Category Archives: Visual Studio 2013

.NET 4.0, json, Visual Studio 2013

Generate C# Classes from JSON Responses

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Well, as web developers, we are always dealing with JSON data which are coming from different sources. Either we are serialising our entities, or it’s coming from the external sources like third-party services and so on.

If the data is coming from an external source, one standard requirement is to always de-serialise it back to the data model to be able to process the data. Creating data model for JSON data is not the most exciting work in the world, especially when the data model is a bit nested and complex.

Fortunately, there is a very nice feature in Visual Studio which makes the life much more manageable. This feature is called Paste Special.

To take advantage, you first need to Copy the JSON data. Imaging there is JSON data as follow:

{
 "glossary": {
 "title": "example glossary",
 "GlossDiv": {
 "title": "S",
 "GlossList": {
 "GlossEntry": {
 "ID": "SGML",
 "SortAs": "SGML",
 "GlossTerm": "Standard Generalized Markup Language",
 "Acronym": "SGML",
 "Abbrev": "ISO 8879:1986",
 "GlossDef": {
 "para": "A meta-markup language, used to create markup languages such as DocBook.",
 "GlossSeeAlso": ["GML", "XML"]
 },
 "GlossSee": "markup"
 }
 }
 }
 }
}

And we require creating the data model for that. To do so, just Copy the data in memory and go to Visual Studio, create a new class (or an existing one where we intend to have our data model).

From the Edit menu in Visual Studio, select the Paste Special and from the submenu, Paste JSON As Classes.

Then, the data model will generate as follow:

public class Rootobject
 {
 public Glossary glossary { get; set; }
 }

public class Glossary
 {
 public string title { get; set; }
 public Glossdiv GlossDiv { get; set; }
 }

public class Glossdiv
 {
 public string title { get; set; }
 public Glosslist GlossList { get; set; }
 }

public class Glosslist
 {
 public Glossentry GlossEntry { get; set; }
 }

public class Glossentry
 {
 public string ID { get; set; }
 public string SortAs { get; set; }
 public string GlossTerm { get; set; }
 public string Acronym { get; set; }
 public string Abbrev { get; set; }
 public Glossdef GlossDef { get; set; }
 public string GlossSee { get; set; }
 }

public class Glossdef
 {
 public string para { get; set; }
 public string[] GlossSeeAlso { get; set; }
 }

As if by magic you see the initial data model has been created for us

As you may have noticed, there is one more option under Paste Special menu item, named Paste XML As Classes. This item does the same thing but for XML data. That means you need to copy your XML data to the memory and from the Paste Special menu item, choose Paste XML As Classes this time, to have your data model generated.

Original post ‘Paste Special’: a less well-known feature in Visual Studio

C#, Unit Testing, Visual Studio 2013

Unit Testing a Private Method

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With Visual Studio keep changing the way you create unit tests I thought I’d document down how to test a private method the easy way.

Here is a simple HomeController and we want to test that the GetPageSize method return 20 in a unit test.

public class HomeController : Controller
{
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        var pageSize = GetPageSize();
        return View(pageSize);
    }

    private int GetPageSize()
    {
        return 20;
    }
}

As GetPageSize is a private method we’ll need to use the PrivateObject class to return the methods result, this is quite easy, from the Unit Test project make sure you have a reference to your MVC project and then reference the HomeController and invoke the method you need the result back from:

[TestMethod]
public void CheckPageSizeIs20()
{
    PrivateObject privateObject = new PrivateObject(typeof(HomeController));
    int pageSize;
    pageSize = (int)privateObject.Invoke("GetPageSize");

    Assert.AreEqual(20, pageSize);
}

If you need to pass in parameters to the private method then you can pass in an anonymous type

var actual = (IEnumerable<ActivityData>)privateObject.Invoke("GetAllUnassignedJobs", new object[] { filterData, uniqueJobs });

Reference: How to test a class member that is not public

Thanks to Karthik for googleing the answer

Visual Studio 2013

Visual Studio 2013 requires Internet Explorer 10 – how to install without IE10

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Not my fix, but it works

@ECHO OFF

:IE10HACK 
REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer" /v Version /t REG_SZ /d "9.10.9200.16384" /f 
REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer" /v svcVersion /t REG_SZ /d "10.0.9200.16384" /f 
REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer" /v Version /t REG_SZ /d "9.10.9200.16384" /f 
REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer" /v svcVersion /t REG_SZ /d "10.0.9200.16384" /f 
GOTO EXIT

:REVERTIE 
REG DELETE "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer" /v svcVersion 
REG DELETE "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer" /v svcVersion 
REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer" /v Version /t REG_SZ /d "8.0.7601.17514" /f 
REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer" /v Version /t REG_SZ /d "8.0.7601.17514" /f 
GOTO EXIT

:EXIT

credit goses to Jimmy http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/4153040-remove-the-requirment-for-internet-explorer-10-to-