Disable password policies in ADLDS (Adam)

Since AD LDS uses the password policies from the local system or the domain, there is no way to set a specific password policy for the AD LDS instance. But there is a way to disable the policy so you could handle the password policy in your own code.

The following command disables the policy

dsmgmt "Configurable Settings" Connections "connect to server localhost:389" q "Set ADAMDisablePasswordPolicies to 1" "Commit changes" q q

Note! My instance of AD LDS is running on "localhost:389". Change it to the server and port that you use.

This nice article explains it in more detail

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Guard your code

You can call it code contracts or an argument guard. This is a simple implementation that can validate that the current state of a variable or method is as you expect it to be. If the validation fails, an exception is thrown. Example code:

public void SomeMethod(int arg1, int arg2)
{
    // This line will throw an exception when the arg1 is less or equal to arg2
    Guard.Check(() => arg1).IsGreaterThan(arg2);

    // This will check that arg1 is not null and that is in some range 1..100
    Guard.Check(arg2).IsNotNull().IsInRange(1,100);

    // Do stuff
}

Source code can be found on GitHub

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XmlTidy

Needed a tool to tidy some Xml in "Programmer's Notepad" and could not resist to created my own version of XmlTidy. :-)

using System;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.XPath;

namespace XmlTidy
{
    public class Program
    {
        private enum ExitCodes
        {
            Success = 0,
            Failure = 1
        }

        private static int Main(string[] args)
        {
            if (args.Length == 0)
            {
                return ShowUsage();
            }

            var inputFile = args[0];
            var outputFile = args.Length == 1 ? args[0] : args[1];
            return Tidy(inputFile, outputFile);
        }

        private static int ShowUsage()
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Usage: XmlTidy <inputfile> <outputfile>");
            Console.WriteLine("if <outputfile> is not specified, the <inputfile> is overwritten.");
            return (int)ExitCodes.Success;
        }

        private static int Tidy(string inputFile, string outputFile)
        {
            var result = (int)ExitCodes.Success;
            try
            {
                var document = new XPathDocument(inputFile);
                var settings = new XmlWriterSettings { IndentChars = "\t", Indent = true };
                var writer = XmlWriter.Create(outputFile, settings);
                document.CreateNavigator().WriteSubtree(writer);
                writer.Close();
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                Console.Error.WriteLine(ex.Message);
                result = (int)ExitCodes.Failure;
            }

            return result;
        }
    }
}

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Programmer's Notepad

Got a new laptop today and have started to install all the cool and useful tools I need. Previously I have used TextPad and Notepad++ as my notepad replacements, but this time I decided to see if there was some other text editors out there. Found "Programmer's Notepad" that looks promising. I looks simple and clean, but yet powerful.

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Creating a self-signed certificate with private key

Needed to make a self-signed certificate with a private key for a project I working on. After some research I found that the combination of makecert and pvk2pfx did the trick. Use the following commands in Visual Studio Command Prompt

makecert -r -pe -n "CN=Test" -b 01/01/2010 -e 01/01/2020 -sky exchange Test.cer -sv Test.pvk
pvk2pfx.exe -pvk Test.pvk -spc Test.cer -pfx Test.pfx

When executing the commands above you will be asked for some information like password etc. After you are finished the file Test.pfx includes a self-signed certificate with the a private key.

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Mocking extension methods

This post shows howto to make your extension methods mockable.. http://www.clariusconsulting.net/blogs/kzu/archive/2009/02/19/Makingextensionmethodsamenabletomocking.aspx

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Howto create unit test for privat, internal, and friend methods

Problem: You have a class with a private method that you wish to test.

public class ClassUnderTest
{
  private int DoSomePrivateStuff()
  {
     // Something is happening here
  }
} 

Since the method is private you can not access the it from the outside of the object.

How I solved this earlier was to make a testable class that inherited from the class I wanted to test.

public class TestableClassUnderTest : ClassUnderTest
{
  public int DoSomePrivateStuff()
  {
     base.DoSomePrivateStuff();
  }
} 

I now could do the following.

[TestClass]
public class ClassUnderTestTests
{
  [TestMethod]
  public void DoSomePrivateStuff_WhenCalled_ReturnsZero()
  {
     //Arrange
     var testClass = new TestableClassUnderTest();
     //Act
     var actual = testClass.DoSomePrivateStuff();
     //Assert
     Assert.AreEqual(0, actual);
  }
}

This is the classic Extract and Override pattern and there is nothing wrong with it.
But as a colleague showed me today, there is another way when you are using Visual Studio.

1. Goto the ClassUnderTest in visual studio and right click. Select "Create Private Accessor" and select the test project you want this accessor in.
   
2. Go to the test project you choose in step 1. You will now have a project folder called "Test References" with one file ending with ".accessor".
   

And that's it. VS have now created a class for you with the name "_accessor" that you can use in your tests. My example from above can now be rewritten to the following:

[TestClass]
public class ClassUnderTestTests
{
  [TestMethod]
  public void DoSomePrivateStuff_WhenCalled_ReturnsZero()
  {
     //Arrange
     var testClass = new ClassUnderTest_accessor();
     //Act
     var actual = testClass.DoSomePrivateStuff();
     //Assert
     Assert.AreEqual(0, actual);
  }
}

What's nice about this is that you don't need to create a bunch of testable classes. They are automagically created with reflection for you. Now you got more time to do fun stuff.... :-)

You can read more about this here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb385974.aspx

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