Automated testing in Umbraco

Following on from the talk I gave at the UK Umbraco Festival about automated testing in Umbraco, using Slenium etc.

I’ve created an example folder structure with build files and also included some example cc.net config files as well. You can download it here.

As per the comment below, here’s the Visual Studio plugin we use for Mercurial: http://visualhg.codeplex.com/, also Tortoise HG http://tortoisehg.bitbucket.org/

Hopefully this will get you started.

T

Umbraco 4.5 a quick guide (inc Linq to Umbraco tip)

Whilst working on my first big Umbraco 4.5 implementation I began noticing the new preview functionality didn’t behave as I expected.

To start off with I thought it was broken, but in fact there are some performance related decisions that have been made in the implementation that can confuse you when you first start using it.

First off how does Preview work:

The new Umbraco preview functionality generates a new XML cache of the Umbraco content when you press the preview button and uses this whilst you are browsing the site in preview mode.

However to aid performance Umbraco only generates preview data for the nodes including and below the one you are previewing. They do this for performance reasons. However this can lead to some unexpected behaviour if you are using recursive data in your macros etc (Data which is stored higher in the tree than the node you are previewing).

The solution to this is of course to preview your site starting from the homepage, then the full node tree is populated with preview data when you press preview (this could get slow in big sites).

Preview works perfectly with NodeFactory and with XSLT as long as you bear the above in mind.

The other quirk that had me stumped for ages and made me think preview was broken was Linq2Umbraco. Linq to Umbraco staunchly failed to show preview content. So I had a dig about in the 4.5 source and discovered that the default provider for Linq to Umbraco ONLY USES PUBLISHED DATA.

However the clever folk at Umbraco have given us a way to make this work (they just haven’t told us )

The answer is in the code below:

namespace Extensions.LinqToUmbraco
{
    using System;
    using System.Web;
    using umbraco.presentation;
    using umbraco.presentation.preview;
    using umbraco.Linq.Core.Node;

    /// <summary>
    /// Extension class which provides singleton like access to the UmbracoNodesDataContext
    /// It is not a true singleton pattern, but is ueful because it provides HttpContext
    /// level caching of Umbraco data, improving performance on requests
    /// </summary>
    public partial class UmbracoNodesDataContext
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// Instance property which creates a new instance of the UmbracoNodesDataContext class
        /// if the instance has already been created within the current HttpContext then it returns the cached version.
        /// However if the site is in preview mode then it returns the current preview content (this is not cached in the HttpContext)
        /// </summary>
        public static UmbracoNodesDataContext Instance
        {
            get
            {
                var context = HttpContext.Current.Items["UmbracoNodesDataContex"] as UmbracoNodesDataContext;

                if (UmbracoContext.Current.InPreviewMode)
                {
                    var previewContent = new PreviewContent(new Guid(umbraco.BusinessLogic.StateHelper.GetCookieValue("PreviewSet")));
                    var path = previewContent.PreviewsetPath;
                    context = new UmbracoNodesDataContext(new NodeDataProvider(path, true));
                }
                else
                {
                    if (context == null)
                    {
                        context = new UmbracoNodesDataContext();
                        HttpContext.Current.Items["UmbracoNodesDataContext"] = context;
                    }
                }

                return context;
            }
        }
    }
}

The above code is a partial calss which extends the DataContext which is auto generated by Linq2Umbraco. It needs to be in the same nasespace as your main DataContext class and have the same class name.

More info on partial classes here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wa80x488(VS.80).aspx

It does 2 things, the first is to implement a singleton type pattern so your datacontext can be cached during the current HttpContext, which should give you a performance boost (as outlined in this video: http://vimeo.com/9790069)

It also checks to see if the site is in preview mode and if it is grabs the preview XML and passes that to the NodeDataProvider. This means that when in preview mode Linq2SQL will behave just like Nodefactory and XSLT and sow the preview content. I’m not caching the preview content in the current context BTW.

Till next time.

Collaborating with Microsoft on Open Source and the awkward moment I realised I was part of it

Collaborating with Microsoft, is a phrase that reads rather like a pejorative. Clearly not what is intended but revealing nonetheless of Microsoft’s perception in the open source community.  This is a perception that Microsoft is clearly serious about changing and I have somehow become part of this (despite turning up for a meeting at MS HQ toting a Macbook and iPhone).

