I love the Disney Parks Blog. They post interesting stuff (if you’re a Disney fan like me), particularly if you’re into behind-the-scenes things.

Today’s post on Mickey and the Magical Map is cool and tells you about how they put that show together.

Seeing some of that behind-the-scenes stuff reminds me of a time back when I was younger, maybe… I don’t know, 10? There was some sort of promotion going on at a local department store. I think it was JC Penney, but I don’t remember exactly. They had some Disney character artists touring through and they’d give little demonstrations every hour and show you how to draw the characters.

I remember being really excited to see it, sitting on the floor in front of a small raised platform that had a chair and a drawing table. A bunch of other kids had gathered around, too, and we were all anxious to see what was going to happen.

Eventually a lady came out and talked all about drawing the characters - how you could imagine all of them as basic shapes, then sort of “tweak” the shapes to get a little closer to what you wanted. Donald Duck’s head is basically round, while Chip and Dale’s heads are more oval. That sort of thing. Looking back, it was all sort of basic drawing techniques - putting the cross-shaped guidelines on the head to place the eyes and nose, and so on. Simple stuff when I look at it now, but so inspiring and magical when you’re young, watching your favorite characters basically materialize in front of you from some simple pencil marks.

The artist gave her drawings away to the audience members as she finished them. I remember wanting one really badly but not getting one, being jealous of the kid in front of me who got the one of Chip.

I also got an opportunity back in college to work for a short amount of time at Will Vinton Studios. It was really cool to see the little sets that the stop motion animation was done on, how the cameras and the figures all came together to create this magical moving picture. I ended up writing some conversion tools for Kuper motion control cameras to help integrate computer animation with physical camera movements so computer animation and clay animation could coexist. I don’t know how useful it was, but I heard they liked it and used it quite a bit.

I still love seeing that stuff. How the animation is done, how the shows are put together… and when I see it, and remember, it makes me wish I was part of that magic. That I was helping to put on the shows, or create the animation, or make that happen for other people. My friends Sheldon and Jason are doing that, and I admit it makes me a little jealous.

Hey, Pixar… need any remote developers in Oregon?

dotnet, vs comments edit

In working on some NuGet packages, one thing I wanted to do was set up some configuration files in preparation for SlowCheetah integration. Instead of seeing a folder structure like this in the project…

  • ~/Config
    • MyConfig.config
    • MyConfig.Debug.config
    • MyConfig.Release.config

I wanted to see the file dependencies set up like you usually get with Web.config:

  • ~/Config
    • MyConfig.config
      • MyConfig.Debug.config
      • MyConfig.Release.config

That’s not really a straightforward thing to do, as it turns out.

Luckily, NuGet provides your package the ability to have a PowerShell script run at install time, and part of what it passes you is a reference to the EnvDTE project into which the package is being installed.

EnvDTE is the way you automate Visual Studio for things like custom tools and add-ins. I’ve messed around with EnvDTE before (though lately I prefer using CodeRush for my automation tasks) so this wasn’t too hard to get back into. Here’s the script for Install.ps1:

param($installPath, $toolsPath, $package, $project)
# Sets the configuration files to have dependent transforms (.Debug/.Release).
# Selections of items in the project are done with Where-Object rather than direct
# access into the ProjectItems collection because if the object is moved or doesn't
# exist then Where-Object will give us a null response rather than the error that
# DTE will give us.

$configFolder = $project.ProjectItems | Where-Object { $_.Properties.Item("Filename").Value -eq "Config" -and  $_.ProjectItems.Count -gt 0 }
if($configFolder -eq $null)
{
  # Upgrade scenario - user has moved/removed the Config folder
  # or has moved/removed the configuration files out of the folder.
  return
}

$baseConfig = $configFolder.ProjectItems | Where-Object { $_.Properties.Item("Filename").Value -eq "MyConfig.config" -and $_.ProjectItems.Count -eq 0 }
if($baseConfig -eq $null)
{
  # Upgrade scenario - user has moved/removed the MyConfig.config file
  # or it already has the dependent items set.
  return
}

