Back in November I participated in Virtual Tech Days which is an online conference presented by Microsoft. In the session I discussed the enhancements to web deployment using Visual Studio 2010 and MSDeploy. Some of the topics which I covered includ:

• web.conig (XDT) transforms
• How to publish to local file system using Visual Studio
• How to publish to a 3rd party host using Visual Studio via MSDeploy
• How to publish to local IIS server using the .cmd file generated by Visual Studio
• How to use msdeploy.exe to delete IIS applications
• How to use the IIS Manager to import web packages
• How to use msdeploy.exe to deploy a web package to the local IIS server
• How to use msdeploy.exe to deploy a web package to a remove IIS server
• How to use msdeploy.exe to deploy a web package & set parameters using SetParameters.xml to a remote IIS server

You can download the video & all of my sample files at http://virtualtechdays.com/pastevents_2010november.aspx. In the samples you will find all of the scripts that I used and a bunch of others which I didn’t have time to cover. Enjoy!

Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi @sayedihashimi

I will be speaking at the Orlando Code Camp on Saturday March 27. I will be giving two session; one on Simplifying deployments with MSDeploy and Visual Studio 2010 and the other on ASP.NET MVC View Helpers. By the way, the other name for MSDeploy is the Web Deployment Tool.

If you have ever had issues with deploying web applications (which includes everyone who has ever deployed a web app :) ) then you need to attend my session. I will discuss the three major scenarios of deploying web applications:

• Deploying to a local IIS server
• Deploying to an IIS server on the intranet
• Deploying to a 3rd party host

I will be demonstrating how to perform 2 of the 3; deploying to local IIS server and to a 3rd party host. Since I won’t have any other machines besides my notebook I will not be demoing how to deploy to an IIS server on the intranet, but it is very similar to the other 2 scenarios. There has been a lot of work in the area of web deployment (deployment in general actually) recently which could really help spare you of a lot of headache. I presented this at the South Florida Code Camp a couple weeks ago and a person actually stated in the session “There are a lot of people who wish they were in here right now”! If you are in the area then you should attend my session, you won’t regret it.

Here is the abstract:

Visual Studio 2010 will be shipped including integration with Microsoft’s Web Deployment Tool, MSDeploy. For quite a while web deployments have been very difficult to manage and automate. With MSDeploy you can manage the complexities of web deployments. One of the great aspects of the Web Deployment Tool is that it is integrated into Visual Studio with MSBuild tasks and targets. Since Team Foundation Build can leverage MSBuild we can take advantage of those tasks and targets to automate web deployments using Team Build.

My other talk will be on creating leaner views with ASP.NET MVC View Helpers. If you are using ASP.NET MVC then this is one of the sessions you’ll be interested in. I will be getting in depth about ASP.NET View Helpers, and just talking ASP.NET MVC in general. I gave this talk at the Jacksonville Developers User Group last week and it was great. I’m very excited about these two talks, I’m sure they will be great. Here is the abstract.

If you have been using ASP.NETMVC then you certainly have been using some of the built in view helper methods that are available, you know those expressions like Html.TextBox("textBoxName") and Html.ValidationMessage("Required"). View helpers are nothing more than extension methods which create HTML that is injected into your views based on the method and its parameters. Creating your own view helpers is very simple and can be extremely beneficial. By writing your own custom view helpers you will benefit in at least the following ways

• Simplifies Your Views
• Eases Re-hydrating HTML Elements with ModelState Values
• Standardizes the Creation of Common HTML Components
• Helps you Implement the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) Principal

I have published a 22 page paper discussing custom ASP.NET MVC view helpers along with a sample app at http://mvcviewhelpers.codeplex.com/ if you are interested.

If you are in the area this weekend its going to be a great event. I think there were >400 people there last year, so it should be a good turn out this year as well. I hope to see you there.

Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi

This weekend I will be speaking at the South Florida Code Camp. This has historically been a very popular event (>500 people) with a lot of good speakers.

I will be presenting 2 topics there, the abstracts are below.

MSBuild 4.0 What’s New

MSBuild, the Microsoft Build Engine, was first introduced with Visual Studio 2005. This was MSBuild 2.0, and it was delivered along with the .NET Framework 2.0. The next major release of MSBuild, version 3.5, was introduced for Visual Studio 2008 and was deployed with the .NET Framework 3.5. Now the third major version, 4.0, is being introduced with Visual Studio 2010, and in concert with previous releases is being shipped with the .NET Framework 4.0. In this session we will talk about the new features included with MSBuild 4.0 and how it can make your MSBuild files better. The topics we will talk about will include.
•    Inline Tasks
•    Property Functions
•    Item Functions
•    Before / After Targets
•    Support for C++ projects (both native and managed)
•    New Object Model

Simplifying deployments with MSDeploy and Visual Studio 2010

In this session we will demonstrate how to greatly simplify deployments of web applications using MSDeploy. MSDeploy is shipped with Visual Studio 2010 and is available as a separate download. Visual Studio 2010 has enhances support for MSDeploy and we will go over many of those details in this session. We will also be discussing how MSDeploy can be used as a stand alone tool outside of Visual Studio 2010. So if you are not able to upgrade to Visual Studio 2010 but developing web applications this is still a great for you.

