John Koerner's Page

Running Multiple Iterations of a Test using MSTest

nospam@example.com (JohnKoer) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 23:46:07 -0500

I recently ran into a scenario where I wanted to run all of my tests within a TestClass multiple times, each with a different Selenium browser. I did not want to resort to having each test have a loop within it or force each test to have a data source that fed it the browsers.

After doing some digging, more digging, and more digging I thought all hope was lost.

Then I ran across this article on extending the Visual Studio test types and decided to see if that would work. To alleviate the suspense, yes, it did work, and after the break I will show you how.
Continue reading "Running Multiple Iterations of a Test using MSTest"

Dragging from an Application and Creating a File

nospam@example.com (JohnKoer) — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 22:48:05 -0500

There was a recent question on StackOverflow asking how to drag content from a rich text box and drop it into windows explorer to create a file. I did some digging and found that this was surprisingly easy to do. The thing to understand is that Explorer drag and drop expects the file to exist. So the solution I came up with was when the mouse leaves the RTB, if the left button is down, we save a temporary file and then setup the drag and drop.

        private void richTextBox1_MouseLeave_1(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            // If the left mouse button is down when leaving the rtb
            if (MouseButtons == MouseButtons.Left)
            {
                // Write everything to a temp file.
                System.IO.File.WriteAllText(@"c:\Temp\helloWorld.rtf", richTextBox1.SelectedRtf);
                string[] filenames = { @"c:\Temp\helloWorld.rtf" };
                DataObject obj = new DataObject();
                // Set the drag drop data with the FileDrop format
                obj.SetData(DataFormats.FileDrop, filenames);
                // Start the drag drop effect
                DoDragDrop(obj, DragDropEffects.All);
            }
        }

Colorized by: CarlosAg.CodeColorizer

That's it. Now you can highlight some text in the RTB and drag it out to a folder and it will create a file called helloworld.rtf.

Windows 8 From Scratch - Draggable Images

nospam@example.com (JohnKoer) — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 22:21:29 -0400

In this video we go over the steps required to create draggable images in your Windows 8 application. We start from a brand new application so you understand all of the pieces required to get it working.

Code after the break.

Continue reading "Windows 8 From Scratch - Draggable Images"

Windows 8 From Scratch - Application Settings

nospam@example.com (JohnKoer) — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 23:54:59 -0400

In this video we go over the steps required to create a settings page for your Windows 8 application. We start from a brand new application so you understand all of the pieces required to get it working.

VS 2012 - Get Rid of Uppercase Menu

nospam@example.com (JohnKoer) — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 00:28:09 -0400

One of the first things I found jarring when I logged into VS 2012 was the uppercase menu.

I hate when my IDE yells at me, and by default it is now doing it all the time. What gives? It turns out there is an easy registry fix to get the menus back to normal. Simply set the following registry key:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\General]
"SuppressUppercaseConversion"=dword:00000001

Restart VS 2012, and everything is back to normal. Well, as normal as VS 2012 gets.

Here is a reg file you can download to perform the fix for you:

Suppress Uppercase Menu in VS 2012.reg

Jquery - Animating a car

nospam@example.com (JohnKoer) — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 20:51:53 -0400

There was a question over on stackoverflow the other day that I had some fun with. Someone asked how to animate a truck moving on a map. The implementation I provided was a static one and would only work for this map, but it was kind of fun to see the result. I figured I would share the result here.

Processing Command Line Applications using C#

nospam@example.com (JohnKoer) — Tue, 8 May 2012 22:51:48 -0400

Here is a quick video on how to get at the output from a command line application in C# 4.0:

Code Snippets after the break.
Continue reading "Processing Command Line Applications using C#"

ImgUr Album Downloader

nospam@example.com (JohnKoer) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 21:22:19 -0500

I had some friends upload an album to imgur and I wanted to download them to my computer, but I found that imgur did not have an easy way to do this; So I wrote a little app that will let you download all pictures in an album directly to your machine.

Simply put the URL of the album into the Album URL text box and click the download button. By default it will save the images to your My Pictures\ImgUr Albums folder, but that can be changed using the settings button. Also, the folder icon will take you directly to the folder of the last album downloaded.

If you have any suggestions, post them here.

Download the application here.

Update: I have updated the installer to use a more standard installation package, which should alleviate problems in chrome and firefox.

Update 2012-06-27: The downloader has been updated to support albums with more than 56 items in it.

Using Reddit's API in C#

nospam@example.com (JohnKoer) — Mon, 3 Oct 2011 12:00:00 -0400

I started using Reddit's API in C# to try and get a list of stories and comments. It took me a bit to get the JSON syntax parsing right, so for anyone who needs help here is a decent example of loading the list of stories from r/all.