# Config file exists, so update the properties.
$baseConfig.Properties.Item("SubType").Value = "Designer"

$debugConfig = $configFolder.ProjectItems | Where-Object { $_.Properties.Item("Filename").Value -eq "MyConfig.Debug.config" }
if($debugConfig -eq $null)
{
  # Upgrade scenario - user has moved/removed the MyConfig.Debug.config file
  # or it's already set as a dependent item. (Dependent items show up as children
  # of the file on which they depend, not as a child of the folder.)
  return
}

# Handle the update for MyConfig.Debug.config - set it as BuildAction = None
# and move it to be a dependency of MyConfig.config.
$debugConfig.Properties.Item("ItemType").Value = "None"
$baseConfig.ProjectItems.AddFromFile($debugConfig.Properties.Item("FullPath").Value)

$releaseConfig = $configFolder.ProjectItems | Where-Object { $_.Properties.Item("Filename").Value -eq "MyConfig.Release.config" }
if($releaseConfig -eq $null)
{
  # Upgrade scenario - user has moved/removed the MyConfig.Release.config file
  # or it's already set as a dependent item. (Dependent items show up as children
  # of the file on which they depend, not as a child of the folder.)
  return
}

# Handle the update for MyConfig.Release.config - set it as BuildAction = None
# and move it to be a dependency of MyConfig.config.
$releaseConfig.Properties.Item("ItemType").Value = "None"
$baseConfig.ProjectItems.AddFromFile($releaseConfig.Properties.Item("FullPath").Value)

What this does is switch this .csproj snippet…

<ItemGroup>
  <Content Include="MyConfig.config" />
  <Content Include="MyConfig.Debug.config" />
  <Content Include="MyConfig.Release.config" />
<ItemGroup>

Into this:

<ItemGroup>
  <Content Include="MyConfig.config">
    <SubType>Designer</SubType>
  </Content>
  <None Include="MyConfig.Debug.config">
    <DependentUpon>MyConfig.config</DependentUpon>
  </None>
  <None Include="MyConfig.Release.config">
    <DependentUpon>MyConfig.config</DependentUpon>
  </None>
<ItemGroup>

What I’ve not yet figured out is how to get a new custom element <TransformOnBuild>true</TransformOnBuild> to show up on the MyConfig.config element. From this article on MSDN, it appears there’s a much more involved bit of work to do and I’m not sure that I have access to all the requisite DTE objects from inside the script.

We’ve had a recent issue where Phoenix won’t do something because she claims she’s “scared”.

“Phoenix, can you come over here?”

“No,” she says. “I scared.”

“What are you scared of?” As if we didn’t already know.

“Bears. Bears eat my shoes.”

That’s right, she’s scared of bears eating her shoes. Or her coat. Or my car. Pretty much anything out there is something waiting for a bear to eat it. At night, we have this somewhat covered.

“The bear can’t get you, Phoenix, because you have your unicorn to protect you. Unicorns stop bears.” We’ll hand her this little stuffed unicorn and all is well.

“My un-corn.” Long “u” is a hard sound, I guess, so it’s not “unicorn,” it’s “un-corn.” Whatever.

This morning in the car, though, I didn’t have the unicorn and the bear talk started. I tried to think up something new.

“Daddy, I scared.”

Sigh. No unicorn. Well, let’s just get down to it. “Are you scared of bears?”

“Yes. Bears eat my shoes.”

“I know. But you like dragons, right?”

“I not dragon, I princen.” Hard “s” is also difficult, so “princess” becomes “princen.”

“Yes, you’re a princess… are you princess of the dragons?” I think you Game of Thrones folks see where I’m going with this.

“I princen of dragons!”

“That’s right, you’re the Khaleesi.”

“I kee-see!”

“Now, tell your dragons to stop the bears. Dragons can stop bears.”

“No, I not tell dragons.”

Dammit. “Why not?”

“Dragons scared of bears.”

