Category Archives: Tips and Tricks

Tip: Healthcard doesn’t cover Pandemic

Did you know that COVID-19 was already declare by WHO as Pandemic. Currently DOH has not yet declared it as Pandemic.

If DOH happened to declare COVID-19 as Pandemic, healthcard will not cover it anymore.

Source: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/wealth/insure/health-insurance/your-health-insurance-policy-might-not-cover-coronavirus-in-these-situations/articleshow/74570246.cms

Azure DevOps Export to Excel Error TF400051

When requesting an Open in Excel a pop-up shows this error.

TF400051: Cannot process URL when attempting to open a query in Excel….

Azure DevOps

This is maybe your installed Visual Studio (VS) that is a lower version recently. Example. Before you’ve install VS 2017 and then VS 2019, but recently you’ve install VS 2010 due to a legacy project support. That sometimes changes a registry that produce this error.

To fix it follow the following:

  1. Open RegEdit
  2. Navigate to

    Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\tfs\shell\open\command
  3. Change the value to the following

    C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Team Foundation Server\15.0\TfsProtocolHandler.exe “%1”
  4. Save the changes.

That’s it. Try exporting again and it should work now.

God Bless!
Thanks,
Thomie

Dynamic Object in C#

In my experience there was a need to create an object and its properties dynamically. Namely as follows:

thisIsMyObject.MyProperty1 = "AnyValueOfAnyType";
thisIsMyObject.MyProperty2 = true;
thisIsMyObject.MyProperty3 = 1;

To do this there could be different approaches like using a dictionary

Dictionary<string,object> c = new Dictionary<string,object>();
//adding a value
c.Add("MyProperty1", "AnyValueOfAnyType");
c.Add("MyProperty2", true);
c.Add("MyProperty3", 1);
//getting the value
c["MyProperty1"]; //AnyValueOfAnyType
c["MyProperty2"]; //true
c["MyProperty3"]; //1

But you may also use a dynamic object like as follows

var c = new System.Dynamic.ExpandoObject() as IDictionary<string, Object>; //namespace for note only
//adding a value
c["MyProperty1"] = "AnyValueOfAnyType";
c["MyProperty2"] = true;
c["MyProperty3"] = 1;
//getting the value
c["MyProperty1"]; //AnyValueOfAnyType
c["MyProperty2"]; //true
c["MyProperty3"]; //1

This way its more presentable and like using an array.

God Bless!

Thanks,
Thomie

Visual Studio Extension -Ngrok

Ngrok is now widely being used. From simple web development up to complex development. Is hard to run Ngrok everytime you are coding specially when using IIS Express that if not configured to use a specific IP it will generate random port which is a hard to map.

Thankfully there is a plug-in for our beloved Visual Studio to integrate this.

Ngrok Extensions

With Ngrok Extension we only open our Visual Studio solution and navigate to Tool>Start ngrok Tunnel and it will create a tunnel for the websites under your solution.

Try it now!

God Bless!

Thanks,
Thomie

Ngrok – Free Web Tunneling

In the verge of today’s web development we encounter cases that in order to proceed we need to have a public accessible URL. Thankfully, Ngrok provide a free service to do this.

What it does is tunnel your machine to a Ngrok URL with a specific port. We just need to download the ngrok.exe from their website and run the command like

ngrok http 80


With this command your service on your local machine that is running on port 80 will be mapped and accessible publicly for FREE. For a full documentation view it here.

God Bless!

Thanks,
Thomie

Want to convert your load to cash?

I was once a user of load that expires. Expiring load is a past as with the ability to convert load to cash emerges with LoadToCash

LoadToCash support the following:

  1. All SIMs
  2. Postpaid and Prepaid
  3. Unlimited conversions
  4. Several options to cashout

Availing the service is just a app away. Download LoadToCash via Play Store. Register. Convert. and then Wait.

LoadToCash allows cashout to the following:

  1. BDO
  2. BPI
  3. GCash
  4. Coins.ph
  5. Paymaya

Just a tip your consumables is not allowed to be pasaload. But they can be converted via LoadToCash.

God Bless!

Thanks,
Thomie

Compress files on windows via Command Line

Hi,

There are time we want to perform things via CLI. Today I encountered to perform compression via CLI for my windows machine as it has problem performing the task via the UI. Here are the codes:

  • Compression

compact /c /s:”full path of folder” /i /Q

  • Uncompress

compact /u /s:”full path of folder” /i /Q

That’s it

Source: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/26340-compress-uncompress-files-folders-windows-10-a.html

Review: Tab Manager

In a world of development cycle we open several tabs for research and development, requirement gathering, and even when presenting. In cases like this we want to open tabs simultaneously. Most of us will do this by creating folder on our Bookmarks and open them up. For me I use Tab Manager on chrome to do this. Its so easy.

