Force Content Types to Json in .NET WebApi

I ran into a situation where I couldn't set the Content-Type header in the http request client I was using. (Crossrider's appAPI.request.post)

The client was either not setting a Content-Type or defaulting to application/x-www-form-urlencoded

If you put the code below in Application_Start you should be able to force form-urlencoded data to the JsonFormatter and by removing the XmlFormatter, Json will also be the default.

HttpConfiguration config = GlobalConfiguration.Configuration;
foreach (var mediaType in config.Formatters.FormUrlEncodedFormatter.SupportedMediaTypes)
{
    config.Formatters.JsonFormatter.SupportedMediaTypes.Add(mediaType);
}
config.Formatters.Remove(config.Formatters.FormUrlEncodedFormatter);
config.Formatters.Remove(config.Formatters.XmlFormatter);

Using Less and Twitter Bootstrap in ASP.NET MVC4

UPDATE 05/02/2013:

Changed ScriptBundle and StyleBundle to just Bundle, per Andrey Taritsyn:

Bundle Transformer it is not recommended to use together with the StyleBundle and ScriptBundle classes, because these classes already contain transformations (instances of the built-in minifiers: CssMinify and JsMinify). Use a Bundle class.

UPDATE 11/08/2012:

1. Create a new MVC4 Internet Application
   
2. Add the following Nuget Packages
• Install-Package BundleTransformer.Less
• Install-Package Twitter.Bootstrap.Less
3. Rename /Content/site.css to /Content/site.less 
4. Edit BundleConfig.cs in the App_Start folder and update the css file name to site.less like so:

   bundles.Add(new var cssTransformer = new CssTransformer();
   var jsTransformer = new JsTransformer();
   var nullOrderer = new NullOrderer();
   
   var defaultScriptsBundle = new Bundle("~/bundles/default.js").Include(
               "~/Scripts/jquery-{version}.js",
                "~/Scripts/jquery-ui-{version}.js",
               "~/Scripts/site.js");
   defaultScriptsBundle.Transforms.Add(jsTransformer);
   defaultScriptsBundle.Orderer = nullOrderer;
   bundles.Add(defaultScriptsBundle);
   
   var defaultStylesBundle = new Bundle("~/Content/default.css").Include("~/Content/site.less");
   defaultStylesBundle.Transforms.Add(cssTransformer);
   defaultStylesBundle.Orderer = nullOrderer;
   bundles.Add(defaultStylesBundle);
   

5. Add the following to the top of /Content/site.less in order to have access to all of the Bootstrap mixins:

   @import "less/bootstrap.less"; 
   body {
         padding-top: 60px;
         padding-bottom: 40px;
   }
   @import "less/responsive.less"; 
   

   
   

=================== THE REST OF THIS POST IS OUT OF DATE ==========

UPDATE 8/20/2012: I've created a Nuget package that performs the steps below. I'd suggest reviewing what the package does below and then running:
Install-Package Twitter.Bootstrap.Less.MVC4

ASP.NET MVC4 has a great new feature that can bundle and minify your CSS and Javascript files.

But in order to get Twitter Bootstrap to work it takes a bit more work. Here are the steps that worked for me.

1. Create a new MVC4 Internet Application
   
2. Add the following Nuget Packages
• Install-Package dotless
• Install-Package Twitter.Bootstrap.Less
3. Create an Infrastructure folder and add the following two files: (hat tip to this Stackoverflow question)
• ImportedFilePathResolver.cs
• LessMinify.cs
4. Rename /Content/site.css to /Content/site.less 
5. Edit BundleConfig.cs in the App_Start folder and replace the default Content/css bundle with the following:

   var css = new Bundle("~/Content/css").Include("~/Content/site.less");
   css.Transforms.Add(new LessMinify());
   bundles.Add(css);
   

   
   
6. Add the following to the top of /Content/site.less in order to have access to all of the Bootstrap mixins:

   @import "less/bootstrap.less";
   

   
   

If you have "shared" .less files from other projects I found importing them in site.less right after boostrap.less to work pretty well. They'll have access to all the mixins.

@import "less/bootstrap.less";
@import "less/shared.less";

The completed solution is available on Github here

If there is a better/easier way to do this please let me know in the comments!

Passing Cookies to a Node.js REST Client

In Node.js if you want to pass the current user's Cookies to a REST call your making from the server here's a simple way to do it:

var cookies = _.map(req.cookies, function(val, key) {
    return key + "=" + encodeURIComponent(val);

}).join("; ");

rest.get("http://makerocketgonow.com/", {
    headers: {
        Cookie: cookies,
        "Content-Type": "application/json"
    }
  }).on("complete", function(data) {
    return console.log(data);
});

This example uses the popular Restler library, but I assume you could do something similar with other libraries or without using a library.

CAUTION: I'm using encodeURIComponent on the cookie value. Ruby on Rails seems to expect their cookies to be encoded like this. On the other hand, I've looked throw a few Node.js libraries that deal with cookies and they don't seem to manipulate the value at all. So you can play with adding or removing encodeURIComponent.