Are you freaking kidding me? “Are you sure?” Then, out of nowhere…

“PA-KOW! PA-KOW! I shoot bear!”

O_o

Wait, what? “Phoe, you shot the bear?”

“PA-KOW! I shoot bear!”

Um. Well, uh… I’m not really sure where she picked that one up, but… I guess… bear problem solved, right?

dotnet, aspnet comments edit

We do a lot of interesting stuff with FluentValidation at work and more than a few times I’ve had to give the whiteboard presentation of how a server-side FluentValidation validator makes it to jQuery validation rules on the client and back. I figured it was probably time to just write it up so I can refer folks as needed.

Let’s start out with a simple model we want to validate. We’ll carry these examples with us in the walkthrough so you have something concrete to tie back to.

public class MyModel
{
  public string Name { get; set; }
  public int Age { get; set; }
}

On the server, we’d validate that model using FluentValidation by implementing FluentValidation.AbstractValidator<T> like this:

public class MyModelValidator : AbstractValidator<MyModel>
{
  public MyModelValidator()
  {
    RuleFor(m => m.Name)
      .NotEmpty()
      .WithMessage("Please provide a name.");

    RuleFor(m => m.Age)
      .GreaterThan(21)
      .WithMessage("You must be over 21 to access this site.");
  }
}

First let’s look at the way rules are set up in FluentValidation. You’ll see that each call to RuleFor points to a property we want to validate. Calling RuleFor sort of starts a “stack” of validators that are associated with that property. Each method that adds a validation (NotEmpty, GreaterThan) adds that validator to the “stack” and then sets it as “active” so other extensions that modify behavior (WithMessage) will know which validator they’re modifying.

A more complex setup might look like this:

RuleFor(m => m.Name)                        // Start a new validation "rule" with a set of validators attached
  .NotEmpty()                               // Add a NotEmptyValidator to the stack and make it "active"
  .WithMessage("Please provide a name.")    // Set the message for the NotEmptyValidator
  .Matches("[a-zA-Z]+")                     // Add a RegularExpressionValidator to the stack and make it "active"
  .WithMessage("Please use only letters."); // Set the message for the RegularExpressionValidator

In a server-side only scenario, when you validate an object each “rule” gets iterated through and each validator associated with that “rule” gets executed. More or less. There’s a bit of complexity to it, but that’s a good way to explain it without getting into the weeds.

ASP.NET MVC ships with an abstraction around model validation that starts with a ModelValidatorProvider. Out of the box, MVC has support for DataAnnotations attributes. (Rachel Appel has a great walkthrough of how that works.) From the name, you can guess that what this does is provide validators for your models. When MVC wants to validate your model (or determine how it’s validated), it asks the set of registered ModelValidatorProvider objects and they return the validators. It’s dumb when I say it out loud, but the class names start getting really long and a little confusing, so I just wanted to bring this up now: if you start getting confused, really stop to read the name of the class you’re confused about. It’ll help, trust me, because they all start sounding the same after a while.

FluentValidation has an associated FluentValidation.Mvc library that has the MVC adapter components. In there is a FluentValidationModelValidatorProvider. To get this hooked in, you need to register that FluentValidationModelValidatorProvider with MVC at application startup. The easiest way to do this is by calling FluentValidationModelValidatorProvider.Configure(), which automatically adds the provider to the list of available providers and also lets you do some additional configuration as needed.

Things you can do in FluentValidationModelValidatorProvider.Configure:

  • Specify the validator factory to use on the server to retrieve FluentValidation validators corresponding to models.
  • Add mappings for custom validators that map between the server-side FluentValidation validator and the MVC client-side validation logic.

Right now we’ll talk about the validator factory piece. I’ll get to the custom validator mappings later.

