Navigation can always be fiddly with Umbraco with XSLT. This template take two parameters, startNode and maxLevel. It recursively prints a hyperlinked list of nodes so you end up with a nested list of <ul>‘s going maxLevel levels deep from startNode.

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While writing the database synchronization code for a number of apps, I’ve found myself writing method after method of boilerplate which does more or less the same thing. This generic method uses a sorted collection comparer, which I can’t claim credit for. I believe it was originally from StackOverflow.

The SortedCollectionComparer compares two lists using an IComparer, performing one action when an item only exists in one list (eg: adding it to a combined list), and another action when an object is in both lists (eg: comparing last modified time).

This lets you write (relatively) little boilerplate to merge two lists:
This is done using an intermediate method to call SortedCollectionComparer.CompareSortedCollections.

public List<locationbase> SynchronizeLocations(string otherDbPath) {
    SqLiteDal otherDb = new SqLiteDal(otherDbPath);
    var merged = new List</locationbase><locationbase>();
    this.SynchronizeItems</locationbase><locationbase>(() => this.GetLocations(), () => otherDb.GetLocations(), merged.Add, (loc1, loc2) =>
        {
            if (loc1.LastModified > loc2.LastModified) {
                merged.Add(loc1); // first item newer
            } else {
                // either they're equal or the one in the second database is newer, either way we want the one from the second Db.
                merged.Add(loc2);
            }
    }, new LocationComparer());
    return merged;
}
</locationbase>

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Migrating data between applications is always a fiddly process. Ideally someone has already written a converter which allows you to import from a generic format (eg: XML) but in the case of my transition from Vanilla forums to YAF.NET, nothing existed already and I had to start from scratch.

First I tried using SSIS to take a flat file (exported from Vanilla) into SQL Server. This took the best part of a day due to all of the conversions involved and the difficult to parse format used by Vanilla. After a day struggling I eventually decided to give up and do it in .NET.

This WPF utility needs a little modification before it will work for you, it should at least give you a huge headstart in the process. I used SSIS to import the users so I’ll skip that step.

1. Export the gdn_users (Users), gdn_discussion (Topics), gdn_category (Forums) and gdn_comment (Posts) tables using phpMyAdmin to XML.
2. Open the Constants.cs in the solution and update the paths to point to these files.
3. Compile and run the app and hit the ‘Go’ button
4. Disco

This will import your forums, topics and posts from Vanilla. The only thing it won’t do is correctly arrange subforums, so you’ll still need to re-arrange the forums afterwards to re-nest forums. The main thing for me was getting the post data across, but the app could easily be extended to import any other important data from Vanilla.

In creating a templating system for people to insert placeholder text, I wanted a toolbar with buttons which would insert text at the position of the cursor when clicked.

This plugin takes an array of button IDs and the text to be inserted when each button is clicked. EG:L

var buttons = [
	{ 'buttonId':'btnName', 'insertionText':'%%NAME%%' },
	{ 'buttonId':'btnAddress', 'insertionText':'%%ADDRESS%%' },
];
$('#toolbar').hypotoolbar(buttons, 'txtBody');

When the btnName and btnAddress buttons are clicked, %%NAME%% and %%ADDRESS%% will be inserted into the textarea with ID txtBody at the cursor position.
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This small plugin will display a progress meter which fills up as text is entered into an input or textarea. Useful for indicating to a user how much remaining text they have in a field with a maximum length.

Options

• messageFormat – The format for the count label. Available placeholders are {current}, {total} and {percent}
• showCount – true/false – Whether or not to display a total of the current length/maximum allowed length.
• max – The maximum allowed length
• allowOverLength – true/false – Whether or not to prevent more text being entered than allowed.
• classes An object containing two keys:
  • standard – The progress bar class if less than the allowed length of text is entered.
  • over – The class if equal to or more than the allowed text length is entered
• textbox – The textbox/input element to measure.

Demo
Source on GitHub

One of the repetitive things I found myself doing with Twitter’s Bootstrap framework was creating buttons which had a background gradient and an image. (Doesn’t work in < IE9, but does in Fx, Chrome and Safari).

This makes use of the multiple backgrounds CSS3 property. The CSS I was typing every time was this (eg: for an ‘add’ button):
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