I'm creating a simple MVC CMS for which I need a first time run configuration (to set up the database and admin user account, etc.).
The setup screen will ask them for the database connection string, so at first run, there is no knowledge of a database store.
How would I detect that this is the first time the application is being run, and take them to that setup screen?
Should I put a setting in the web.config with an initial value of false:
<add key="SetupComplete" value="false" />
And once the setup is complete, I can change it via:
ConfigurationManager.AppSettings.Set("SetupComplete", "True");
The downfall of this method is that, if the application is restarted, the config value will default to "false". What is a good solution to this problem?
Many PHP CMS doing the same thing you want to do, as it is the initial setup it would be OK that the admin change this value manually or you simply check the existence of a file which must be deleted manually.
As it is IIS app I would build a deployment package, so you can setup the the initial settings during the installation process, which is the common way for IIS apps I think.
In the past, I implemented a custom SettingsProvider (an example is here and here). Special care was taken regarding security, ensuring keys are encrypted. The samples isn't perfect. You can use the Application Settings provided by Visual Studio and .NET 2.0 to store settings in the format (e.g. xml) and location of your choosing (e.g. AppData).
It is a tad more secure than allowing your application to modify your web.config, since doing the latter means you have to elevate the privileges of your process which may be rather dangerous when your application is exposed on the internet.
It also simplify backups and upgrades.
Related
As sf_sandbox has set up the symfony environment, why not develop in the sandbox directly and then upload on to server? What are the disadvantages of sandbox compared with configuring manually?
I think there is no drawback in following this approach. sf_sandbox is a pre-configured symfony project. One of the pluses is that is saves you time in creating your project and initializing an empty application (by default this is called frontend).
It's more a matter of taste rather than a matter of right or wrong. It's up to you!
Note: If you follow this approach you have to make some initial configuration (steps 1,2,3 would be done anyway if you started your project from scratch):
Rename the project
Change the config/properties.ini file
Change the config/databases.yml file (by default sf_sandbox uses sqlite database)
Remove the data/sandbox.db database file
I'm trying to upload an ASP.NET MVC 3.0 application to Windows Azure. The upload ok but the configuration (automatic operation just after upload) failed.
Any idea ? (I'm new in Windows Azure)
In the new portal you have to explicitly check a check box to allow deployment with less that two instances:
There is absolutely no obligation to use 2 instances. There is only SLA that comes into place only if you have 2 or more instances. I have production roles with 1 instance and I am very happy to use the Windows Azure services.
UPDATE
Just ntoed the "Linked Resources" comment on the first answer. So here are my 2 cents on it too: Linked resources feature is just a way for us developers to have a quick overview of our application and to quickly navigate between the components. There is nothing to do with our application's configuration files. You can set your Windows Azure SQL Database connection string as you normaly do with regular apps - in web.config (web.release.config)
The answer is right there in the second screen shot.
When you upload your package from the portal the dialog has a checkbox at the bottom that says "Deploy even if one or more roles contain a single instance" That needs to be checked if you are choosing to deploy to a single instance.
This is required since the SLA cannot be maintained with a single instance. There are times when the single instance needs to have OS updates applied or sometimes there are hardware failures. Having more than one instance is the only way to continue serving requests when one of these events occur.
You probably will not want to deploy a production solution with a single instance. But, for the dev cycle you can certainly get by with 1.
I'm in the process of evaluating db4o and I have a pretty simple question. Does the db4o configuration settings (e.g. Transparent Activation) and indexes need to be setup each time the application runs and/or the database is loaded, or can all this be setup at the time the database is created?
For reference - I'm building an Android application and the database is going to be prebuilt on the desktop and shipped with the app.
just as an FYI, there is an exception .. indexes once created are saved and will be used regardless of their specification at OpenFile/Connection time.
Best,
Robert
After more digging in the documentation for db4o I found my answer :)
"Configuration settings are not stored in db4o database files. Accordingly the same configuration has to be submitted every time an ObjectContainer/ObjectServer is opened. For using db4o in client/server mode it is recommended to use the same configuration on the server and on the client. To set this up nicely it makes sense to create one application class with one method that creates an appropriate configuration and to deploy this class both to the server and to all clients."
I've found a dilly of a pickle with a new web server. We have a new web server that is displaying dates differently than our old web servers.
We are running asp classic web pages on IIS 6.0 with windows server 2003.