As mentioned, when you run FluentValidationModelValidatorProvider.Configure(), you can tell it which FluentValidation.IValidatorFactoryto use for mapping server-side validators (like the MyModelValidator) to models (like MyModel). Out of the box, FluentValidation ships with the FluentValidation.Attributes.AttributedValidatorFactory. This factory type lets you attach validators to your models with attributes, like this:

[Validator(typeof(MyModelValidator))]
public class MyModel
{
  // ...
}

That’s one way to go, but I find that to be somewhat inflexible. I also don’t like my code too closely tied together like that, so instead, in MVC, I like to use the DependencyResolver to get my model-validator mappings. FluentValidation doesn’t ship with a factory that uses DependencyResolver, but it’s pretty easy to implement:

public class DependencyResolverModelValidatorFactory : IValidatorFactory
{
  public IValidator GetValidator(Type type)
  {
    if (type == null)
    {
      throw new ArgumentNullException("type");
    }
    return DependencyResolver.Current.GetService(typeof(IValidator<>).MakeGenericType(type)) as IValidator;
  }

  public IValidator<T> GetValidator<T>()
  {
    return DependencyResolver.Current.GetService<IValidator<T>>();
  }
}

Using that validator factory, you need to register your validators with your chosen DependencyResolver so that they’re exposed as IValidator<T> (like IValidator<MyModel>). Luckily AbstractValidator<T> implements that interface, so you’re set. In Autofac (my IoC container of choice) the validator registration during container setup would look like…

containerBuilder.RegisterType<MyModelValidator>().As<IValidator<MyModel>>();

To register the model validator factory with FluentValidation, we’d do that during FluentValidationModelValidatorProvider.Configure() at application startup, like this:

FluentValidationModelValidatorProvider.Configure(
  provider =>
  {
    provider.ValidatorFactory = new DependencyResolverModelValidatorFactory();
  });

Let’s checkpoint. Up to now we have:

  • A custom validator for our model.
  • A validator factory for FluentValidation that will tie our validator to our model using dependency resolution.
  • FluentValidation configured in MVC to be a source of model validations.

Next let’s talk about how the FluentValidation validators get their results into the MVC ModelState for server-side validation.

ASP.NET MVC has a class called ModelValidator that is used to abstract away the concept of model validation. It’s responsible for generating the validation errors that end up in ModelState as well as the set of client validation rules that define how the browser-side behavior gets wired up. The ModelValidator class has two methods, each of which corresponds to one of these responsibilities.

  • Validate: Executes server-side validation of the model and returns the list of results.
  • GetClientValidationRules: Gets metadata in the form of ModelClientValidationRule objects to send to the client so script can do client-side validation.

For DataAnnotations, there are implementations of ModelValidator corresponding to each attribute. For FluentValidation, there are ModelValidator implementations that correspond to each server-side validation type. For example, looking at our MyModel.Name property, we have a NotEmptyValidator attached to it. That NotEmptyValidator maps to a FluentValidation.Mvc.RequiredFluentValidationPropertyValidator. These mappings are maintained by the FluentValidationModelValidatorProvider. (Remember I said you could add custom mappings during the call to Configure? This is what I was talking about.)

When MVC needs the set of ModelValidator implementations associated with a model, the basic process is this:

  • The ModelValidatorProviders.Providers.GetValidators method is called. This iterates through the registered providers to get all the validators available. Eventually the FluentValidationModelValidatorProvider is queried.
  • The FluentValidationModelValidatorProvider uses the registered IValidatorFactory (DependencyResolverModelValidatorFactory) to get the FluentValidation validator (MyModelValidator) associated with the model (MyModel).
  • The FluentValidationModelValidatorProvider then looks at the rules associated with the property being validated (MyModel.Name) and converts each validator in the rule (NotEmptyValidator) into its mapped MVC ModelValidator type (RequiredFluentValidationPropertyValidator).
  • The list of mapped ModelValidator instances is returned to MVC for execution.

Here’s where it starts coming together.

When you do an MVC HtmlHelper call to render a data entry field for a model property, it looks something like this:

@Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.Name)

Internally, during the textbox generation, a bit more happens under the covers:

  • The input field HTML generation process calls ModelValidatorProviders.Providers.GetValidators for the field. (This is the process mentioned earlier.)
  • The ModelValidator(s) returned each have GetClientValidationRules called to get the set of ModelClientValidationRule data defining the client-side validation info.
  • The ModelClientValidationRule objects get converted to data-val- attributes that will be attached to the input field.

