ASP.NET - Fixing Entity Framework Migration Errors

AKA

"The Entity Framework provider type 'System.Data.Entity.SqlServer.SqlProviderServices, EntityFramework.SqlServer' registered in the application config file for the ADO.NET provider with invariant name 'System.Data.SqlClient' could not be loaded. Make sure that the assembly-qualified name is used and that the assembly is available to the running application. See http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=260882 for more information."

OR

"Exception Details: System.InvalidOperationException: The Entity Framework provider type 'System.Data.Entity.SqlServer.SqlProviderServices, EntityFramework.SqlServer' registered in the application config file for the ADO.NET provider with invariant name 'System.Data.SqlClient' could not be loaded. Make sure that the assembly-qualified name is used and that the assembly is available to the running application. See http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=260882 for more information."

 

Whilst doing migrations from EF4 to EF6, I came across the following error. This is caused by two different things

1.) Your project contains both EF4 and EF6 references. If you're using EF6, only EF6 can be in the project. Either remove everything EF4 related, or upgrade it to EF6.

2.) You're missing a DLL. This seems to be the most common error. Navigate to applicationPath\bin\ on the server, and look for EntityFramework.SqlServer.dll (Should be around 600KB). For some odd reason, it rarely gets included in deployments. If it's not there, simply copy the version from your development machine onto the server, and you're good to go!

The End Of Windows Defender

I recently had a rather rampant piece of Adware that was effecting Chrome, and causing several miscellaneous words to underline, and hyperlink their way to ad sites. I eventually found the location of the executable, and submitted it to Windows Defender (The Anti Virus I was using at the time).
 
What I got back shocked me. A result of "Not detected". This means that the executable had been previously submitted, and had been found by the Microsoft researchers to not be harmful.
 
Curious about the result, I decided to submit the same file to several online virus scanners - All of which detected the file as harmful by no less than 15 separate anti virus scanners, none of which were Windows Defender.  
 
Curious, I decided to check some previous submissions of mine. The early ones (Back in the Windows 7 / Early Windows 8 period) had all subsequently been added within a few days of my submission. The later ones were either Not Detected or simply No Scan Result Available. Keep in mind that both of those submissions are picked up by the majority of other Anti-Virus's (AVG, F-Secure, Malwarebytes, McAfee, Etc), so I decided to switch.
 
Having 3 known virus files at my disposal, I decided to look around to various free alternatives. I used to use AVG when they were still located at http://free.grisoft.com/ before they went corporate, but they have since severely dwindled in quality. Norton was out of the question (Any tech-savvy person will know how useless and bloatware-esque it is), so I decided to try Malwarebytes. I downloaded their free version located here (16.5MB), and it quickly scanned my PC, effortlessly finding the 3 files I had, as well as some registry entries that the Adware had created. Happy, I acquired a premium version (Real Time Protection), and went merrily on my way.

Convert Number To Month Name In Excel

A simple Excel function to convert a digit to a month name

The first letter of the month (Eg: "N" of "November" for 9)
=TEXT(DATE(2000,A1,1),"MMMMM")

The complete month name (Eg: "November" for 9)
=TEXT(DATE(2000,A1,1),"MMMM")

The abbreviation of the month name (Eg: "Nov" for 9)
=TEXT(DATE(2000,A1,1),"MMM")

Thank to this thread.

CSS equivalent of the center tag

From: <center>dataHere</center> to
To: <div style="margin: auto; text-align: center;">dataHere</div>

Thanks to Isaksen from Stack Overflow

Online Wh to mAh Converter

Just a useful little utility :)

Wh (Eg: 4.44):
V (Eg: 3.7):
mAh:

Formula: mAh = Wh * 1000 / V

<script type="text/javascript">

function convertWhtomAh()

{

var WhValue = document.getElementById('convertWh').value;

var VValue= document.getElementById('convertV').value;

var result = (WhValue * 1000) / VValue;

void(document.getElementById('convertmAh').value = result);

}

</script>

HTML Font Size Conversion

Whilst getting rid of font tags today, I needed an easy reference point to find what size rating in one coding format was equivalent to another (Eg: Is <font size="1"> the same as <span style = "font-size: 8px;"> or... ?) and came across this fantastic chart!

http://www.trishasdesignstudio.com/font-size-conversion-chart.asp

As the link died, here is a version of it hosted on imgur.

How To Rename Google Maps Saved Locations

Whilst saving various places on Google Maps for navigation on my Android phone, I got annoyed that the phone only listed the address (Which gets confusing when you have a list)

To rename them to something more friendy, do the following:

1.) Star a place as per usual.
2.) Browse to https://www.google.com/bookmarks/
3.) Click "Edit" next to the one you want to change.
4.) Change the top line (That currently has the address) to the name you want.
5.) Click "Save"

Your Android device will automatically sync, and you will now see the user-friendly name when navigating :)

Skype - Ultra High CPU Usage

The past few days I've noticed that my office laptops Skype was permanently sitting at +- 90%+ CPU usage. Since I use Skype for work, not using it was not exactly a viable option, and restarting it (And updating to the latest version) didn't help.

I did, however - Find a solution!

1.) Download Process Explorer

2.) Run it

3.) Right click on Skype, and click "Properties"

4.) Click "Threads" (Ignore the potential message about something not being up to date)

5.) Sort by CPU usage by clicking the 2nd tab from the left twice.

6.) Find that a single thread is using all the CPU (For me it was Skype.exe+0x705c although it's also known to be Skype.exe+0x7074)

7.) Click the offending thread, and click  "Kill"

Skype's CPU usage will drop to what it's meant to be (0% average for me), with no visible side effects.

Seems like Microsoft have some threading bug with Skype that's existed for awhile :)

Copy.com VS Dropbox.com

I recently got suggested a new Cloud Storage service - Copy

After testing it for about 5 minutes, I give it the following review :)

1.) 15GB Default Storage - Awesome!
2.) The Desktop app seems awesome (Although the 45MB download is a bit overkill) - It's also native x64!
3.) Files can be direct linked - Which is awesome!
4.) HTML files are served as type text/plain intead of text/html- This is a critical fail on Copy's behalf.

Whilst the first 3 are awesome, the 4th is a critical failure, and so I will stick to Dropbox :)

New IRC Client - AdiIRC

Whilst searching around for an IRC client with a native x64 build (Curse you mIRC ;D), I stumbled across AdiIRC.

TINY IRC Client (1MB) that's coded in C#, and 100% Free :D
 
I'd highly recommend it :)

How do I get started programming games???

By reading this fantastic guide by Tommy Refenes - That's how :)

JavaScript - Regex to format currency

A simple way to format currency! Given a number, format it to a currency-esque format.

number.toFixed(decimalPlaces).replace(/(\d)(?=(\d{3})+\.)/g, "$1,");

Sample:


Symbol (EG: R, $):
Number (EG: 1234567.50):
Decimal Places (EG: 1, 2, 3 - Probably 2):

Handler "PHP53_via_FastCGI" has a bad module "FastCgiModule" in its module list

I found this error after installing PHP on IIS, and attempting to browse to a local .php page.

Do the following to fix it.

1.) Go to Add / Remove Programs
2.) Click "Turn Windows features on or off"
3.a.) Open "Internet Information Services"
3.b.) Open "World Wide Web Services"
3.c.) Open "Application Development Features"
3.d.) Tick "CGI"
3.e.) Click "OK
3.f) Wait for it to complete.
4.) Attempt to go to your php page again.

\o/

A Quote

Online ASP.NET ViewState Decoder

I was looking for one of these, and it took me awhile to locate - Maybe someone will find it useful :)
 
Link: Here

XNB Decompressor

Whilst messing around with some XNA .XNB files, I wanted to see if I could extract any useful information from them.

A bit of googling later lead me to an archive with several files, and this!

Whilst it keeps the files as the ".xnb" format, it decompresses them allowing you to pull some info using a basic text editor :)

Thanks to the XeNTaX forum for the link :)

3D JavaScript is weird...

3D JavaScript is weird...

An object can ONLY be collided with if it's in the scene, even if you're only using the object collection as collision reference.
The problem is that an object can only be collided with if it's of type geometry , which normal .obj's aren't.

Now, for the fun part!

Rendering a textured object is significantly faster than rendering an object with a mesh, so, whilst you could just use textured mesh's and render those, this is slow as heck.