We have logged in as an administrator and set the regional settings as appropriate and then applied the settings to current user and default user profile.
We then went into registry and update the appropriate formats under HKEY_USERS/.default/control panel/international.
Update the asp.net configuration for our websites to the correct code-page and locale.
Does anyone have other places that the application could be getting date formats from?
I know this isn't the 'proper' way to fix the issue. However, the application was written many years ago, getting something through planning/change control would be a pain, and is the only application running on the server. Thus it is okay to configure the server to cater to this single application. Besides it was driving me crazy that a new server that should be configured identically to an old server was not working.
It turns out that in addition to HKEY_USERS/*/Control Panel/international, there is a setting for non-unicode programs. It can be found under HKLM/system/currentcontrolset/control/nls/language/Default. Set that to the correct code page and it is golden.
On the other hand, if you prefer to not modify the registry directly, you can update all these values through the Regional settings from the control panel.
You can adjust the formats through the 'customize' button.
You can change the 'language for non-unicode programs' under advanced tab.
Just make sure that you check the 'apply to the default profile' at the bottom of the advanced tab.
I don't think the highest vote answer is right, though it's close.
I had to use regedit to change all the internationalization settings of HKU\S-1-5-19\Control Panel\International (NT Authority) and HKU\S-1-5-20\Control Panel\International (Network Service) to match the settings that were already in HKU\S-1-5-18\Control Panel\International (Local System).
This worked perfectly.
I modified all the settings I could see which were different, by hand.
I should think I only really needed to change the settings for S-1-5-20 (Network Service).
Go to Control Panel -> Regional And Language Options, set all options you need, then under 'Advanced' tab select settings for non-Unicode programs and check 'Apply all settings to the current account and to the default user profile.'. Press OK and restart server.
On Windows Server 2008 administrators have additional 'Administrative' tab. There press 'Copy to reserved accounts'.
Classic ASP Defaults to the Locale ID that was configured when the server was Setup. If you have access to the original server run the following code to get Locale ID it's operating under and verify that the new server is using the same.
<%=Session.LCID%>
If the Locale IDs are different and you cannot change it on the new server then you can add a line to the Session_OnStart sub in the global.asa for the application that assigns the correct Locale ID to Session.LCID.
Using an ASP page with the content:-
Response.Write GetLocale
Might be informative, it'll show you what locale VBScript thinks its using.
I've seen issues like this in the dim and distant past when using integrated security. The ASP caches the regional details from a user hive when it first needs to use them then continues to use those settings until the process dies. ASP gets these settings from the user hive associated with the user identity the code is currently running under. Most of the time that would be DEFAULT because the user doesn't have a profile on the system.
However if the user happens to have logged on interactively to the server they will have a profile and so their settings are used. Hence I've seen situations where the server appears to have intermitten problems with regional settings.
I can't recall if I've seen this on IIS6, I've definitely seen it on IIS5.
If you run your ASP application under a different account (not IUSR_Guest)
Login as that account, set date/time format to what you want and restart IIS.
Does anyone have any good techniques for easily switching between development and live builds for asp.net mvc websites? Every time I make some changes I need to change to go through my web.config and comment out all my local stuff and uncomment all my remote settings. I also need to update the linq-to-sql dbml file to point to the right connection string.
This happens every time I make a change in a controller. After I upload the changes I then have to do the same process and get it back to development (local) mode.
Is there an automatic way to handle this, or at least one setting that can flag between the two?
Thanks
a way I've done is to make two groups of configuration settings
<LiveSomeSetting>something</LiveSomeSetting>
<TestSomeSetting>anotherthing</TestSomeSetting>
Then in my class that reads configuration info, I'd check on something like the system environment / computer name and if applicable to the name of your LIVE machine look at the settings... otherwise the development.
if (System.Environment.MachineName.ToLower().StartsWith("devMachineName"))
IsLive = "Test";
else
IsLive = "Live";
Application["IsLive"] = IsLive;
SomeSetting = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[IsLive + "SomeSetting"];
I use a simple technique that Scott Hanselman blogged in '97. It basically involves maintaining separate web.config files for each of you build types. Then there is a pre-build event which copies the correct web.config into place.
It does have the down side of having to maintain 2+ web.config files but once you're up and running it isn't really that big an issue.
Have a look here at the article:
Managing Multiple Configuration File Environments with Pre-Build Events
HTHs,
Charles