.NET Framework V1.X

[Download] CSLMail - SMTP/POP3 email component for .NET Framework and .NET Compact Framework

Gaurav Khanna — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 06:03:00 GMT

CSLMail is my pet project on which I have been working for past few years. I have recently worked towards updating, feature enhancing and bug-fixing it, resulting in v2.0.

CSLMail 2.0 is a free and feature rich .NET based email component, which supports the SMTP and POP3 protocols, completing the need to design a complete email client. Its comes with complete documentation and features include:

SMTP
- Complete SMTP support for sending emails
- SMTP Authentication supported
- Attachments supported using BASE64 encoding
- Return/Delivery Receipts, Email Priority, Plain-Text/Rich-Text emails supported
- Custom email headers can be inserted
POP3
- Support for automatic email parsing an presenting you with the various email sections
- Support for getting the partial email content for showing the header information only (TOP command)
- Allows you to automatically decode and save BASE64 encoded attachments

CSLMail also supports variety of platforms for desktop and compact device development:

.NET Framework 2.0
.NET Compact Framework 1.0 and 2.0
Windows CE 5.0
Pocket PC 2003 and SmartPhone 2003
Windows Mobile 5.0 based Pocket PC and SmartPhone

Best of all: Its free!

Download it today from http://www.wintoolzone.com/showpage.aspx?url=ListDotnet.aspx?ListType=3

TechED Sri Lanka Presentations

Gaurav Khanna — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 18:00:00 GMT

[Original Post Date: 17th October 2005]

Below are the presentations for the sessions delivered at TechED Sri Lanka:

India Technology Roadshow Presentations and Downloads

Gaurav Khanna — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 17:58:00 GMT

[Original Post Date: 14th October 2005]

Technology Roadshows, which have been on for almost a month across India, have been very successful. I have been speaking in the Developer Track on Building Performant Applications using .NET Framework 2.0 and Debugging Techniques for .NET Framework 2.0 and VS 2005.

You can download the presentations and demos from http://www.microsoft.com/india/msdn/events/presentations.aspx#sept05

WindowsIdentity Debugger Visualizer for Visual Studio 2005

Gaurav Khanna — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 17:53:00 GMT

[Original Post Date: 9th October 2005]

I just finished implementing WIVisualizer, a WindowsIdentity debugger visualizer for Visual Studio 2005. It displays important details like:

Username
Authentication type
Impersonation Level
Account type - System or Guest
Anonymous or Authenticated identity
Windows groups the identity is member of

Here's a screen-shot for the same:

It has been built using the Visual Studio 2005 Release Candidate and can be downloaded from here. To install, simply copy the DLL file to <Visual Studio 2005 Installation Folder>\Common7\Packages\Debugger\Visualizers folder.

Image Visualizer for VS 2005 Beta 2

Gaurav Khanna — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 17:48:00 GMT

[Original Post Date: 25th September 2005]

I am currently on the Technology Roadshow across 6 six cities in India, where I am talking about Building performant applications and Debugging Techniques for .NET Framework 2.0.

One of the things the developers here are amazed at are the DataTips that have been introduced with VS 2005, and also with Visualizers. Infact, when I demonstrate the DataSet Visualizer that ships with VS 2005, you can hear the WOW! of the audience :)

In the same session, we then go about building a visualizer for the Image class. For those interested, you can download the VS 2005 Beta 2 source code for the same from http://www.wintoolzone.com/showpage.aspx?url=dotnet.aspx. To activate the visualizer, build the DLL assembly and copy it to <ProgramFiles Folder comes here>\<VisualStudio Installation Folder comes here>\Common7\Packages\Debugger\Visualizers folder.

Technology Roadshow: September/October 2005

Gaurav Khanna — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 17:46:00 GMT

[Original Post Date: 18th September 2005]

Starting from 20th of September, Technology Roadshow starts in India. We are going to 6 different cities and doing two complete days of technical sessions across a breadth of technologies: for developers, IT professionals, Windows Mobile and Tablet PC developers and Architects. Below are the dates for the same:

City	Day 1	Day 2
Mumbai	20th Sep	21st Sep
Pune	22nd Sep	23rd Sep
Chennai	27th Sep	28th Sep
Hyderabad	30th Sep	1st Oct
New Delhi	4th Oct	5th Oct
Bangalore	18th Oct	19th Oct

I would be delivering session on Day 1 and Day 2. On Day 1, I am talking about How to build performant applications using .NET Framework, followed by the session on Debugging Techniques for .NET Framework 2.0.