Using our example, if we did that Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.Name) call…

  • The FluentValidationModelValidatorProvider would, through the process mentioned earlier, yield a RequiredFluentValidationPropertyValidator corresponding to the NotEmptyValidator we’re using on the Name field.
  • That RequiredFluentValidationPropertyValidator would have GetClientValidationRules called to get the client-side validation information. I happen to know that the RequiredFluentValidationPropertyValidator returns a ModelValidationRequiredRule.
  • Each of the ModelClientValidationRule objects (in this case, just the ModelValidationRequiredRule) would be converted to data-val- attributes on the textbox.

What’s in a ModelClientValidationRule and how does it translate to attributes?

Basically each ModelClientValidationRule corresponds to a jQuery validation type. The ModelValidationRequiredRule is basically just a pre-populated ModelClientValidationRule derivative that looks like this:

new ModelClientValidationRule
{
  ValidationType = "required",
  ErrorMessage = "Please provide a name."
}

The ValidationType corresponds to the name of a jQuery validation type and the error message is the one we specified way back when we defined our FluentValidation validator.

When that gets converted into data-val- attributes, it ends up looking like this:

<input type="text" ... data-val-required="Please provide a name." />

That’s how the validation information gets from the server to the client. Once it’s there, it’s time for script to pick it up.

MVC uses jQuery validation to execute the client-side validation. It takes advantage of a library jQuery Unobtrusive Validation which is used to parse the data-val- attributes into client-side logic. The attributes fairly well correspond one-to-one with existing jQuery validation rules. For example, data-val-required corresponds to the required() validation method. That jQuery Unobtrusive Validation library reads the attributes and maps them (and their values) into jQuery validation actions that are attached to the form. Standard jQuery validation takes it from there.

The whole process for validating a submitted form is:

  • The Html.TextBoxFor call gets the set of validators for the field and attaches the data-val- attributes to it using the process described earlier.
  • jQuery Unobtrusive Validation parses the attributes on the client and sets up the client-side validation.
  • When the user submits the form, jQuery validation executes. Assuming it passes, the form gets submitted to the server.
  • During model binding, the MVC DefaultModelBinder gets the list of ModelValidator instances for the model using the process described earlier.
  • Each ModelValidator gets its Validate method called. Any failures will get added to the ModelState by the DefaultModelBinder. In our case, the RequiredFluentValidationPropertyValidator will pass through to our originally configured NotEmptyValidator on the server side and the results of the NotEmptyValidator will be translated into ModelValidationResult objects for use by the DefaultModelBinder.

Whew! That’s a lot of moving pieces. But that should explain how it comes together so you at least know what you’re looking at.

When you want to add a custom server-side validator, you have to hook into that process. Knowing the steps outlined above, you can see you have a few things to do (and a few places where things can potentially break down).

The basic steps for adding a new custom FluentValidation validator in MVC are:

  • Create your server-side validator. This means implementing FluentValidation.Validators.IPropertyValidator. It’s what gets used on the server for validation but doesn’t do anything on the client. I’d look at existing validators to get ideas on how to do this, since it’s a little different based on whether, say, you’re comparing two properties on the same object or comparing a property with a fixed value. I’d recommend starting by looking at a validator that does something similar to what you want to do. The beauty of open source.
  • Add an extension method that allows your new validator type to participate in the fluent grammar. The standard ones are in FluentValidation.DefaultValidatorExtensions. This is how you get nice syntax like RuleFor(m => m.Name).MyCustomValidator(); for your custom validator.
  • Create a FluentValidation.Mvc.FluentValidationPropertyValidator corresponding to your server-side validator. This will be responsible for creating the appropriate ModelClientValidationRule objects to tie your server-side validator to the client and for executing the corresponding server-side logic. (Really the work is in the client-side part of things. The base FluentValidationPropertyValidator already passes-through logic to your custom server-side validator so you don’t have to really do anything to get that to happen.)
  • Add a mapping between your server-side validator and your FluentValidationPropertyValidator. This takes place in FluentValidationModelValidatorProvider.Configure. Let’s talk about that.