  1. Open the tabs you want
  2. Name them on Tab Manager
  3. Then click the + sign

Thats it. It will save that as a group and with just one click you will open them all. The best part of it is its free and it sync the data along with your google account. Download it now at https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-manager/mcidendbndlekegaphipeeoaemckemhm

God Bless!

Thanks,
Thomie

Fix SignalR OnDisconnected not working

This just come up and after searching and testing it like to Fix SignalR OnDisconnected if not working is to implement on the client at least one method so that this method will be called. Think of it like a requirement.

Example for the SignalR residing on the same server

<!– Reference to jQuery –>
<!– Reference to SignalR –>
<script src=”~/hubs/signalr“></script>
<script>
var onlineHubProxy = $.connection.onlineHub;

onlineHubProxy.client.void = function(){
//do nothing
};

$.connection.start();

</script>

Then try again now and the Default methods of hubs will now be working properly.

God Bless!

Thanks,
Thomie

DateTime not parsing MM/dd/yyyy correctly on Windows 10 on ASP .Net MVC

Have you experienced coding and all of a sudden when on windows 10 you experienced that MM/dd/yyyy is not a valid date? This is because of the culture that is default implemented on your device, in this case on my device with Windows 10 Pro. To cause of this is the machine is by default is using dd/MM/yyyy and in this case apps that we are developing is having this kind of issue.

Thank fully the fastest way to fix is via the web.config with the following code:

<system.web>

<globalization culture=”en-US” uiCulture=”en-US”/>

 

And then run again your application and it will now accept your MM/dd/yyyy.

Replace words on MS Word using C#

Hi,

Recently I was instructed to create an application that will be able to replace an array of words and replace them with an array of corresponding words on an MS Word document. With this I’ve searched the following:

Prerequisites

  1. Visual Stduio
  2. Install the nuget package DocX
  3. Administrative access on the context the application is running

Code

Dictionary<string, string> lReplacements = new Dictionary<string, string>();
string newFullPath = @”c:\sample.docx”;

using (DocX document = DocX.Load(newFullPath))
{

//for loop is better than foreach
foreach (var item in lReplacements)
{

document.ReplaceText(item.Key, item.Value);

}
document.Save();

}

Hope it helped you as it helped me with this simple snippet.

God Bless!
Thanks,
Thomie

Convert Hard-drive from Dynamic to Basic

Hi,

Just recently we had a requirement to enable bitlocker on our development machines. Unfortunately you can’t use bitlocker on hard drive that of type DYNAMIC. So initially we were advised to have our machines reformatted. We all know that having our development machines reformatted will result to downtime on development task so I tried searching the web for solution and I found one.

As always for a peace of mind you may backup your files just in case you did something that is not part of the steps.

 

Summary

  1. Delete volume of the drive using Diskpart and convert drive to basic
  2. Use Gparted to recreate the volume
  3. Enable bitlocker

Details

  1. Create a Gparted bootable disk
    1. Download the latest YUMI Multiboot creator
    2. Download the latest GParted ISO either the x64 or the one that is compatible to your machine
    3. Insert the USB drive to your machine
    4. Run YUMI
    5. On Step 1 select the USB drive and check on Format drive preferably as FAT32
    6. On Step 2 select Gparted
    7. On Step 3 locate the downloaded ISO file from Step 1.2
    8. Click Create and wait for the USB drive to be created successfully
    9. Keep it for now as we will use it later
  2. Create a local administrator
    1. This is a different from a domain admin that is created for corporate machine this is an account that binded only to your machine
    2. To create open Computer Management
    3. Navigate to Local User admin Groups > Users
    4. Right click and select New User
    5. Fill up the following accordingly
      1. User name
      2. Full Name
      3. Password
      4. Confirm Password
      5. User must change password at next logon : UNCHECKED
    6. Double click on the newly created account and select the Member of Tab
    7. Click Add and search for Administrators
  3. Boot your machine to command prompt, on our Machine we are using Windows 10 and below are the steps to boot to the command prompt
    1. On your task bar go to All Settings
    2. Select Update & Security
    3. Select Recovery
    4. Under Advance startup click on Restart Now
    5. Your machine will restart
    6. On the said screen navigate to find the Command Prompt usually it is found by:
      1. Troubleshooting > Advanced > Command prompt
      2. Then select the local admin you have created on Step #2
    7. Type in Diskpart
    8. Type in  list disk take note of the disk you want to convert to basic
    9. Type in select disk <disknumber>
    10. Type in detail disk take note of the details for later reference #3.10
    11. This time we will delete all the volume of the said disk by
      1. select volume <volumenumber>
      2. delete volume
      3. Repeat step untill all volume has been deleted
    12. When all volumes has been deleted you may now convert that selected disk on #3.10 by typing convert basic
    13. Now our disk is converted to basic we need to reboot our machine and boot unto our USB live drive that we have created on Step #1
  4. After booting up on the USB Drive just look for the Gparted and just press enter until you see the desktop of Gparted
    1. Open GParted app and make sure that the drive we wanted to convert to basic is showing unallocated as we have deleted the volume on Step #3
    2. Now open terminal and type the following steps
      1. sudo -s
      2. testdisk
        1. On the testdisk follow this steps
          1. Select No Log.
          2. Select the disk drive you want to recover, e.g. /dev/sdc.
          3. Select your partition table type. Usually it’s Intel.
          4. Select Analyse and Quick Search.
          5. If you get asked whether your partition was created under Vista, answer yes/no.
          6. Your drive will be analysed and you will see a list of all found partitions. If you know what you are doing, you can edit the list, but usually that list is already the volume we’ve got on Step #3.10 and if yes just press Enter.
          7. On the next screen you have the option to either perform a second Deeper Search, or Write the current partition table to disk. If the quick search, which we checked if it matched our volume on Step #3.10, was successful, choose Write.
      3. Close and Open the GParted app to verify the changes
      4. If all is well you can now exit GParted and boot again
  5. Your machine will now boot properly and your drive will now be on Basic type.
  6. You can now enable bitlocker as needed.

 

Hope it helped you as it did to me.

 

God Bless!

Thanks,
Thomie

 

Referrences:

https://www.partition-tool.com/easeus-partition-manager/convert-dynamic-disk-to-basic-disk.htm

YUMI – Multiboot USB Creator

https://gparted.org/download.php

https://ubuverse.com/recover-a-disk-partition-with-testdisk-and-gparted-live/

C# Task<object> return Type

In every signalr or webapi request based application there is a need to indicate the return type of Task<object> along with the async keyword. Let say this sample:

public async Task<MyObject> GetItem(){

MyObject myObject = new MyObject();

myObject = await getSomeWhereThere();

#doSomethingElse

return myObject;

}

In this sample, we all know that this is a asynchronous request from somewhere. Which dictates that myObject will return later after the getSomeWhereThere(); has finished executing. But we need to remind of a very important thing that #doSomethingElse will not be executed in Xamarin if it is not properly used. Let say we did this instead:

public async void GetItem(){

MyObject myObject = new MyObject();

myObject = await getSomeWhereThere();

#doSomethingElse

}

In this code the #doSomethingElse will not be executed because it will only assume that after the getSomeWhereThere(); is executed you don’t mind if #doSomethingElse is still needed. Thus make sure that we use the Task<MyObject> in cases like this so that #doSomethingElse will still be executed.

PayMaya a good way to pay online

Hi,

Since then my only way to buy online is using my EON from UnionBank. But the ways to have it loaded is not many and is limited to Western union transfer or in back deposit which will take time of course. Thank fully there is another one and that is PayMaya. PayMaya a good way to pay online because it’s easy to load up with its several partners. Namely, BDO Online transfer, 7-Eleven, and MiniStop which is very accessible.

I strongly recommend it to my love ones and friends because of its flexibility. So head up to their website, https://paymaya.com/, to get more information and get yours now!

 

God Bless!

Tip: MSSQL Drop all triggers

Its funny that sometimes we need to drop all triggers because we inputed a logic that will prohibit a particular code. In cases like this we can drop them all and later create them again. In database with plent of tables, 100 tables, its hard if we drop them one by one. So here is a script that can help you as it just did to me.

SELECT N’DROP TRIGGER ‘ +QUOTENAME(OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(t.object_id)) + N’.’ +   QUOTENAME(t.name) + N’; ‘ + NCHAR(13)

FROM sys.triggers AS t

WHERE t.is_ms_shipped = 0 AND t.parent_class_desc = N’OBJECT_OR_COLUMN’;


God Bless!

Tip: MSSQL list all SPs by its modified date

In some cases we may want to get from MSSQL list all SPs by its modified date so that we know what we or our college did modified last. Here is a query you may use

SELECT name, OBJECT_DEFINITION(object_id), modify_date
FROM sys.procedures
ORDER BY modify_date DESC

This query will return the SPs from the latest modified stored procedure. Its handy specially when your migrating SPs manually.

God Bless!

Tip: View your website from different countries

Hi,

May be your a developer that wanted to view your website from different countries. Yes in instance of DNS migration or just for the purpose of other troubleshooting needs. Then go visit LocaBrowser which enable you to visit your website in a max of 6 destination. Go there now http://www.locabrowser.com/

 

screenshot-324

God Bless!

Thanks,
Thomie

Tips : Install .Net 3.5 of Windows Feature when under Proxy

Hi There,

We recently had a problem with our Windows 10 to Install .Net 3.5 of Windows Feature when under Proxy. We found out that the installer of Windows has the said installer with it but needs to be triggered by the following steps:

1. Run CMD as Administrator
2. DISM /Image:C:\test\offline /Enable-Feature /FeatureName:NetFx3 /All /LimitAccess /Source:D:\sources\sxs

God Bless!

Thanks,
Thomie