On Day 2, we have sessions on SQL Mobile 2005 andIntroduction to development using Tablet PC.

For more details on developer sessions, visit http://www.microsoft.com/india/msdn/events/ and for MED/Tablet session, visit http://www.microsoft.com/india/msdn/events/med.aspx.

To register, visit http://www.microsoft.com/india/events/audience.aspx?filter=20001

Adding process enumeration support in Rotor v1.0

Gaurav Khanna — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 17:44:00 GMT

[Original Post Date: 5th September 2005]

Share Source CLI, better known as Rotor, is one of the best ways to understand how .NET Framework works. And with the source code availability as part of Rotor distribution, its an excellent academic/hobby interest - you can extend it by adding more functionality, or modify the existing one and see how it behaves.

Yesterday, I went about doing the same. One of the functionality which I found missing in Rotor is that of enumerating system process list. .NET Framework's System.Diagnostics.Process class has methods, like GetProcesses, that allow you to do the same.

So, I went about implementing GetProcesses method overloadsin System.Diagnostics.Process class that allow me to enumerate process list on the local machine only. This required modification in the Platform Adaptation Layer (PAL) of Rotor. Since, I just have it running on Win32 for the moment, I modified the Win32 PAL to implement the support via ToolHelp API. Now, on a Windows system, its possible to enumerate the system process list using Rotor, as exemplified by the snippet below:

using System;

using System.Diagnostics;

publicclass EnumProcess

{

publicstaticvoid Main()

{

Process[] arrProcess = Process.GetProcesses();

if (arrProcess == null)

{

Console.WriteLine("Unable to get process list!");

return;

}
Console.WriteLine("{0} processes enumerated.",arrProcess.Length);

foreach (Process proc in arrProcess)

Console.WriteLine("Process ID {0}, Handle: {1}", proc.Id, proc.Handle);

}

You can download the updated source files for Rotor v1.0 from http://www.wintoolzone.com/showpage.aspx?url=rotor.aspx. The zipped archive contains Changes for Process Enumeration.txt that indicates where the updated files need to be copied. Once done, rebuild Rotor to get the changes into effect.

Enumerating Managed Processes

Gaurav Khanna — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 17:33:00 GMT

[Original Post Date: 16th August 2005]

System.Diagnostics.Process class is a managed wrap over a subset of the ToolHelp API - as it enumerates only the process list. Not only that, it will list all the running processes, irrespective of whether they are running unmanaged code or running managed code. What if you wish to identify which of these processes are running managed code?

Unfortunately, neither the ToolHelp API, nor the Process class allow us to identify managed processes from the list they provide us. However, if you have noticed while debugging using Visual Studio, the debugger does identify a managed process in such a list:

So, how does the VS debugger do it?

Well, the CLR exposes debugging interfaces, which contain this functionality. These interfaces include ICorPublish, ICorPublishProcess, ICorPublishAppDomain, just to name a few. Infact, if you have installed the .NET Framework 2.0 SDK and navigate to the %SDKRoot%\v2.0\include folder, you will see the relevant header files that contain these interface definitions

The same identification can now also be done using managed code. Under %SDKRoot%\v2.0\bin folder, you will find, amongst others, MdbgCore.dll - the core of the managed debugger. If you ILASM this file (yes, its an assembly), you will see the managed wraps of the unmanaged interfaces mentioned above:

The starting point is Microsoft.Samples.Debugging.CorPublish.CorPublish. This lets us enumerate the managed processes, returning an instance of Microsoft.Samples.Debugging.CorPublish.CorPublishProcess type. Below is a sample that exemplifies doing the same:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using Microsoft.Samples.Debugging.MdbgEngine;
using Microsoft.Samples.Debugging.CorPublish;

namespace ManagedProcessList
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
CorPublish pub = new CorPublish();
foreach (CorPublishProcess proc in pub.EnumProcesses())
{
Console.WriteLine("{0} IsManaged: {1}",proc.DisplayName, proc.IsManaged.ToString());
}
}
}
}

Understanding CLR's Special Threads

Gaurav Khanna — Tue, 12 Jul 2005 16:48:00 GMT

There are multiple special threads which the CLR maintains and executes. Yun Jin talks about them in his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/yunjin/archive/2005/07/05/435726.aspx.

Must read for those who want to understand CLR better!

Shared Source Bluetooth Library

Gaurav Khanna — Fri, 27 May 2005 02:47:00 GMT

Check out the shared source Bluetooth class library - Windows Embedded Source Tools for Bluetooth