Mercurial: “Waiting for lock on working directory of”

Problem: Mercurial commits time out with message “waiting for lock on working directory of <Repo - PATH> held by ” “.

Solution: go to .hg folder in working directory and delete file named “wlock”

operation is not valid due to the current state of the object sharepoint 2013 deploying solution

This issue has been haunting me for two days and I was unable to figure out the root cause and how to get it resolved.

After searching on different blogs for a good enough time it became frustrating because I was unable to deploy my solution and there was a demo.

For me it happened because I had refreshed the cache.ini file present at %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config\ path in your SharePoint farm.

I had reset the cache.ini file by changing its content to 1 but unfortunately my cache didn't get reset properly. After restarting the server, SPTimerService and all repeatedly following several blogs it didn't resolve my issue.

The fix was I had to create a folder in the same directory where I had cache.ini with the same name as the id of content database. Doing just that created several xml files in the folder and I got everything working once again.

You can find the config DB key from the following place in your registry:

Run - regedit

Expand the following key 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\15.0\Secure\ConfigDB

and copy id. 

Go back to the config folder and create a new folder with the same name as id and that's all!

You will see the magic and now you can resume with your work.

Logging Utility

Background

Sometimes you need to introduce excessive logging in a workflow, web application, complex runtime application logging is a very important thing in order to identify issues. I have a logger by looking into various loggers available over the web. The sole purpose of this logger for me was to be applied to a workflow which was written in C# using Windows Workflow Foundation.

Logging seems quite easy if it's an application which runs one time or is a sequential one where the rate of concurrent users is less or negligible you just write all the logging lines down in a file and that's all. But imagine when there are multiple people working on an application for which you are logging you will definitely come across the issue of writing to the file when it's already in use.

Implementation Details 

Here are details of the workflow with a test application; I have tried up to 20 threads which are trying to access the file for writing and its working fine.

	using System;
	using System.Collections.Generic;
	using System.Linq;
	using System.Text;
	using System.Threading;
	using System.Threading.Tasks;
	using WriteToFileMultiThreaded;
	namespace WriteToFileMultiThreaded
	{
	using System;
	using System.Collections.Generic;
	using System.Configuration;
	using System.IO;
	/// <summary>
	/// A Logging class implementing the Singleton pattern and an internal Queue to be flushed perdiodically
	/// </summary>
	public class LogWriter
	{
	private static LogWriter instance;
	private static Queue<Log> logQueue;
	private static string logDir = "";
	private static string logFile = "WorkflowLog.txt";
	private static int maxLogAge = int.Parse("5184000");
	private static int queueSize = int.Parse("20");
	private static DateTime LastFlushed = DateTime.Now;
	/// <summary>
	/// Private constructor to prevent instance creation
	/// </summary>
	private LogWriter() { }
	/// <summary>
	/// An LogWriter instance that exposes a single instance
	/// </summary>
	public static LogWriter Instance
	{
	get
	{
	// If the instance is null then create one and init the Queue
	if (instance == null)
	{
	instance = new LogWriter();
	logQueue = new Queue<Log>();
	}
	return instance;
	}
	}
	/// <summary>
	/// The single instance method that writes to the log file
	/// </summary>
	/// <param name="message">The message to write to the log</param>
	public void WriteToLog(string message)
	{
	// Lock the queue while writing to prevent contention for the log file
	lock (logQueue)
	{
	// Create the entry and push to the Queue
	Log logEntry = new Log(message);
	logQueue.Enqueue(logEntry);
	// If we have reached the Queue Size then flush the Queue
	if (logQueue.Count >= queueSize || DoPeriodicFlush())
	{
	FlushLog();
	}
	}
	}
	private bool DoPeriodicFlush()
	{
	TimeSpan logAge = DateTime.Now - LastFlushed;
	if (logAge.TotalSeconds >= maxLogAge)
	{
	LastFlushed = DateTime.Now;
	return true;
	}
	else
	{
	return false;
	}
	}
	/// <summary>
	/// Flushes the Queue to the physical log file
	/// </summary>
	private void FlushLog()
	{
	while (logQueue.Count > 0)
	{
	Log entry = logQueue.Dequeue();
	string logPath = logDir + entry.LogDate + "_" + logFile;
	// This could be optimised to prevent opening and closing the file for each write
	using (FileStream fs = File.Open(logPath, FileMode.Append, FileAccess.Write))
	{
	using (StreamWriter log = new StreamWriter(fs))
	{
	log.WriteLine(string.Format("{0}\t{1}", entry.LogTime, entry.Message));
	}
	}
	}
	}
	}
	/// <summary>
	/// A Log class to store the message and the Date and Time the log entry was created
	/// </summary>
	public class Log
	{
	public string Message { get; set; }
	public string LogTime { get; set; }
	public string LogDate { get; set; }
	public Log(string message)
	{
	Message = message;
	LogDate = DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd");
	LogTime = DateTime.Now.ToString("hh:mm:ss.fff tt");
	}
	}
	class Program
	{
	static void Main(string[] args)
	{
	for (int i = 0; i < 20; i++)
	{
	string threadName = "Thread " + Convert.ToString(i + 1);
	Thread t = new Thread(() => ThreadData(threadName));
	t.Start();
	}
	}
	static void ThreadData(string threadName)
	{
	LogWriter writer = LogWriter.Instance;
	for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++)
	{
	writer.WriteToLog(threadName + " Writing" + Environment.NewLine);
	//System.IO.File.AppendAllText("test.txt", "Thread One Writing Line " + i + Environment.NewLine);
	}
	}
	static void ThreadTwo()
	{
	LogWriter writer = LogWriter.Instance;
	for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++)
	{
	writer.WriteToLog("Thread Two Writing Line " + i + Environment.NewLine);
	//System.IO.File.AppendAllText("test.txt", "Thread Two Writing Line " + i);
	}
	}
	}
	}