Remember earlier I said we’d talk about adding custom validator mappings to the FluentValidationModelValidatorProviderduring configuration time? You need to do that if you write your own custom validator. When you want to map a server-side validator to a client-side validator, it looks like this:

FluentValidationModelValidatorProvider.Configure(
  provider =>
  {
    provider.ValidatorFactory = new DependencyResolverModelValidatorFactory();
    provider.Add(
      typeof(MyCustomValidator),
      (metadata, context, rule, validator) => new MyCustomFluentValidationPropertyValidator(metadata, context, rule, validator));
  });

There are mappings already for the built-in validators. You just have to add your custom ones. Unfortunately, the actual list of mappings itself isn’t documented anywhere I can find, so you’ll need to look at the static constructor on FluentValidationModelValidatorProvider to see what maps to what by default.

I won’t walk through the full creation of an end-to-end custom validator here. That’s probably another article since this is already way, way too long without enough pictures to break up the monotony. Instead, I’ll just mention a couple of gotchas.

GOTCHA: DERIVING FROM OUT-OF-THE-BOX VALIDATORS

Say you have a custom email validator. You decide you want to shortcut a few things by just deriving from the original email validator and overriding a couple of things. Sounds fine, right?

public class MyCustomEmailValidator : EmailValidator

Or maybe you don’t do that, but you do decide to implement the standard FluentValidation email validator interface:

public class MyCustomEmailValidator : PropertyValidator, IEmailValidator

The gotcha here is that server-side-to-client-side mapping that I showed you earlier. FluentValidation maps by type and already ships with mappings for the out-of-the-box validators. If you implement your custom validator like this, chances are you’re going to end up with the default client-side logic rather than your custom one. The default was registered first, right? It’ll never get to your override… and there’s not really a way to remove mappings.

You also don’t want to override the mapping like this:

provider.Add(
  typeof(IEmailValidator),
  (metadata, context, rule, validator) => new MyCustomFluentValidationPropertyValidator(metadata, context, rule, validator));

You don’t want to do that because then when you use the out-of-the-box email validator, it’ll end up with your custom logic.

This is really painful to debug. Sometimes this is actually what you want - reuse of client (or server) logic but not both… but generally, you want a unique custom validator from end to end.

Recommendation: Don’t implement the standard interfaces unless you plan on replacing the standard behavior across the board and not using the out-of-the-box validator of that type. (That is, if you want to totally replace everything about client and server validation for IEmailValidator, then implement IEmailValidator on your server-side validator and don’t use the standard email validator anymore.)

GOTCHA: CUSTOM VALIDATION LAMBDAS ONLY RUN ON THE SERVER

Say you don’t want to implement a whole custom validator and would rather use the FluentValidation lambda syntax like this:

RuleFor(m => m.Age).Must(val => val - 2 > 6);

That lambda will only run on the server. Maybe that’s OK for a quick one-off, but if you want corresponding client-side validation you actually need to implement the end-to-end solution. There’s no automated functionality for translating the lambdas into script, nor is there an automatic facility for converting this into an AJAX remote validation call. (But that’s a pretty neat idea.)

GOTCHA: MVC CLIENT-SIDE VALIDATION ADAPTERS OVERLAP TYPES

If you dive deep enough, you’ll notice that certain server-side FluentValidation validators boil down to the same ModelClientValidationRule values when it’s time to emit the data-val- attributes. For example, the FluentValidation GreaterThanValidator and LessThaValidator both end up with ModelClientValidationRule values that say the validation type is “range” (not “min” or “max” as you might expect). What that means is that on the server side, this looks sweet and works:

RuleFor(m => m.Age).GreaterThan(5).LessThan(10);

But when you try to render the corresponding textbox, you’re going to get an exception telling you that you can’t put “range” validation twice on the same field. Problem.

