First day at CEI

Well, I started working at CEI, today. I'm excited because I've already been thrown into the fire of a Commerce Server project. Seems like I will even get to implement some extensions of the new Enterprise Library (probably just logging and data), but it will be fun to get one under my belt.

NetSig Controls available

I never got around to posting that the controls and tools Ron Buckton and I presented in the Feb. Cleveland .NET SIG are all availble for download at:

http://www.bennettadelson.com/technicalresources/presentations.aspx
The title was ASP.NET 2.0 I Want it Now!!!

To see the controls in action, you can toy with them at my site here:
http://www.aspnetgeek.com/NetSig_2-8-05/

There is one bug that you will see when running the web. Please remove the Register directive on the MasterPage.ascx file for the ~/UserControls/Header.ascx.

MCMS Resource image handler

I’ve been working on rendering resources from MCMS using an HttpHandler. Now I’ve written a class to handle image scaling and quality, and I’ve used this concept in large scale applications; however, I cannot seem to render resources from the Resource Gallery of MCMS consistently.

public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
{
  try
  {
    // get the resource
    Resource resource =
    (Resource)CmsHttpContext.Current.Searches.GetByGuid(ResourceGuid);

    if (resource != null)
    {
      HttpCachePolicy policy = context.Response.Cache;

      policy.SetLastModified(resource.LastModifiedDate);
      policy.VaryByParams["w;h;r"] = true;
      
      Stream stream = resource.OpenReadStream();
      
      // Resize the image
      ImageResizer.ResizeImage(
        stream,
        context.Response.OutputStream,
        Width,
        Height,
        true);
    }
    else
    {
      context.Trace.Warn(
        "No Image",
        "Cannot retrieve resource: "
          + ResourceGuid);
      RenderNoImage(context);
    }
  }
  catch (Exception ex)
  {
    context.Trace.Write(ex.ToString());
    Controller.Errors.LogError(ex);
    RenderNoImage(context);
  }
}

I can get this handler to render effectively for the first few requests. After a few requests, the handler consistently fails to retrieve the Resource and the Searches object may even be null.

Leaving Bennett Adelson

After a year at Bennett Adelson, I have decided to leave for a Pittsburgh-based company called CEI. There I will be working under Microsoft Regional Director Mike Snell as a .NET Architect.
I am really excited about this venture and I am sure this is a great career move.