view raw logger.cs hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Handling the UnauthorizedAccessException in SharePoint Visual Web Part

I came across an issue lately where I had to allow different users to access a web part with each having their own permissions set for a document library.

Some of the users might not have access on the web part or even the library that we have configured with this web part to be shown. So in order to by pass the automatically getting redirected to access denied page we need to run the code in this scope


using (new SPSecurity.SuppressAccessDeniedRedirectInScope())

{

   //Your custom code here

}

That's all that helped me get through this painful situation.

Suppress Javascript Errors

There are times when we see, due to any reason, our javascript in the page starts throwing errors. Hence if some one is browsing the page using Internet Explorer, they might come across the annoying popups if they have configured the Internet settings like that, this is where this Tutorial might come in handy for a few coders like me tackling the situation.

Again it's not a solution it's just a way to handle and tackle the issues, I would still say if you have time in your hand go through your javascript and get it fixed. This snippet must be used if and only if, you are out of time and options.

	<script type="text/javascript">
	window.onerror = function() {//global handler for page javascript errors
	var suppressErrorAlert = true;
	// If you return true, then error alerts (like in older versions of
	// Internet Explorer) will be suppressed.
	return suppressErrorAlert;
	};
	abcd();//this is where the error will be caused
	</script>

view raw Suppress.js hosted with ❤ by GitHub

I hope it gives peace to someone in need!

SharePoint 2014 Conference

Dear All,

Microsoft SharePoint conference is back! You can get the details to register on the following link Details

SharePoint Conference offers a wide variety of presentations, labs, certification testing, Q&A sessions, workshops, and networking events for attendees to build their skills and meet other SharePoint professionals. Along with the best new content, industry trends, and product announcements, SharePoint product managers, engineers, and other experts will be answering questions, giving presentations, and hosting discussions

Custom Document Library Viewer SharePoint 2013 part 1

Lately I came across an interesting task and was able to successfully deliver it. I know that we have a Custom Library Viewer in SharePoint OOTB. I had a different requirement from the one already present in the SharePoint. I had been asked to develop a Custom Document Library Viewer based on Content Types and also display each of the content type in a separate tab.

So, the requirement was something like that for instance in a document library I have 4 different kinds of content types and there are several items in it. I will have to show 4 different tabs and also display the items in each tab using a grid. Interesting isn't it?!

Yea so this gave birth to a new generic web part based on jQuery tabs, and jQGrid. Which is configurable to use any document library, hosted on any website and user can choose which content types to show for a particular library!

Genius isn't it, alright so stay tuned I will be sharing the implementation details in the next post.