Useful CSV reader

To aid my unit testing I needed to populate a database with a load of test data. This data needs to be generated by some of the less technical guys on the project and so exporting CSV (Comma Separated Values) files from Excel seemed a sensible approach. So I then cast around for any existing code that would save me having to write a robust CSV parser. The search turned up this on CodeProject:

LumenWorks.Framework

The neat thing about it is that you can get field values either by index position or column name, assuming you put column headers in your file. The column name feature really helps out with maintainance of the test data as we evolve and vary the schema slightly – we can insert columns with no worries about upsetting existing reader code.
It’s easy to use and install in your own project, and the CodeProject article describes the basic usage pattern. At the moment it is just linked in to the unit test framework, but is so useful I will probably make it a part of the core application libary to facilitate importing data from customers as we anticipate some of our customers could have thousands of records to import when they move to our system.

Don’t believe NUnit

Just a quick note about a little problem I found using Nunit (2.2.9, but affects earlier revisions too).

After a bunch of edits to my project, I suddenly started getting messages from NUnit GUI “could not load file or assembly nunit.core”. Try as I could, this would not go away. This included everything from reinstalling NUnit to tracking DLL loading via SysInternal’s Process Explorer tool.
My project is non trivial – a top level solution containing an ASP2 web project, a couple of library DLL’s for the business logic, a unit test executable, and a testing helper library to help cross reference test results against direct SQL calls. As I’ll be writing about in another post shortly, incorporating unit testing into an ASP project is a pain in the rear and so I had been restructuring things. My natural assumption based on the error message was I had messed up something in the linking/referencing.

But it turned out to be an error in the application config file – for some reason NUnit reports this as a DLL missing, not that you have mistyped a bit of config text. I simply had a closing tag in the wrong place – still syntactically correct, however.
This link is by someone else who hit the exact same problem, and he has written about in more detail.

So remember folks: never assume a system generates the correct error message for all circumstances.

Adding ASP Role tables to your own database

This is still work in progress, but I want to incorporate the user role management tables within my own database, as the concept of users and their distinct roles ties right in with the core business model of the new site.
The following link explains the standalone tool to create the tables:
ASP.NET SQL Server Registration Tool

Invoking the exe runs a wizard requesting the database service – it needs to match the connection string as mentioned in the gotcha above. Since no parameters are specified, it then creates a database “aspnetdb” with all the role tables. This is not quite what I want, as I need these added to my application database.

The answer is to use the command line:
aspnet_regsql -S -E -A all -d

If you run SQL Management Server Studio Express before and after – not forgetting to hit ‘refresh’ – then a bunch of new tables are added: aspnet_Applications, aspnet_Roles, aspnet_SchemaVersions, aspnet_Users, aspnet_UsersInRoles etc. Now it is just a matter of hooking those up with the application tables.

Since I wanted membership and roles as well as basic authentication I used the “-A all” option to add everything in. Of course I get profile and web-part support too with this, but I may choose to exploit such features in the future.