protected static void SendMail(string to, string subject, string body)
{
    try
    {
        using (var bgw = new BackgroundWorker())
        {
            bgw.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler(delegate
                                                     {
                                                         try
                                                         {
                                                             Thread.Sleep(15000);
                                                             using (MailMessage message = new MailMessage())
                                                             {
                                                                 message.From = new MailAddress(AdminEmail,
                                                                                                AdminName);
                                                                 message.To.Add(new MailAddress(to));
                                                                 message.Subject = subject;
                                                                 message.Body = body;
                                                                 message.IsBodyHtml = false;

                                                                 SmtpClient mailClient = new SmtpClient();
                                                                 mailClient.Send(message);
                                                             }
                                                         }
                                                         catch (Exception ex)
                                                         {
                                                             Utils.Log(ex);
                                                         }
                                                     });

            bgw.RunWorkerAsync();
        }
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        Utils.Log(ex);
    }
}

I added the Thread.Sleep(15000) to see if it works.  To my surprise, it didn’t.  For some reason, the web request doesn’t return until the email thread is done executing.  When I step through the code, it runs through the code right away without waiting and calls the return method on the controller as expected.  But the response is actually never sent to the server until the thread completes – which defies the whole point of it being asynchronous.

What am I doing wrong?  Is this a bug in the MVC framework?  Or did I just overlook something?

[UPDATE]

I am not sure what’s wrong with the code above but I re-wrote it as show below and it works very well.

protected static void SendMail(string to, string subject, string body)
{
   try
   {
       var t1 = new Thread(SendMailAsync);
       t1.Start(new string[] {to, subject, body});
   }
   catch (Exception ex)
   {
       Utils.Log(ex);
   }
}

private static void SendMailAsync(object emailInfo)
{
   try
   {

       var paramArray = emailInfo as string[];
       if (paramArray != null)
       {
           var to = paramArray[0];
           var subject = paramArray[1];
           var body = paramArray[2];

           using (MailMessage message = new MailMessage())
           {
               message.From = new MailAddress(AdminEmail,
                                              AdminName);
               message.To.Add(new MailAddress(to));
               message.Subject = subject;
               message.Body = body;
               message.IsBodyHtml = false;

               var mailClient = new SmtpClient();
               mailClient.Send(message);
           }
       }
   }
   catch (Exception ex)
   {
       Utils.Log(ex);
   }
}

So, if you have attended the talk, I would love to hear your feedback, so please leave me a comment or send me a not through the contact page.

Previously, I posted some asp.net mvc framework resources over here. You can also see my mvc bookmarks at http://del.icio.us/eibrahim/mvc

There are also tons of JQuery resources at www.jquery.com and I found this handy JQuery 1.2 cheat sheet (remember: this is for version 1.2)

“According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.” – Jerry Seinfeld.

[update 2: I just created www.isweat.com using the yonkly engine]

[update 3: Tons of new features]

Asp.net MVC framework rocks. I wanted to play with it more and decided why not build an open source twitter. Unfortunately, I couldn’t come up with a better name for it that had an available domain so Yonkly it is. Come to think of it Yonkly is not too bad – http://yonkly.com

I will post the source code online very soon at either codeplex or Google – not sure which one is better yet. Any suggestions? I just need to clean it up and add some comments before I post it online. Hopefully, no one will laugh at my code.