I am now part of a collaborative effort (with Microsoft at the fulcrum) to create some sexy open source packages for the Umbraco platform. Also on this team are:

• Adam Shallcross
• Darren Ferguson
• Alex Norcliffe
• Ismail Mayat
• Peter Miller
• Warren Buckley

This as far as I can tell is a fairly hands off Microsoft backed initiative, we build some packages, blog and vlog about it and Microsoft give us access to the relevant teams they have internally.

There is no censorship on what we say, if we think Silverlight is a solution in need of a problem we’re free to say so……… nope no MS swat team just bashed down my door, looks like I’m free to continue.

We’re working on a few different projects, but there is one biggie that will be the posterboy of this effort. Can’t say too much right now, it’s bad luck to discuss vapourware (rather like naming Macbeth in a theatre, only without the over theatrical swooning and hopping round in a circle three times, to break the hex).

So far I have been impressed with Microsoft’s willingness to help and most impressively it’s willingness to listen to open source developers. This from a company that only a few years ago described open source in distinctly disparaging terms.

I’m hoping this will mark the beginning of a fruitful relationship between Microsoft and not just the Umbraco community but the other open source communities that Microsoft is extending is offer of friendship to. (I suspect they are tired of jokes about Steve Ballmer throwing chairs through windows at the thought of it however).

So what’s been achieved so far? Well Warren has released his excellent auto translation package (well done Warren), initial planning of the “don’t mention it’s name” app is done and Darren has made some fantastic progress on getting a proof of concept up and running. Microsoft have set us a deadline (very sensible in my opinion, as I’m wont to talk at length about any subject, regaling my audience with anecdotes and tales of my past at the code face) so with a fair wind we should have exciting things to see by the end of this month.

Until my next update (when hopefully I will have actually written some code)

à bien tôt!

Deleting Document/Node from Umbraco

Deleting nodes from Umbraco is a simple task, but there appears is a lack of clear examples on the web. So here is a code snippet to help you get started.

if(doc.Published)
{
    doc.UnPublish();
    library.UnPublishSingleNode(doc.Id);
}

doc.delete();

So what’s going on here?

First of all we retrieve the document by instantiating the Document class with the node id. In this case 1234.

Now check to see if the document is published. If the document is published then call the UnPublishSingleNode method (passing the id of the document). This method removes the document from the runtime xml index (effectively removing it from the site).

Finally we call the delete method on the document. This moves the document into the trash (including all its children).

If you want to permanently delete the document then simply call the delete method again.  The document will then be entirely removed from Umbraco.

What about  umbraco.library.RefreshContent();

Some examples I found say that you need to call:

umbraco.library.RefreshContent();

In my example this is replaced with:

library.UnPublishSingleNode(doc.Id);

This is a more efficient method as RefreshContent() re-generates the entire runtime xml index, whereas UnPublushSingleNode() only affects the Document you are deleting (it also means you can check to see if the document is published first in order to prevent unnecessary work).

Adding Umbraco Macro dynamically to user control

Today I had occasion to try and add an Umbraco macro to a User Control (.ascx) file.

Here’s how it’s done:

Umbraco Macro’s are just like normal UserControls so can be added to an user control using the standard Controls.Add() method.

However passing macro parameters proved to be a whole different ball game. This is because Macro parameters needed to be specified in lower case, despite the ones I was adding being in camel case in the Umbraco backend and the alias property not being case sensitive.

Here’s an example of the code I used to load my macro in with:


int ProductFolderID = 1188;
umbraco.presentation.templateControls.Macro mcr = new umbraco.presentation.templateControls.Macro();
mcr.Alias="SiteDocumentULList";
mcr.MacroAttributes.Add("source",ProductFolderID);
mcr.MacroAttributes.Add("documenttypealias", "1079");
this.macroContainer.Controls.Add(mcr);


As you can see creating and adding a macro is very simple, but watch out for the all lower case macro parameters and also that in the code that parameters are referred to as attributes.

For those who like a bit more detail here’s what the code above is doing:

First we create a new Macro object and assign it to the mcr variable for later use.
Note: the Macro object you need to create is in the following namespace: umbraco.presentation.templateControls.

Next up we update the alias property of the macro object. This tells umbraco which macro to use.
Note: this is not case sensitive.