And how do you get past this dilemma... ?

Add both the object AND the mesh to the scene, and hide the mesh's. Since they're technically there, they can still be collided with, and since they're invisible, they don't use rendering cycles ;D

Result: 60 FPS with full collision ♥

Javascript - Reverse a string

--> <--

Javascript - Regex to remove all special chars from a string, leaving letters and numbers.

--> <--

How to block ads from websites

As you probably see below this post (If it's the latest) and on the right of the page under the "Site History", I have added some ads.

But fret not - For this post shall include how to remove ads such as these! \o/

1.) Download and install Adblock for Firefox, Chrome, or Opera - If you're using IE... Download Chrome ^_^
2.) Subscribe to the recommended filter list - Should be called 'EasyList'
3.) Enjoy an ad-free experience :D
4.) Example With Adblock Installed: Click Me :D
Note: Some of the items in the image (Pencil, Spanner, Etc) only appear for me since I own the page ^_^

Create a SQL Database using an existing MDF File

If you have an MDF file, and you need to create a SQL Database from it using code, do the following:

USE [master]
GO
CREATE DATABASE [insert_database_name_here] ON 
( FILENAME = N'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\Data\fileNameHere.mdf' ),
FOR ATTACH ;
GO

SharePoint 2010 CAML Query Nuance In C#

Whilst playing around in SharePoint with pulling data from lists (Which requires a wonderfully syntactically obscene language known as CAML Query), I found that my query simply refused to filter out data.

string camlQuery = @"
   <Query>   
      <Where>
         <Eq>
            <FieldRef Name = 'Title' />
            <Value Type='Text'>" + chosenIndex + @"</Value>
         </Eq>
      </Where>
   </Query>";
SPListItemCollection items = myList.GetItems(camlQuery);

Seems simple, enough - Right?

Not quite...

Turns out, if you include the <Query> tags in your CAML Query, the entire thing gets blatantly ignored! No errors - It just selects everything o_O

To fix this problem, simply remove the <Query></Query> tags from your statement, and everything will work as planned...

Note: Thanks to manoli.net for the formatting code :D

Identifying an unknown Device Manager device

I was recently browsing through Device Manager, and came across the following:


Unfortunately, the properties window didn't provide much insight...


Googling around, I found a useful tip!
If you click "Details", then scroll through the properties, one of the options will have something with "VEN_" in it.

In this case:
VEN (Short for Vendor): 8086
DEV (Short for Device): 29C4

Simply jump along to this site, plug the DEV code in "Device Search", and *Poof* - Component Identified! (In my case, It was the Intel Management Engine Interface. Unfortunately for me, my board is End of Life, so no drivers were made for Windows 7)

For the lazy ones, copy and paste the following, and add the device code to the end :p

http://www.pcidatabase.com/search.php?device_search_str=

Good luck! \o/

Quickly Formatting the date in an ASP.NET Gridview

Console.WriteLine("Woop!");

I have recently been dealing with GridViews quite a bit, and one of the things that annoyed me was the way you had to format a date.

You are normally forced to create a function in your code-behind page, and pass the date to it - Which is annoying if you only ever need to format a single date on the page. Something like the following:

Page.aspx

<asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Date Header Here">

   <ItemTemplate>

      <%#FormatDate(Eval("SQLDateValue"))%>

   </ItemTemplate>
</asp:TemplateField>

Page.aspx.cs

public object FormatDate(object input)

{

   string stringObject = input.ToString();

   DateTime dttm = DateTime.Parse(stringObject);

   return dttm.ToString("dd-MMM-yyyy");

}

This was rather annoying, as it seemed like a very roundabout way to do something seemingly small. After messing around a bit, I found a nice compact way to do it in the GridView itself!

<asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Date Header Here">

   <ItemTemplate>

      <%#DateTime.Parse(Eval("DateReceived").ToString()).ToString("dd-MMM-yyyy")%>

   </ItemTemplate>

</asp:TemplateField>

Win! \o/

On an unrelated note, getting decently formatted ASP.NET / C# code in blogspot is a nightmare >_>

Kitten Attack!

Since I really need to start posting something here (I always plan to, but it gets delayed), a little something comical to fill the space :D