This first release has the following features (Note: this is only one week’s worth of work):

1. Conversation threads – here is an example
   
2. Message replies automatically turn into a conversation, just hit the reply button
3. Message deletes – cannot delete messages that have been replied to.
4. Follow and Un-follow friends
5. Built-in URL shortening
6. Public timeline
7. Friends and followers stats
8. Integration with Gravatar (www.gravatar.com)
9. Search for friends by email or username
10. Invite friends

Depending on community support and involvement, I am hopping to add the following features in the next release(s):

1. REST API
2. RSS feeds
3. Twitter and Facebook integration
4. Expanded user profile
5. Friend finder – using gmail, hotmail, outlook imports, etc…
6. Email notifications with opt-in/opt-out options
7. Silverlight, Windows, mac and mobile clients (require the API)
8. Migrate to SQL Server standard
9. UI changes and improvements

The following was used to build the site:

1. Asp.net 3.5 MVC Framework Preview 2
2. JQuery for JavaScript and Ajax
3. SQL Server Express

This was an excellent learning experience which was only possible because of all the MVC fans, bloggers and community. These are all my mvc-related bookmarks that I kept referring to during the development process – http://del.icio.us/eibrahim/mvc

FUN STUFF

How about becoming part of this open source project? If you are interested, leave a comment below or contact me via the contact page. Also, subscribe to my blog to get notified of updates, new releases and so on.

You can also find me on yonkly at yonkly.com/eibrahim or twitter (how ironic) at twitter.com/eibrahim

routes.Add(
    new Route("Message/Create", new MvcRouteHandler())
        {
            Defaults = new RouteValueDictionary(new
                                                    {
                                                        controller = "Message",
                                                        action = "Create"
                                                    })
        }
    );

So far so good, nothing earth shattering.  So I basically did this for all my routes and the last route, I added was:

routes.Add(
    new Route("{*username}", new MvcRouteHandler())
       {
           Constraints = new RouteValueDictionary(new {username = "^(?!content/).*"}),
           Defaults = new RouteValueDictionary(new {Controller = "User", action = "View"})
       });

This basically will catch any route that has not been defined before it and will treat it as a username so /eibrahim would go to the view action on the user’s controller.  Also, note that I added a constraint to prevent the catch-all route from catching any url in the content subfolder.  Important: All your scripts, images, css files and so on have to be in the content folder otherwise they will be handled by the catch-all route and not be accessible to your application.

The signature for the view action look like this:

public void View(string username, int? page)
{

}

Now the tricky part is that you want to make sure that your users don’t signup with a username matching the controller.  So if a user decided to register with the username “message”, he will never be able to go to his profile at /message because it will be handled by the generic message route “message/{action}”.  A quick workaround is to prevent the user from registering with those names.  In my signup process I call a method to check if the selected username is valid.  The validation process loops through all the routes and makes sure the username doesn’t match any controller or action.  It works out pretty well so far.

foreach (Route route in RouteTable.Routes)
{
    if (username == route.Defaults["controller"].ToString().ToLower())
        return false;
    if (username == route.Defaults["action"].ToString().ToLower())
        return false;
}

I don’t know if this is the best solution, so if you know of a better way to do it, let me know.

1. I created a Mock Http context to be used by my controller. I modified the Moq version of the MvcMockHelpers class from Scott Hanselman and added two more methods to mock an authenticated user

public static HttpContextBase FakeAuthenticatedHttpContext()
{
var context = new Mock<HttpContextBase>();
var request = new Mock<HttpRequestBase>();
var response = new Mock<HttpResponseBase>();
var session = new Mock<HttpSessionStateBase>();
var server = new Mock<HttpServerUtilityBase>();
var user = new Mock<IPrincipal>();
var identity = new Mock<IIdentity>();

context.Expect(ctx => ctx.Request).Returns(request.Object);
context.Expect(ctx => ctx.Response).Returns(response.Object);
context.Expect(ctx => ctx.Session).Returns(session.Object);
context.Expect(ctx => ctx.Server).Returns(server.Object);
context.Expect(ctx => ctx.User).Returns(user.Object);
user.Expect(ctx => ctx.Identity).Returns(identity.Object);
identity.Expect(id => id.IsAuthenticated).Returns(true);
identity.Expect(id => id.Name).Returns("test"); 
    return context.Object;
}

public static void
SetFakeAuthenticatedControllerContext(this Controller controller)
{
var httpContext = FakeAuthenticatedHttpContext();
ControllerContext context =                  
new ControllerContext(
new RequestContext(httpContext,
new RouteData()), controller);
controller.ControllerContext = context;
}

Note that the identity.Name returns “test” which is the username of an existing user in the database. If I don’t do that then the MembershipProvider.GetUser method will fail.

