to be able to show the duration based on respective major time format. For example, if an article was displayed a couple hours ago, I would want it to to display “2 hours” not “120 minutes”.

    More importantly, if an article hadn’t been published to the site more than a week, I don’t want the exact time duration to be displayed. I would prefer the following message: “more than a week ago”. This way, if the site administrator gets really lazy the website viewer will not know the exact time period the site was last updated.

    Code:

    public class TimePassed
    {
        public static string GetPassedTime(DateTime since)
        {
            TimeSpan ts = DateTime.Now.Subtract(since);
    
            if (ts.Days <= 7)
            {
                switch (ts.Days)
                {
                    case 0:
                        switch (ts.Hours)
                        {
                            case 0:
                                switch (ts.Minutes)
                                {
                                    case 0:
                                        return String.Format("{0} seconds ago", ts.Seconds);
                                    case 1:
                                        return "1 minute ago";
                                    default:
                                        return String.Format("{0} minutes ago", ts.Minutes);
                                }
                            case 1:
                                return "1 hour ago";
                            default:
                                return String.Format("{0} hours ago", ts.Hours);
                        }
                    case 1:
                        return "yesterday";
                    default:
                        return String.Format("{0} days ago", ts.Days);
                }
            }
            else
            {
                return "more than a week ago";
            }
        }
    }
    
  • Published on
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    1 min read

    Get CheckBoxList Values Using jQuery

    To be able to retrieve values from a ASP.NET CheckBoxList control or a group of HTML checkboxes, use the following jQuery:

    $(document).ready(function () {
        var checkboxValues = [];
    
        $('#<%=MyCheckBoxList.ClientID %> input[type=checkbox]').click(function () {
            $('input[type=checkbox]:checked').each(function () {
                checkboxValues.push(this.value);
            });        
        });
        
        var values = checkboxValues.toString(); //Output Format: 1,2,3
    });
    

    If you do use this code snippet on a CheckBoxList, take a look that this article on how to create a custom CheckBoxList control with a value attribute.

  • Published on
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    2 min read

    ASP.NET CheckBoxList Control With Value Attribute

    ASP.NET server controls is a great way to quickly build a page with dynamic functionality. Even though we do not have much of direct control over the way these controls are rendered, they do a pretty good job and its not very often I get annoyed with them.

    Until now.

    Generally, I find myself using the .Attributes.Add() method when needing to add additional attributes to certain server controls. No problem! In this case, I wanted to add a “value” attribute that will contain the record ID for that checkbox. I can then use this value within my JavaScript. I would have thought a value attribute would already be there. Its perfectly valid HTML mark-up:

    <form>
        <input type="checkbox" name="vehicle" value="Volvo" />
        <input type="checkbox" name="vehicle" value="Volkswagen" />
    </form> 
    

    For some reason, when I tried to add my custom attributes after my CheckBoxList was databound (as shown below), the attribute was simply ignored.

    NewsCheckList.Items[0].Attributes["value"] = "1";
    NewsCheckList.Items[1].Attributes["value"] = "2";
    NewsCheckList.Items[2].Attributes["value"] = "3";
    

    So I decided the best way forward would be to create a custom CheckBoxList control that would contain a value attribute. I based my code from an old (but very useful) article that can be found here.

    using System;
    using System.Collections.Generic;
    using System.Linq;
    using System.Text;
    using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
    using System.IO;
    using System.Web.UI;
    using System.Collections;
    using System.ComponentModel;
    
    namespace Site.WebControls
    {
        [DefaultProperty("Text"),
        ToolboxData("<{0}:CheckBoxValueList runat=server></{0}:CheckBoxValueList>")]
        public class CheckBoxValueList : CheckBoxList
        {
            protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)
            {
                StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
                TextWriter tw = new StringWriter(sb);
                
