Safely updating WinForms controls from a background thread.
Mike Woodring's .NET Sample Page

File Manipulation

System.IO
DirectoryInfo, FileInfo -- check the Exists property after construction to see if valid.
DirectoryInfo.GetFiles( "blah*.txt" )
FileInfo.CreationTime, LastAccessTime, LastWriteTime

COM+ Serviced Components

First try creating a .NET COM+ object. A few things I've learned along the way.

Assembly that has class derived from ServicedComponet must have a strong-name, and application (COM+ package) name.
using System.Reflection;
[assembly: ApplicationName("MyComponent")]
[assembly: AssemblyKeyFile("MyComponent.snk")]
(Remove the AssemblyKeyFile attribute from the AssemblyInfo.cs if you do this from the code)
(Can put these in AssemblyInfo.cs too. Need "using System.EnterpriseServices;" if move the ApplicationName attribute in there.)

Generate keypair with sn –k MyComponent.snk. For C#, put this snk file in the obj directory where assembly DLL is being built. For VB, put it in the solution directory. So after a successful build, the assembly should have a publickey entry in the assembly manifest (use ILDASM to view).

If you just run now without pre-registration, the runtime will register the package and assembly in COM+ "on the fly" (pretty cool, but takes a while to do this).

Pre-register using regsvcs tool.
regsvcs /fc MyAssembly.dll

Server Activation - help file says server activated assemblies need to be in the GAC to be called from DLLHOST, otherwise caller will get exception. This does not seem to be the case (check GAC after auto-registration and the assembly is not there.)

Other attributes to be aware of (what level to declare them), and their default values if you don't declare the attribute:

• ApplicationActivation - library (activated in caller's process)
  
• ApplicationName - <assembly name>
  
• ApplicationID - <generated guid> (used instead of ApplicationName when caller instantiates object)
  
• AutoComplete (method) - false (won't automatically commit transaction upon successful method exit)
  
• Transaction (class) - false
  

Send Email

Usually done from web application, but you can do this from WinForms too.
Simple code example:

	using System.Web.Mail;



	SmtpMail.SmtpServer = "houmailgwi1.hou.aspentech.com";

	MailMessage msg = new MailMessage();



	msg.Subject = "test from .NET";

	msg.From = "danhanan@yahoo.com";

	msg.To = "danhanan@yahoo.com";

	msg.Body = "did you get this?";



	SmtpMail.Send( msg );

search site settings
www.atomz.com
brdking@hotmail.com
standard pwd

options - url entrypoints, added archive link
index - set to Monday nights at midnight
template

WinForm Download

Chris Sells article in July MSDN about automatic downloading of WinForms from intranet.

How to make it work when network connection is down:

• Hit URL when network is alive. This puts exe and supporting DLL assemblies in download cache. ( gacutil /ldl to display)
  
• Open IE and put in offline mode ( File | Work Offline )
  
• Hit the URL again. App should run from download cache.
  

Note: this does not work for some reason when hitting a URL on the local machine (localhost or machinename).

Roundtrips for Supporting Files

See the article for hints on reducing round-trips. By default, runtime will go back to server ~35 times to locate resources for the app. You can shorten the trips by embedding resources in the exe itself - put attribute on assembly saying the resources are of a certain culture.

Also weird about foo.exe.config - no matter if it's a newer version, it will never get updated past first version! What to do about this?

ASP.NET Pages as Remoting Clients

DotNetRemoting.cc showed this example of putting the RemotingConfiguration.Configure call in Application_OnStart.
How to setup ASP.NET as a remoting client.

Conditional Compilation

Since C# doesn't have a preprocessor, you have to do something a little different to include/exclude code based on a symbol definition.

[Conditional("DEBUG")]

public void DoSomething( )

{

   Console.WriteLine( "debug something" );

}

Remoting Trials

Finally getting around to trying some remoting of my own. Here are some gotchas that I've run into:

As the examples do it, I have the remotable object in its own assembly. Then the server project is just a simple console app that reads the config file and waits for <enter> key to stop. The client project has a reference to the remotable object, and reads the client config file to setup the remoting. The entries in the client config file caused some confusion...

Client Config

<configuration>

  <system.runtime.remoting>

    <application>

      <client>

        <!-- 

          wellknown

          type: object, assembly

          url:  http://machine:port/uri (uri as specified in server config file)

        -->



        <wellknown 

          type="RemoteAddrMarshal, RemoteAddrObj" 

          url="http://localhost:6789/RemServerUri"

        />

     </client>

     <channels>

       <!-- Port 0 allows remoting to choose a channel for return calls.  

	           (May only be necessary if using callbacks to client)

       -->

       <channel 

         ref="http" 

         port="0"

       />

     </channels>

Server Config

<configuration>

  <system.runtime.remoting>

    <application>

      <service>

        <wellknown 

          mode="Singleton" 

          type="RemoteAddrMarshal, RemoteAddrObj"  

          objectUri="RemServerUri"

        />

      </service>

      <channels>

        <channel 

          ref="http" 

          port="6789"

        />

      </channels>

Common Problems

• The underlying connection was closed: Unable to connect to the remote server - server process not started or client connecting on wrong machine/port
  
• Object has been disconnected or does not exist at the server - incorrect URI for remote object
  
• Cannot load type RemoteAddrMarshal, RemoteAddrObj - server can not load the speicified type. Syntax is "[namespace.]type,assembly" - are you missing a namespace in the type name?
  

Notes

• Use RemotingServices.IsTransparentProxy to determine if you have a proxy to MarhsalByRef object or local object.
  
• RemotingConfiguration.Configure and new will both succeed even if server not available. Won't get error until the first call to remote object.
  
• If remote object is declared within a namespace, be sure to include that namespace in the wellknown / type element in both client and server config files.
  
• If remote object is declared serializable, the remote server doesn't have to be running. In my test case, the object is implemented in an assembly separate from the remote object, so the server is unnecessary.