Nishant Rana's Weblog

Used SharedVariables in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Today we wrote a plugin which was making use of new shared variables concept for plugin in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

We had one of our plugin registered in post create event of opportunity which was generating a unique number/id for that opportunity record (i.e auto-numbering).
Than we had to write one more plugin again for the same post create event of opportunity but in that plugin we wanted to access the value of that auto generated unique id.
So first what we did was changing the rank of the above two plugin i.e. execution order, if we are registering through plugin-registration tool.
For first plugin which used to generate the unique id we set the rank as 1
and for the second plugin we set it as 2.
But still we were not able to access the value of the unique id attribute in the second plugin.
Than we finally thought of making use of shared variables concept.

The SharedVariables property allows plug-ins to share data with each other. So the plugin which is getting fired first could put some data in the SharedVariables propertybag which than could be accessed by a plugin which is getting fired later.The order of execution of plugin depends on the rank set for it. However we should be careful of not creating too much dependencies among plug-ins.

So, in our first plugin we put the value in the shared variable
context.Properties.Add( new PropertyBagEntry(“MySharedVariable”, myAutoNumber));
and accessed it in the second plugin as following
String mySharedVariable = (string)context.[“MySharedVariable”];

Bye..

SharePoint and Javascript

The following links explains how to use javascript within SharePoint

Using JavaScript to manipulate a list form field.

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepointdesigner/archive/2007/06/13/using-javascript-to-manipulate-a-list-form-field.aspx

Hide a field from NewForm.aspx

http://edinkapic.blogspot.com/2007/08/hide-field-from-newformaspx.html

Using Simple JavaScript in SharePoint

http://www.sharepointkings.com/2008/06/using-simple-javascript-in-sharepoint.html

and few other links

http://sharepointsolutions.blogspot.com/2007/09/make-selected-links-in-links-list-open.html

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointdevelopment/thread/941940cb-acef-434f-830f-233713773b99/

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/sharepoint/Control_validation.aspx

Bye….

Checking for null or blank value in case of post update plugin using ForceSubmit

We were supposed to write a plugin against say entity A which would be updating a related entity B only if the value of one of the attribute(string) in entity A is blank.

The plugin was a post update one , so even though we had registered pre/post image with that particular attribute and as it was null, the property/value wasn’t getting passed.

So there was no way to access it in the entity images.

Only way to access the value was to make use of query expression class to get the value saved in the table for that entity. But we decided to use another approach.

Normally if we set a ForceSubmit on a particular field it is passed as one of the property of inputparameters of the context.

So what we did was set ForceSubmit on the field and then converted the inputparameters properties as Dynamic Entity and were able to get the value of that attribute even in case when it was null/blank.

DynamicEntity entity = (DynamicEntity)context.InputParameters.Properties[“Target”];

if (entity.Properties.Contains(“new_attSchemaName”))
{
String myAttrValue = (string)entity.Properties[“new_attSchemaName”];
if (myAttrValue == “”)
{

Bye..

Using Encryption and Decryption in an ASP page

Hi I was looking for implementing cryptography in an ASP page.

I found this following article of great use

http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/webtech/010100-1.shtml

The inc file

<%
Dim sbox(255)
Dim key(255)

Sub RC4Initialize(strPwd)
dim tempSwap
dim a
dim b
intLength = len(strPwd)
For a = 0 To 255
key(a) = asc(mid(strpwd, (a mod intLength)+1, 1))
sbox(a) = a
next

b = 0
For a = 0 To 255

b = (b + sbox(a) + key(a)) Mod 256
tempSwap = sbox(a)
sbox(a) = sbox(b)
sbox(b) = tempSwap
Next
End Sub

Function EnDeCrypt(plaintxt, psw)

dim temp
dim a
dim i
dim j
dim k
dim cipherby
dim cipher

i = 0
j = 0

RC4Initialize psw
For a = 1 To Len(plaintxt)
i = (i + 1) Mod 256
j = (j + sbox(i)) Mod 256
temp = sbox(i)
sbox(i) = sbox(j)
sbox(j) = temp
k = sbox((sbox(i) + sbox(j)) Mod 256)

cipherby = Asc(Mid(plaintxt, a, 1)) Xor k
cipher = cipher & Chr(cipherby)
Next
EnDeCrypt = cipher
End Function

And following is the code for my asp page

<!–#include file=”g.inc”–>

<html>
<head>
<title>TestPage</title>
</head>
<body>
<form action=”G.asp” method=”post”>
<%
dim psw, txt
dim strTemp
txt=”NishantRana”
psw=”myPassword”
strTemp=EnDeCrypt(txt,psw)
response.write “Encrypted Text =” & strTemp & “</Br>”
txt=EnDeCrypt(strTemp,psw)
response.write “Decrypted Text =” & txt
%>
</form>

</body>

</html>

Just copy and paste the code

That’s it …

IIS not serving ASP.NET pages

It mostly happens when IIS is installed after .NET is installed. So in this case we need to make use of aspnet_regiis.exe utility.
1) Go to command prompt
2) Go to the following path
“C:WINDOWSMicrosoft.NETFrameworkv2.0.50727”
depending on the version.
3) Enter “aspnet_regiis.exe -i”
4) It will display the message finished installing
5) Open your IIS
6) Select web service extensions
7) Click on Allow for ASP.NET v2.0.50727

That’s it . Now the IIS has been configured properly

Changing authentication mode for Sql Server express edition

One way of doing it is through sql server management studio explained over here

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188670.aspx

But if you haven’t installed the management studio than in that case you need to make following change in the registry

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE / SOFTWARE / Microsoft / Microsoft SQL server / MSSQL.1/ MSSQLSERVER/ LoginMode

Click on it change it’s value from 1 to 2.

Then Restart your sql server service !!!

After you have done this you need to enable you sa account for sql server authentication for this follow these steps

1) Open SQL Server Management Studio Express and Login
2) In Object Explorer, click Security followed by Logins
3) Right click sa user and select Properties.
4) Uncheck Enforce password policy
5) Select Status. Click the Grant and Enabled radio buttons. Click OK
6) Restart your database server and select restart.

That’s it