                HtmlTextWriter originalStream = new HtmlTextWriter(tw);
                base.Render(originalStream);
                string renderedText = sb.ToString();
    
                int start = 0;
                int labelStart = 0;
                int end = renderedText.Length;
    
                for (int i = 0; i < this.Items.Count; i++)
                {
                    StringBuilder itemAttributeBuilder = new StringBuilder();
    
                    end = renderedText.Length;
                    start = renderedText.IndexOf("<input", start, end - start);
                    labelStart = renderedText.IndexOf("<label", start, end - start);
    
                    this.Items[i].Attributes.Render(new HtmlTextWriter(new StringWriter(itemAttributeBuilder)));
    
                    renderedText = renderedText.Insert(labelStart + 7, itemAttributeBuilder.ToString() + " ");
                    renderedText = renderedText.Insert(start + 7, String.Format("{0} value=\"{1}\" ", itemAttributeBuilder.ToString(), this.Items[i].Value));
                    start = renderedText.IndexOf("/>", start, renderedText.Length - start);
                }
                
                writer.Write(renderedText);
            }
        }
    }
    
  • Published on
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    2 min read

    Has Facebook Redefined Friendship?

    Definition Of FriendI was a late bloomer when when it came to joining the social networking giant that is Facebook (around late 2007). The only reason I can remember for ever joining the site was just because all people around me were submitting their profiles like crazy. Not wanting to miss out on this new trend, I decided to “pop” my social networking cherry and take the plunge!

    Looking back on my first experience on Facebook I was amazed at how easily I could connect with friends and people I used to know from a past life (school, work etc). Within a few months my Facebook profile spread through the social networking vine in quick haste and found myself receiving friend requests. But it became ever so prevalent that the people who requested me to add them as a friend weren’t people I would necessarily call a friend. I knew of them and that is where my connection ends. So in some ways Facebook has redefined the term “friend”.

    Facebook has broken down the friendship barriers considerably. Its made it really easy. Too easy in fact. It was only a couple days ago when my sister said: “Look! I got more friends than you!”. In all honesty I wasn’t really bothered…ok maybe a little. This is where personal feelings come into play.

    One of the feelings I will call: “Facebook guilt”. Facebook guilt is when you receive a friend request and don’t act on it. You simply ignore it hoping they would just forget or even worse…remove their request altogether. Hoping by not accepting their friend request you haven’t made an enemy or caused emotional discourse.

    Then there is “Facebook rejection”. An example of this is the following conversation I had with with a work mate of mine a few years back:

    Anonymous friend: I’ve sent you a Facebook friend request. Me: Ok cool. Anonymous friend: How come you haven’t approved it yet? Me: Mate, I’ve been on holiday for over a week and haven’t checked Facebook yet. I’ll do it today. Anonymous friend: Thanks Surinder!

    I was surprised that he took not responding to his friend request as a personal hit.

    Social Networking sites have created a trend that makes us more interested in the number of people in our social circles rather than the relationships we have with them.

    So where do I stand in the social networking medium? My Facebook activity has drastically declined over the years. Currently, I have 114 friends with majority of them I know quite well and only a handful of them I haven’t really met. Nowadays, I have become more of a tweeter. I just feel that Twitter has met my social needs over Facebook. Its just more flexible and open. If someone likes you they follow you, if not they don’t.

  • Published on
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    1 min read

    EaseUS Todo Backup Disk Clone Tool…It’s Good!

    Earlier today, I decided to upgrade my laptop’s hard drive to a larger capacity disk. As we all know, the most straight-forward method of carrying this out is by cloning the existing drive onto your new disk of choice. Originally, I was planning on purchasing “Acronis True Image” since this is something I’ve used it in the past and makes cloning any disk a cinch!

    I decided to look for some freely available cloning software available online, instead of having to pay £30 for software I won’t be using that often. Yes I am that tight! :-) In all honesty, I wasn’t expecting to find anything substantial but I was surprised to find a great piece of cloning software called “EaseUS Todo Backup” free edition. EaseUS Todo Backup software not only had the ability to clone a disk but also had the following useful features:

    • Backup – on selected files, partitions or your entire computer
    • Recovery
    • Scheduled backup plan

    I am happy to report that I managed to clone the whole of my disk drive successfully within 2.5 hours (based on 126GB of data). Whoever said nothing in life is free!

    You can download EaseUS Todo Backup here.