What it means is that when you create custom validations, you have to be mindful of which jQuery rule you’re going to associate it with on the client. It also means you have to be creative, sometimes, about how you set up MVC validations on the server to make sure you don’t have problems when it comes to adapting things to the client-side. Stuff that works on the server won’t necessarily work in MVC.

For reference, here’s a SUPER ABBREVIATED SEQUENCE DIAGRAM of how it comes together. Again, there are several steps omitted here, but this should at least jog your memory and help you visualize all the stuff I mentioned above.

net comments edit

Since we switched Autofac to be a Portable Class Library, it’s been nice not having to maintain different builds for different platforms. It’s also nice to not have preprocessor directives littered through the code. Props to Microsoft for making it part of VS2012.

The problem is… not very many people are familiar with Portable Class Libraries and what they do. Probably once a week (give or take) we’ll get a defect filed on Autofac that it’s targeting the wrong version of .NET or something along those lines.

To that end, I figured I’d blog the answers to some of the common questions we see. I also tried to summarize it on the FAQ, but a couple of spots with the info never hurt.

  • Why are old versions of .NET referenced? If you pop open Autofac in Reflector, dotPeek, or your favorite decompiler, you’ll see that it looks like it references .NET 2.0.5.0. Autofac targeting System
  2.0.5.0

    This is not a problem. The important part is the “Retargetable=Yes” at the end of the reference. What that means is Autofac will use the version of the assembly in the hosting process. If it’s .NET 4.5, that’s what it’ll use. If it’s Windows Phone, it’ll use that. You can read more about what “Retargetable” means here.

  • Why do I get an exception where a 2.0.5.0 assembly fails to load? If it’s retargetable, why is it blowing up in .NET 4.0? I get an exception that looks like this:

      Test 'MyNamespace.MyFixture.MyTest' failed: System.IO.FileLoadException : Could not load file or assembly 'System.Core, Version=2.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=7cec85d7bea7798e, Retargetable=Yes' or one of its dependencies. The given assembly name or codebase was invalid. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131047)
          at Autofac.Builder.RegistrationData..ctor(Service defaultService)
          at Autofac.Builder.RegistrationBuilder`3..ctor(Service defaultService, TActivatorData activatorData, TRegistrationStyle style)
          at Autofac.RegistrationExtensions.RegisterInstance[T](ContainerBuilder builder, T instance)
          MyProject\MyFixture.cs(49,0): at MyNamespace.MyFixture.MyTest()
    

    You’re getting an exception because you haven’t got the latest .NET updates. I have a blog article here that walks into that in more detail.

  • Why is FxCop failing with CA0060 assembly binding errors? If you’re building your project on Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012, chances are you haven’t seen this error. However, on Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008R2, you might have seen FxCop fail with warning CA0060 because it can’t find the 2.0.5.0 assemblies that Autofac appears to bind to. FxCop doesn’t really “get” the whole “Retargetable” thing right now.

    First, make sure it’s the 2.0.5.0 assemblies FxCop is complaining about. If it’s something else, you may need to change the way you invoke FxCop so it ignores version or something like that.

    Assuming it really is the 2.0.5.0 assemblies, the best you can do is ignore them. It doesn’t affect your analysis results since you’re not analyzing Autofac anyway. This blog article shows you one way to ignore the error in your build. I, personally, ended up writing a little custom FxCop build task that handles both the FxCop version ignore thing and the CA0060 error. Either way, ignoring it is the easiest way to go. Actually installing various SDKs doesn’t seem to help. (I tried.)

  • How come secannotate.exe isn’t working for me? Congratulations, you’re one of the seven people out there who actually use secannotate. :)

    You need to pass the /d switch to secannotate and point to the Portable Class Library reference assemblies. This StackOverflow question shows an example of the errors you might see in secannotate and the solution.

Portable Class Libraries really do make targeting multiple platforms easy, but if you’re new to them, hopefully this helps you understand why you’re seeing some of the things you’re seeing.