Continue reading "Using Reddit's API in C#"

Windows Azure: The subscription Id or the certificate provided is invalid

nospam@example.com (JohnKoer) — Sat, 1 Oct 2011 20:20:06 -0400

When testing an Azure application against the Microsoft Platform Ready tool, I received the error "The subscription Id or the certificate provided is invalid".

I triple checked my subscription Id and I knew that the certificate I was referencing was associated with my hosted service, so I didn't understand the issue.

It turns out the certificate they are looking for is actually a management certificate associated with the subscription and not one tied to the hosted service. So under your Azure management portal, go to the "Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN" and select the Management certificates section, and use a certificate from there, or upload one if you haven't used one yet.

Creating a Firewall Exception in VB.Net

nospam@example.com (JohnKoer) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 22:30:46 -0500

Windows Vista and 7 provide a rather robust firewall API that can be used to add exceptions to the firewall. The code below will add an exception to the windows firewall for the specified application, provided that the code is run with administrator privileges. Add a reference to %systemroot%\system32\FirewallAPI.dll to your application.

Imports NetFwTypeLib
Public Class Form1

    Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click

        ' Create the Application we want to add to the exception list
        Dim appType As Type = Type.GetTypeFromProgID("HnetCfg.FwAuthorizedApplication")
        Dim app As INetFwAuthorizedApplication
        app = DirectCast(Activator.CreateInstance(appType), INetFwAuthorizedApplication)

        ' Set the application properties
        app.Name = "Negative0's Sandbox"
        app.ProcessImageFileName = "C:\Users\Negative0\vbsandbox2.exe"
        app.Enabled = True

        ' Get the firewall manager, so we can get the list of authorized apps
        Dim fwMgrType As Type = Type.GetTypeFromProgID("HnetCfg.FwMgr")
        Dim fwMgr As INetFwMgr
        fwMgr = DirectCast(Activator.CreateInstance(fwMgrType), INetFwMgr)

        ' Get the list of authorized applications from the Firewall Manager, so we can add our app to that list
        Dim apps As INetFwAuthorizedApplications
        apps = fwMgr.LocalPolicy.CurrentProfile.AuthorizedApplications
        apps.Add(app)

    End Sub

End Class

Colorized by: CarlosAg.CodeColorizer

Find Pixels on the screen by color without using GetPixel API.

nospam@example.com (JohnKoer) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:27:00 -0500

Occasionally I need to write an app that reads pixels from the screen. When searching small chunks of the screen, the windows GetPixel API works fine, but if I need to search the whole screen, that gets too slow. One way that I have found that is about twice as fast as GetPixel is copying the screen to a bitmap and using the Bitmap's GetPixel method. Below is an extension method that works with the Screen class to find pixels.

Module ScreenExtensions
    <Extension()> _
    Public Function FindPixelsByColor(ByVal CurrentScreen As Screen, ByVal SearchColor As Color) As List(Of Point)

        Dim ScreenBitmap As Bitmap = Nothing
        Dim ScreenCopier As Graphics = Nothing

        If CurrentScreen Is Nothing Then Throw New ArgumentException("The screen object is nothing.")
        If SearchColor = Color.Empty Then Throw New ArgumentException("The search color is empty.")

        Try
            ' Initialize our output of points.
            Dim OutputPoints As New List(Of Point)

            ' Create the bitmap object that will be used to store the image of the screen.
            ScreenBitmap = New Bitmap(CurrentScreen.WorkingArea.Width, CurrentScreen.WorkingArea.Height, _
                         Imaging.PixelFormat.Format32bppArgb)

            ' Create the graphics object that will be used to copy the screen
            ScreenCopier = Graphics.FromImage(ScreenBitmap)

            ' Copy from the screen to the bitmap, so we can search for the pixels we are looking for
            ScreenCopier.CopyFromScreen(New Point(0, 0), New Point(0, 0), _
                    New Size(CurrentScreen.WorkingArea.Width, CurrentScreen.WorkingArea.Height))

            Dim ScreenColor As Color

            ' Loop through all of the pixels in the bitmap
            For x As Integer = 0 To CurrentScreen.WorkingArea.Width - 1
                For y As Integer = 0 To CurrentScreen.WorkingArea.Height - 1
                    ' Get the color at the current pixel from the screenshot.
                    ScreenColor = ScreenBitmap.GetPixel(x, y)

                    ' Compare the color from the screenshot with the desired color.  We need to level off the alpha
                    ' for this compare to work properly.  All colors from the screenshot have an alpha of 255.
                    If ScreenColor = Color.FromArgb(255, SearchColor) Then
                        ' If we have a match, then add the current x,y to our output.
                        OutputPoints.Add(New Point(x, y))
                    End If
                Next