If you are in the South Florida area this is definitely an event that you don’t want to miss out. Please stop by and see me!

Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi

This weekend I will be speaking at the Tallahassee Code Camp on Saturday September 5, 2009. I will be presenting two sessions which are:

ASP.NET Custom View Helpers

If you have been using ASP.NET MVC then you certainly have been using some of the built in
view helper methods that are available, you know those expressions like
Html.TextBox("textBoxName") and Html.ValidationMessage("Required").
View helpers are nothing more than extension methods which create HTML that is injected into
your views based on the method and its parameters. Creating your own view helpers is very
simple and can be extremely beneficial. By writing your own custom view helpers you will
benefit in at least the following ways

• Simplifies Your Views
• Easies Rehydrating HTML Elements with ModelState Values
• Standardizes the Creation of Common HTML Components
• Helps you Implement the DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) Principal

We will take an in depth look at how you can easily and effectively create your own view helpers. We will also discuss how the default view helpers were created and the benefits that they provide.

Utilizing Web Deployment Projects

In this session we will take a look at how Web Deployment Projects can be used to assist in the deployment of web sites and web applications; including ASP.NET Web Applications and ASP.NET MVC Web Applications. We will give an overview of what Web Deployment Projects are and the functionality that is available out of the box. A Web Deployment Project is a wrapper for the aspnet_compiler.exe tool in the form of an MSBuild project and adds value to using the tool itself. Because they are MSBuild files we are able to customize and extend the process. We will discuss how we can customize the process to perform common steps such as

1. Creating Virtual Directories
2. Updating values in the web.config file
3. Encrypting the web.config file
4. Minimizing JavaScript files
5. Versioning the Assemblies

If you are in the area and interested in these topics make sure to drop in!

Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi

On Friday August 28 and Saturday August 29 there will be a conference in St. Louis called St. Louis Day of .NET that I will be speaking at. Here is the outline

Simplify build and deployment of ASP.NET sites with Web Deployment Projects

When you are creating ASP.NET sites, (either ASP.NET web site / ASP.NET Web Project / ASP.NET MVC Project / etc) you will need to deploy the site to machines which will host them. Classically there were two options; xcopy the actual source to the live server and let them be compiled on demand or you could use the aspnet_compiler.exe and aspnet_merge.exe tools to pre-compile the website for you. The little known, yet extremely useful, Web Deployment Projects (an add on for Visual Studio) can greatly simplify the process of build and deployment. Web Deployment Projects will take care of the complexities of the aspnet_compiler.exe and the aspnet_merge.exe tool for you by way of a tight UI integration into Visual Studio itself. Aslo Web Deployment Projects are MSBuild files so you can extend and customize the process to suit your exact needs. In this session we will introduce Web Deployment Project, show that you can perform very powerful actions without writing a single line of code (or even text)! We will also dive into the MSBuild file that is the Web Deployment Project and show how to customize the process.

This session talks about Web Deployment Projects (2005 version) and how they can help in the build and deployment process. If you are going to be attending and interested in build and deployment of ASP.NET web sites and projects then you don't want to miss this session.

Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi

When I was in Orlando presenting at the Orlando Code Camp I had the pleasure of working with Russ Fustino and Stan Schultes on the latest edition of Russ' Toolshed - It's All About the Tools. This is a Channel 9 show that Russ has created. You can check out the video that I'm in at Episode 2 It's All About The Tools TV Show.

The topic that I discuss in that video is how you can create a custom MSBuild logger to update your Twitter page to keep everybody informed about the build. I love how using a REST based api can be so simple when appropriate. Since Twitter exposes one, of course it was pretty simple. I think that this is a pretty cool application of a custom MSBuild logger, and as far as I know it is the first of it's kind. You can download the source for my logger from my company's page sedotech.com and clicking on the MSBuild Twitter Logger link there.

Check me out in that video, I'm presenting from about the 50 minute mark to about the 65 minute mark. The guys were teasing me saying that I type fast, I don't think so, do you?

This is my second video on Channel 9, my first is described in my post at http://www.sedodream.com/PermaLink,guid,4db4f0b7-9d23-4c64-9fd1-992fb2ae1727.aspx.

Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi

This coming Wednesday I will be at the Jacksonville Developer User Group. The topic title is "Leveraging Web Deployment Projects". I am still thinking about a new title, I'm not extremely happy about that one. Here is the description about the talk.

In this session we will take a look at how Web Deployment Projects can be used to assist in the deployment of web sites and web applications; including ASP.NET Web Applications and ASP.NET MVC Web Applications. We will give an overview of what Web Deployment Projects are and the functionality that is available out of the box. A Web Deployment Project is a wrapper for the aspnet_compiler.exe tool in the form of an MSBuild project and adds value to using the tool itself. Because they are MSBuild files we are able to customize and extend the process. We will discuss how we can customize the process to perform common steps such as

1. Creating Virtual Directories
2. Updating values in the web.config file
3. Encrypting the web.config file
4. Minimizing JavaScript files
5. Versioning the Assemblies

In this session we will not be covering MSBuild itself, so I will not go into too much detail about MSBuild specifics. More to be discussed is how you can take advantage of Web Deployment Projects and how that build process can be extended and customized.

Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi