A while back I needed a way to extract values from a LocalReport object. I wrote a proof of concept application that rendered the object as Excel/Xml data, then parsed that data using OpenXml. This worked perfectly well within the very limited scope typical of a POC, but when I finally got the chance to put it to real world use there were a few predictable snags. Most were reasonably simple to resolve but one - and only one - of the reports I was rendering resulted in this lovely error:...

How oh how is one to get XML from a local (not server) SSRS report? As it turns out, via Excel. The LocalReport.Render() method only supports Excel, PDF, and Image formats, but since the Excel 2007+ file format is just compressed XML, it didn’t take too much finagling to get what I was really after. The only thing I needed was the Microsoft OpenXml SDK, easily acquired through Nuget. This code snippet shows how to get the rendered values from a LocalReport in memory:...

For some odd reason, System.IO doesn’t include a method to get the UNC path for a file or directory. Even stranger, many code samples resort to using p/invoke in order to get that information. But then I came across this StackOverflow answer that explained a pure .NET way to do the same thing. I gave the original code a good refactoring and turned it into the extension method below. While the most obvious place to stick something like this is the Path class, since it’s static that’s not possible....

When you add a new coded ui test map to a project, Visual Studio conveniently organizes the accompanying .uitest, .cs, and .designer.cs files into a neat, unified bundle: So you’d THINK that’s what would happen when you copy an existing coded ui map from another project into a new one. But nooooo, Visual Studio just shrugs and stares blankly like “And…? What do you expect me to do with this?...

Today I encountered a very aggravating exception while playing back some coded ui tests. I consistently got a “Failed To Perform Action On Blocked Control Exception”. Yet nothing was blocking the row...

Late last night, as I was writing up a new blog post, I glanced down at my category list and realized I needed to change what was selected. Right away, I noticed that the “Most Used” tab was selected instead of “All Categories”. I must have clicked it by accident, I thought. But when I clicked the “All” tab, it was empty. The list was completely blank. I went back to the “Most Used” list and they all seemed intact....

One of the great disappointments of a programmer’s workday is creating a component only to discover shortly after finishing that someone else had already created the exact same component...

Except this: “All that matters is that you consume fewer calories than you burn.” ...