Archive for March, 2004
The Coolest DHTML Grid Widget
Came across another great DHTML Widget on SourceForge today (thanks to my good friend Thushan Fernando for pointing it out to me!). It’s a cross-browser grid called ActiveUI, complete with client-side sorting, resizable columns and icons! Very cool. Take a look at http://www.activeui.net/.
The Coolest DHTML Calendar Widget…
Just came across a very cool DHTML Calender control that – guess what – allows you to select dates/times and stick them in an input field! Obviously its client-side, so its nice and fast, customizable, released under LGPL, and best of all works in almost any browser (Internet Explorer, Opera, Mozilla, Safari …).
http://dynarch.com/mishoo/calendar.epl
Definitely worth a look :,,)
New RSS Feed for Developer Fusion
Well, I’ve finally gotten around to publishing an RSS feed for the articles on Developer Fusion . You can get it here – http://www.developerfusion.com/rss/contentrss.aspx?type=articles&language=all .
For anyone who’s interested in the code behind it – I just wrote this simple helper class.
/// <summary>
/// Enables the generation of an RSS feed
/// </summary>
public class RSSFeedGenerator
{
XmlTextWriter writer;
public RSSFeedGenerator( System.IO.Stream stream, System.Text.Encoding encoding )
{
writer = new XmlTextWriter(stream, encoding);
writer.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;
}
public RSSFeedGenerator( System.IO.TextWriter w )
{
writer = new XmlTextWriter(w);
writer.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;
}
/// <summary>
/// Writes the beginning of the RSS document
/// </summary>
public void WriteStartDocument()
{
writer.WriteStartDocument();
//writer.WriteComment(“Generated by Developer Fusion RSS feed at ” + DateTime.Now.ToString(“r”));
writer.WriteStartElement(“rss”);
writer.WriteAttributeString(“version”,”2.0″);
}
/// <summary>
/// Writes the end of the RSS document
/// </summary>
public void WriteEndDocument()
{
writer.WriteEndElement(); //rss
writer.WriteEndDocument();
}
/// <summary>
/// Closes this stream and the underlying stream
/// </summary>
public void Close()
{
writer.Flush();
writer.Close();
}
/// <summary>
/// Begins a new channel in the RSS document
/// </summary>
/// <param name=”title”></param>
/// <param name=”link”></param>
/// <param name=”description”></param>
public void WriteStartChannel(string title, string link, string description, string copyright )
{
writer.WriteStartElement(“channel”);
writer.WriteElementString(“title”,title);
writer.WriteElementString(“link”,link);
writer.WriteElementString(“description”,description);
writer.WriteElementString(“language”,”en-gb”);
writer.WriteElementString(“copyright”,copyright);
writer.WriteElementString(“generator”,”Developer Fusion RSS Feed Generator v1.0″);
writer.WriteElementString(“webMaster”,”James Crowley”);
writer.WriteElementString(“lastBuildDate”,DateTime.Now.ToString(“r”));
writer.WriteElementString(“ttl”,”20″);
}
/// <summary>
/// Writes the end of a channel in the RSS document
/// </summary>
public void WriteEndChannel()
{
writer.WriteEndElement(); //channel
}
/// <summary>
/// Writes an item to a channel in the RSS document
/// </summary>
/// <param name=”title”></param>
/// <param name=”link”></param>
/// <param name=”description”></param>
/// <param name=”author”></param>
/// <param name=”publishedDate”></param>
/// <param name=”category”></param>
public void WriteItem(string title, string link, string description, string author, DateTime publishedDate, string subject)
{
writer.WriteStartElement(“item”);
writer.WriteElementString(“title”,title);
writer.WriteElementString(“link”,link);
writer.WriteElementString(“description”,description);
writer.WriteElementString(“author”,author);
writer.WriteElementString(“pubDate”,publishedDate.ToString(“r”));
//writer.WriteElementString(“category”,category);
writer.WriteElementString(“subject”,subject);
writer.WriteEndElement();
}
}and then it was *really* simple to generate the RSS! 
// set the content type
Page.Response.ContentType = “text/xml”;
// create a RSS feed generator for the output
RSSFeedGenerator gen = new RSSFeedGenerator(Page.Response.Output);
gen.WriteStartDocument();
gen.WriteStartChannel(“Developer Fusion RSS Feed”,
“http://www.developerfusion.com/”,
“Summary of the latest articles published on Developer Fusion”,
“Copyright © Developer Fusion Ltd, 1999-2004″);
// generate the items here
gen.WriteItem(“Some Great Article,”http://www.developerfusion.com/show/10/”,”description”,”James Crowley”,DateTime.Now, “ASP.NET”);
// clear up
gen.WriteEndChannel();
gen.WriteEndDocument();
gen.Close();
Oh – and if anyone can show me how to post this code correctly on these weblogs, then please drop me a line!