If you start to get errors when making the REST request, be sure to check the cookie encoding/format versus what Firebug sends on a normal request to the site. Pay particular attention to any special characters.

Using Mongoid 3 (MongoHQ or MongoLab) on Heroku

Here's what you need to get Mongoid working on Heroku, if you're getting errors like:
NoMethodError (undefined method `[]' for nil:NilClass)

Make sure the following is in your gem file (reference).

source 'http://rubygems.org' 

ruby '1.9.3'
gem  'rails', '3.2.3'

If you get an error like undefined method `ruby' run the following:

gem install bundler --pre

A lot of places have outdate documentation for configuring your mongoid.yml file which may result in the following error:
No database provided for session configuration: :default

Your mongoid.yml file should look like the following.

production:
  sessions:
    default:
      uri: <%= ENV['MONGOHQ_URL'] %>
      options:
        skip_version_check: true
        safe: true

The ENV variable above is for MongoHQ. For MongoLab use ENV['MONGOLAB_URI'] 


Big thanks to the guys in this StackOverflow thread for helping me put all this together!

Add support for LESS to Node.js connect-assetmanager package

The connect-assetmanager Node.js package allows you to combine multiple javascript and CSS files into one and also do other manipulations like minification.

It's part of Mathias Pettersson's (mape) excellent node-express-boilerplate template.

If you're also using LESS for CSS here is some code you can add to get connect-assetmanager to process you're LESS files:

var assetsSettings;
assetsSettings = {
  js: {
    route: /\/static\/js\/[a-z0-9]+\/.*\.js/,
    path: "./public/javascripts/",
    dataType: "javascript",
    files: ["libs/underscore-min.js" "libs/jquery.mobile-1.1.0.min.js", siteConf.uri + "/nowjs/now.js", "site.js"],
    debug: siteConf.debug,
    stale: !siteConf.debug
  },
  css: {
    route: /\/static\/css\/[a-z0-9]+\/.*\.css/,
    path: "./public/stylesheets/",
    dataType: "css",
    files: ["libs/jquery.mobile-1.1.0.min.css", "style.less"],
    debug: siteConf.debug,
    stale: !siteConf.debug,
    preManipulate: {
      "^": [
        function(file, path, index, isLast, callback) {
          var match;
          match = path.match(/\.less$/);
          if ((match != null) && match.length > 0) {
            return less.render(file, function(e, css) {
              return callback(css);
            });
          } else {
            return callback(file);
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  }
};

The import part is the preManipulate line under css but I include my entire assetsSettings from a project to make it easier to understand.

MonoTouch JsBridge - Communicate with the UIWebView

Today I'm open sourcing JsBridge for MonoTouch which allows for bidirectional communication between the javascript in your UIWebViews and your native C# code in your MonoTouch app. Go directly to GitHub for the documentation on how to use it.

This project was inspired by doing a project using Appcelerator's Titanium. In fact the javascript used in JsBridge was taken directly from that project, so if you're used to using Titanium you should be right at home using JsBridge.

At this time it requires MonoTouch 5.3.3, which as of 5/1/2012 is in Alpha, because JsBridge needs to register a custom url protocol using NSUrlProtocol.

I'm not 100% satisfied with the implementation of the event listeners on the native side, so I'm open to suggestions on how to make it better. Ideally some day the Xamarin team will implement something like this in a future version. ;)

I've already submitted my first app to use it the iOS AppStore and it relies heavily on bidirectional communication between javascript and native. The app is a remote control for Rdio's new UI. A nicely executed feature by Rdio (even if it came way after the chrome extension remote I made for their first UI ;) ), but unfortunately it doesn't work on iOS partially due to the Rdio servers not supporting the Websockets protocol that the UIWebView has. Using JsBridge I was able to implement the WebSocket connection on the native side and override the Rdio javascript calls that use WebSockets and pass them to the native side and vice versa. I'm quite pleased with the results so far. ;)

Solved: Video.Js Playback Error in IE9

TL;DR:

Make sure your server (including Amazon CloudFront) is setting the correct mime type when returning the video file.

For .mp4 files the mime type should be video/mp4

ISSUE:

I spent about an hour baffled why IE9 wouldn't play an H.264 video that Chrome and Firefox played fine.

The only lead I had was this message output by Video.js using console.log:

Video Error[object Object] 

What's more annoying is that IE9 doesn't let you inspect objects that are output by console.log. To get around that you can install the Firebug Lite bookmarklet. Unfortunately in this case the object doesn't give you much more to go on.

I tried swapping videos and found it worked with the sample Video.js video, which usually indicates a mime type issue (which seems to be a recurring issue with Microsoft products).

I was using Amazon CloudFront to server the videos (download style as opposed to streaming) and figured I couldn't set the mime type but it turns out you can:

1. Go into S3 and find your video file.
2. Right click and select Properties
3. Select the Metadata tab
4. In this case, set Key = Content-Type and Value = video/mp4
5. Press Save button