2. I added a couple of properties to my test class (MessageControllerTest) to make it easy for me to access the controller and view engine in all the test methods

private FakeViewEngine _fakeViewEngine;
public FakeViewEngine FakeViewEngine
{
get
    {
if (_fakeViewEngine == null)

              _fakeViewEngine = new FakeViewEngine();
return _fakeViewEngine;
}
}

private MessageController authenticatedController;
private MessageController AuthenticatedController
{
get
    {
if (authenticatedController == null)
{
authenticatedController = new MessageController();
authenticatedController.ViewEngine = FakeViewEngine;
authenticatedController.SetFakeAuthenticatedControllerContext();
}
return authenticatedController;
}
}

3. I created my test method which is going to call a Create method in my MessageController and pass it a string.

[TestMethod]
public void Create_Message_Test()
{
AuthenticatedController.Create("This is a test message");

//verify
    Assert.AreEqual("Json", FakeViewEngine.ViewContext.ViewName);
Assert.IsInstanceOfType(FakeViewEngine.ViewContext.ViewData,

                             typeof(MyViewData));
Assert.IsTrue(((MyViewData)FakeViewEngine.ViewContext

                            .ViewData).isSuccessful);
Assert.IsNotNull(((MyViewData)FakeViewEngine

                            .ViewContext.ViewData).Id);

using (MyDataContext dc = new MyDataContext())
{
var query =
dc.Messages.Where(
m => m.MessageId ==
((MyViewData)FakeViewEngine

                       .ViewContext.ViewData).Id);
//verify it was added to the database
        Assert.AreEqual(1, query.Count());

//delete it
        dc.Messages.DeleteOnSubmit(query.First());
dc.SubmitChanges();

//verify it was delete
        Assert.AreEqual(0, query.Count());
}
}

Note that in the verification block, I verify:

1. The view being rendered
2. The returned type of the ViewData
3. Properties on the ViewData

Then I clean up the created message by deleting it from the database.

Important:

You must add your connection strings and membership definition in an app.config file in your test project. If you don’t then the default consrtuctor of your DataContext will fail to run because it looks for the connection string in the config file.

I am still wrapping my head around the concept of mocking, so any tips or advice will be appreciated.

Here are some good resources that I found during my struggle to get this to work.

ASP.NET MVC Resources

1. ASP.NET MVC Framework – Part 2: Testing
2. ASP.NET MVC Session at Mix08, TDD and MvcMockHelpers

LINQ to SQL Resources

1. Being Ignorant with LINQ to SQL

Testing and Mocking Resources

1. Moq: Linq, Lambdas and Predicates applied to Mock Objects
2. Moq
3. Rhino Mocks
4. TDD: Test-Driven Development with Visual Studio 2008 Unit Tests

I commented all the changes made in the code and prefixed them with //emad. So just search for //emad and you will see all the changes I made… Here is a quick list of the changes I made to make this compile and run on MVC Preview 2:

1. Removed the [ControllerAction] tags – they are no longer needed.
2. Updated the Route Table creation in the global.asax.cs file to work with the new format
3. Updated the Ajax framework project to use the new classes
   1. HttpContextBase instead of IHttpContext
   2. HttpRequestBased instead of IHttpRequest
   3. HttpResponseBase instead of IHttpResponse
4. Updated the AjaxViewContext constructor to match ViewContext constructor
5. Changed the web.config to work with the new version (copied and pasted from another preview 2 project)

Note: Test project was not updated and will not compile – sorry, I didn’t have time to do it.

Here is the updated code: tasklist.zip