Back in the Sitecore world again!!

I have recently been able to get back into the Sitecore world and I am excited! I have been living in the Tridion world for a few years and it has been painful. With that being said it is not like Sitecore does not have it's pain points as well. Here are some I have run into as I start playing with version 9.

Keep your license file name "license.xml"

Using SIF to install locally only works with a license file named "license.xml". I had a temp license for awhile so in the file name I put the expiration date. I updated the install powershell script for SIF with the new license file name (yes in both places) and run the install. The install was fine until it tried to start the indexer window service. That step failed as the service would not start. When I looked at the logs the service said it was still looking for a file name "license.xml" and it was missing. Sure enough the license file I referenced was not copied over. I have not found the root cause of this yet, I just know changing it back to "license.xml" resolved the issue.

The prefix must be unique for all installs

When you set up your install.ps1 script for SIF you have to set the prefix for the install. I have installed a couple different instances to play with different things. Some of these had the same "demo" prefix. This will cause somethings (mainly the installed Window Services) to overlap and screw things up. So always make sure you have a unique prefix for all your instances.

Uninstalling, while manual, is not too painful

The above issue lead me into figuring the uninstall process out. While there is a nice script to install everything there is not a script to uninstall. There is a nice thread on StackExchange on doing this. How to Uninstall an instance created using the Sitecore Install Framework.

Access to the registry key 'Global' is denied.

This one was a bit hidden and you will not even know it is there unless you check your logs. Here is a nice blog with the fix.

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Experience Profile Anonymous, Unknown and Known contacts

When you first get started with Sitecore's experience profile the reporting for contacts can cause a little confusion. There are 3 terms that are thrown around, 1) Anonymous 2) Unknown 3) Known. When you read the docs they can bleed into each other a little. First, have a read through the Sitecore tracking documentation to get a feel for what Sitecore is trying to do. There are a couple key things here to first understand: Unless you call " IdentifyAs() " for request the contact is always anonymous. Tracking of anonymous contacts is off by default. Even if you call "IdentifyAs()" if you don't set facet values for the contact (like first name and email) the contact will still show up in your experience profile as "unknown" (because it has no facet data to display). Enabled Anonymous contacts Notice in the picture I have two contacts marked in a red box. Those are my "known" contacts that I called "IdentifyAs"

Uniting Testing Expression Predicate with Moq

I recently was setting up a repository in a project with an interface on all repositories that took a predicate. As part of this I needed to mock out this call so I could unit test my code. The vast majority of samples out there for mocking an expression predicate just is It.IsAny<> which is not very helpful as it does not test anything other then verify it got a predicate. What if you actually want to test that you got a certain predicate though? It is actually pretty easy to do but not very straight forward. Here is what you do for the It.IsAny<> approach in case someone is looking for that. this .bindingRepository.Setup(c => c.Get(It.IsAny<Expression<Func<UserBinding, bool >>>())) .Returns( new List<UserBinding>() { defaultBinding }.AsQueryable()); This example just says to always return a collection of UserBindings that contain “defaultBinding” (which is an object I setup previously). Here is what it looks like when you want to pass in an exp

Excel XIRR and C#

I have spend that last couple days trying to figure out how to run and Excel XIRR function in a C# application. This process has been more painful that I thought it would have been when started. To save others (or myself the pain in the future if I have to do it again) I thought I would right a post about this (as post about XIRR in C# have been hard to come by). Lets start with the easy part first. In order to make this call you need to use the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel dll. When you use this dll take note of what version of the dll you are using. If you are using a version less then 12 (at the time of this writing 12 was the highest version) you will not have an XIRR function call. This does not mean you cannot still do XIRR though. As of version 12 (a.k.a Office 2007) the XIRR function is a built in function to Excel. Prior version need an add-in to use this function. Even if you have version 12 of the interop though it does not mean you will be able to use the function. The

Security Config in IIS Express

I have gotten tired of always having to look this up or remember where it is at. That means it is time to post to my blog so I can find it easier and hopefully others can too. If you are having issues with IIS Express authentication errors (like the Unauthorized 401.2 error I always get) here is some help. I can never remember what the last setting was I had IIS Express set to for authorization. To change IIS Express for windows auth or anonymous auth you want to work with the applicationhost.config file. It can be found here …Documents\IISExpress\config. You want to change the settings in the following area of the config file. < authentication > < anonymousAuthentication enabled ="true" userName ="" /> < basicAuthentication enabled ="false" /> < clientCertificateMappingAuthentication enabled ="false" /> < digestAuthentication enabled ="false" />

WPF Localization - RESX Option

About a year ago I was building a WPF project in .Net 3.0 and Visual Studio 2005. I wanted to revisit this subject and see what has changed in .Net 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008. I will make a few of these posts to try and cover all the different options (RESX option, LocBaml option, Resource Dictionary Option). In this blog I will focus on using a resx file to localize an application. To show how the resx option is done I created a WPF form with three labels on it. The first label has is text set inline in XAML, the second has it text set via code behind from the resx file and the third has its text set via XAML accessing the resx file. The first thing that needs to happen to setup a project for localization is a small change to the project file. To make this change you will need to open the project file in notepad (or some other generic editor). In the first PropertyGroup section you need to add the follow XML node <UICulture>en-US</UICulture>. So the project file node w

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