            Next

            Return OutputPoints
        Catch ex As Exception
            Throw New Exception("Unable to perform pixel search.", ex)
        Finally

            If ScreenBitmap IsNot Nothing Then ScreenBitmap.Dispose()
            If ScreenCopier IsNot Nothing Then ScreenCopier.Dispose()
        End Try
    End Function
End Module

Colorized by: CarlosAg.CodeColorizer

To use this class. You can simply call it from any screen object. For example:

        Dim l As List(Of Point)

        l = Screen.PrimaryScreen.FindPixelsByColor(Color.FromArgb(128, 128, 128))

        MessageBox.Show(l.Count.ToString())

Colorized by: CarlosAg.CodeColorizer

Taking a screenshot in VB.Net

nospam@example.com (JohnKoer) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 13:24:00 -0400

Taking a screenshot from a .Net app is very easy. The function to use is the CopyFromScreen function from the Graphics class.

        Dim b As Bitmap

        'Hide the form, so it doesn't show in the screenshot
        Me.Hide()

        b = New Bitmap(My.Computer.Screen.WorkingArea.Width, _
                My.Computer.Screen.WorkingArea.Height, _
                Imaging.PixelFormat.Format32bppArgb)
        Dim g As Graphics = Graphics.FromImage(b)
        g.CopyFromScreen(New Point(0, 0), New Point(0, 0), _
                New Size(My.Computer.Screen.WorkingArea.Width, _
                 My.Computer.Screen.WorkingArea.Height))

        'Show the form again
        Me.Show()

        'Save the file
        Dim ofd As New SaveFileDialog ()
        ofd.Filter = "(*.bmp)|*.bmp"
        If ofd.ShowDialog() = Windows.Forms.DialogResult.OK Then
            b.Save(ofd.FileName)
        End If

Colorized by: CarlosAg.CodeColorizer

Using the ShowWindow API on a VB6 App from .Net

nospam@example.com (JohnKoer) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 22:14:00 -0500

I was helping someone with an issue restoring vb6 windows from a .Net application over on VBForums. The issue ended up being that the MainWindowHandle of the process was returning the window handle for the ThunderRT6Main window. The ThunderRT6Main is a hidden window that all VB6 apps have that is used for message processing. When we called ShowWindow against this window handle, nothing would happen. To get around this, I ended up calling the GetWindow API with a GW_HWNDPREV to get the window handle of the form window and then called ShowWindow on that.

Private SW_SHOWNORMAL As Integer = &H1
    <Runtime.InteropServices.DllImport("user32", EntryPoint:="ShowWindow")> _
    Private Shared Function ShowWindow(ByVal hwnd As IntPtr, ByVal nCmdShow As Integer) As Integer
    End Function

    Declare Auto Function GetWindow Lib "user32.dll" ( _
ByVal hWnd As IntPtr, ByVal uCmd As UInt32) As IntPtr

    Const GW_HWNDPREV As Integer = 3

    Dim proc As New Process

    Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click

        ' Start the process
        With proc
            .StartInfo.FileName = "c:\temp\project1.exe"
            .Start()
        End With

        ' Wait for it to finish loading and put the window handle into the form caption
        proc.WaitForInputIdle(10000)
        Me.Text = proc.MainWindowHandle.ToString("x8")

    End Sub

    Private Sub Button2_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button2.Click
        ' Call GetWindow with GW_HWNDPREV to get the form from the ThunderRT6Main window
        Dim vb6Window As IntPtr = GetWindow(proc.MainWindowHandle, GW_HWNDPREV)

        ' Call ShowWindow on the window we got back from the last call, which should be the ThunderRT6FormDC window
        ShowWindow(vb6Window, SW_SHOWNORMAL)

    End Sub

Keyboard Listener

nospam@example.com (JohnKoer) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:30:28 -0500

Whenever I need to write a keyboard listener, I always have to go back and search through old code to get the exact syntax. I then end up copying and pasting a whole bunch of code. I decided it was time to create a DLL that will handle all of this work for me. I also decided that I will post the DLL up here for anyone to use as they see fit.

The DLL is copyrighted, however, it is free for distribution with personal or commercial applications.

The setup package, which includes a help file, a sample app, and the DLL, can be downloaded from the downloads page, or from the link below.

Download: KeyboardListener.msi

The sample app shows off the basic functionality of listening for one particular key, a set number of keys, or all key presses on a system. Below is a screenshot of the sample application. This dll works system wide, not just within the application that is using it.