Next we add the parameters to the macro, we do this by adding an entry into the MacroAttributes property, which is just a Hashtable. In my example the first parameter I add takes a value from a variable I have declared. The second parameter is a string literal I am passing direct to the hashtable.

The final line uses the standard Add() method on a PlaceHolder I have created in my usercontrol to add the umbraco macro to the page.

 

Cannot log in to Umbraco after upgrading to 4.0.1

Had a problem after upgrading to Umbraco 4.0.1 today.

I dutifully copied and merged all my files together from Umbraco 4.0.0 to 4.0.1 and everything appeared to work fine.

However when I tried to log into the backend I couldn’t. No error no indication of why my log-in now didn’t work.

Turns out that Umbraco is now set to Hash passwords by default in the web config and if you have users created before this change they no longer work (because their passwords are not hashed).

To solve the problem remove the passwordFormat=”Hashed” attribute from the UmbracoMembershipProvider and UsersMembershipProvider

The old logins will work correctly again now.

Upgrading to Umbraco 4.0.1 – a Diff of the files

Had to upgrade a site to Umbraco 4.0.1 today and found it useful to have a proper list of the files that had been changed in Umbraco 4.0.1 from 4.0.0

So here it is:

http://www.thecogworks.co.uk/umbraco-files/umbraco4.0.0to4.0.1.htm

Thought it might come in handy for someone else.

Why URLEncode turns £ into £ – Solved

I had an odd problem today when I was working with an SMS gateway.

They asked for the SMS message I wanted to send to be URL Encoded.

No problems I said and simply added the URLEncode() method around where I was sending them the message:

string SMSToSend = HttpUtility.UrlEncode(message);

However, when the message string contained a £ sign my SMS got sent over as £.

So instead of £200 being sent £200 was sent instead.

First I thought it was a problem at their end, so I asked them. But they said they were receiving the  from me.

So with some further digging it transpires that URLEncode doesn’t like the default format of of C# string which is UTF-8. This means that when you URLEncode a string with characters such as £ in it you MUST specify the correct encoding, which is iso-8859-1

string SMSToSend = HttpUtility.UrlEncode(message, “iso-8859-1″);

This solved the problem and is one to watch out for in the future as it is not clear at first look that URLEncode() would cause this issue.

Umbraco not displaying document type tab content

Today I found an odd quirk in Umbraco, which I don’t think was Umbraco’s fault but nonetheless had me banging my head in frustration for a while.

I was busily creating new Document Types in the admin interface and putting the barebones of a site structure together when I suddenly discovered some of my Document Types couldn’t be edited.

When I clicked on the Structure or Generic Properties tab nothing would appear, rending the document type non-editable.

So after much faffing about with browser settings (thinking it was some kind of Javascript error) I simply recopied over the Umbraco folder from the install, which fixed the problem.

Hopefully this will help anyone else who runs into this rather odd issue.

I’d be interested to hear form anyone else who’s had this issue and anyone who could give an explanation why it happened in the first place!

Safari 4 (Beta) my first impressions

I’ve been playing around with Safari 4 the latest incarnation of Apple’s webkit powered browser. On the whole it’s excellent, but there are some oddities which I’m just not sure about.

The first thing that strikes you about the browser is how gorgeous the Top Sites view is. This has been the feature that’s got the most use. In general I tend not to click wildly around the internet like a deranged tweenie. Instead I have a collection of often visited sites. I’m also not really a fan of bookmarks, I’m frankly just not organised enough. So for me the Top sites view is a godsend.

As I’ve been browsing around the interweb, Safari has learnt my favourite sites and they are now always available to me whenever I open the browser or fire up a new tab. This feature alone makes Safari my new default browser on both Mac and Windows (Sorry Firefox you’re dumped).

The area I’m most unhappy with, at this stage, is where they’ve put the tabs! Frankly it’s just a bit odd. They’re now part of the very top of the window. Every other tabbed browser has them extending from the page content view pane. I’m sorry Apple but sometimes convention is a good thing.

It’s still perfectly usable but my mouse is magnetically drawn to the wrong part of the screen.

Another tab related annoyance is that you must click on a small icon in the top right of the tab to drag them around. Why can’t I just click anywhere in the tab?

Other than that the obviously Chrome influenced browser is excellent. Snappy rendering, elegant and polished interface and above all easy to use.