The time has come where I needed to handle streams, so the first I needed to generate some tests and within these tests I need to generate a stream based on some text.  So the first task was to convert a String in to a Stream, and while I am at it how about the other direction to (Stream to a String)

String in to a Stream

string text = “To Jani, Reminder Don’t forget me this weekend!'”;
byte[] byteArray = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(text);
MemoryStream streamXML = new MemoryStream(byteArray);

Stream to a String

xml.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
var readerXML = new StreamReader(xml);
string textXML = readerXML.ReadToEnd();

If you have ever come across generating XSD’s then you will soon find out that it’s a new ball game.  So in order to help you along I have generated this reference point of items that I have found useful.

XML Schema data types. The most common types are:

• xs:string
• xs:decimal
• xs:integer
• xs:boolean
• xs:date
• xs:time

I came across a very simple to use XML to XSD generator today

http://www.xmlforasp.net/CodeBank/System_Xml_Schema/BuildSchema/BuildXMLSchema/

While attending a DotNetDevNet meeting in September 2009, by Stephen Oakman and Ronnie Barker, I remembered they used a tool called AutoHotKey, I’ve just revisited the tool and found it has increased my productivity, and combining it with Jean-Paul S. Boodhoo article for replacing spaces with underscores it is just perfect for generating unit tests.

WCF is a very powerful tool for developers, and I’m sure as you dive in to the development environment you will come across the WCF Message, which is part of System.ServiceModel.Channels Namespace. You should be aware that a message body can only be accessed once and a message can only be written once.  This will in turn can cause a problem if you are creating your own IDispatchMessageInspector, as at some you will need to read the message and once you have read it, you are buggered!

So in order to use the Message you will have to copy the message in to a buffer using the CreateBufferCopy method, here is how you go about it

public void Validate(ref Message message)
{
    MessageBuffer buffer = message.CreateBufferedCopy(int.MaxValue);
    try
    {
    ValidateInput(buffer.CreateMessage());
    }
    catch (Exception)
    {
    throw;
    }
    message = buffer.CreateMessage();
}

I’ve been dealing with REST services within WCF, and one thing that has come to my attention is that the calling service or third party only has access to the REST interface and the XSD’s.

The XSD’s holds all the contract information, therefore if you need to generate a concreteclass you are going to have to translate the XSD to an object. 

I’ve have come across the XSD Object Generator frm Microsoft which appears to do the job.

XSDObjectGen.msi (667.00 kb)

After attending a talk on Silverlight 4, MVVM and TDD with Jesse Liberty, I thought it would be an idea to find out more information on MVVM, James Green provided me with a number of worth while links by Jason Dollinger from Lab49.  The main blog post is here http://blog.lab49.com/archives/2650 but the actual video is here http://www.lab49.com/files/videos/Jason%20Dolinger%20MVVM.wmv big download (about 1.5 hours).

The source code for the project he is doing is here http://blog.lab49.com/archives/2689

Another good one is by Karl Shifflet (he’s a VS IDE developer) http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Continuum/MVVM/

This guy is worth following as well http://sachabarber.net/?cat=17

Want to know not only MVVM but all about Silverlight 4 too, check out Scott Gu’s post for Silverlight 4 Training Kit