Saving an XPathDocument or XmlDocument to a File in ASP.NET

Today I was working on a class that was returning an XPathDocument representation of an XML document and I needed to save it to a file. I switched the class to return an XmlDocument ... and the reason for that should be obvious from the two code samples below.

Here's how I saved an XPathDocument to an XML file:

// myItems[0] is from a generic List<XPathDocument> list
XPathDocument document = myItems[0];
// Feels like there should be an easier way to do this.
XPathNavigator documentNav = document.CreateNavigator();
XmlTextWriter writer = new XmlTextWriter(
  Server.MapPath(temporaryFiles + "/" + 
  fileId + ".xml"), System.Text.Encoding.UTF8);
writer.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;
writer.Indentation = 3;
writer.WriteStartDocument();
writer.WriteNode(documentNav, true);
writer.WriteEndDocument();
writer.Close();

Now here's how I saved an XmlDocument to an XML file:

// myItems[0] is from a generic List<XmlDocument> list
XmlDocument document = myItems[0];            
document.Save(
  Server.MapPath(temporaryFiles + "/" + fileId + ".xml"));

Load an XML File from the File System into Textml with ASP.NET

I'm building an internal application that needs to load an XML file from the file system into a specific repository path in Textml Server. Here's the method I used within a ContentServer class I created.

The references to various this properties are set in the same class where I get the values from a configuration file for the staging and production servers.

public bool Publish(string fileUri)
{
  try
  {
    ArrayList documents = new ArrayList(1);
    IxiaClientServices IxiaCS = new IxiaClientServices();
    IxiaServerServices IxiaSS = IxiaCS.ConnectServer(this.ContextServer);
    IxiaDocBaseServices IxiaDS = IxiaSS.ConnectDocBase(this.ContextContainer);
    IxiaDocumentServices ds = IxiaDS.DocumentServices;
    IxiaDocument document = IxiaDocument.getInstance();
    FileInfo file = new FileInfo(fileUri);
    
    document.Name = file.Name;
    document.MimeType = "text/xml";
    document.Collection = this.ContextAdditionalName;
    document.Content = IxiaDocument.MakeBinaryContent(file.FullName);
 
    documents.Add(document);
    IxiaTextmlServerError [] err = ds.SetDocuments(documents,
        (int)IxiaDocumentServices.TextmlSetDocuments.TextmlAddDocument |
        (int)IxiaDocumentServices.TextmlSetDocuments.TextmlReplaceDocument |
        (int)IxiaDocumentServices.TextmlSetDocuments.TextmlIndexDocument,
        TextmlDocumentType.TextmlDocument);
 
    // If there is more than one item, and that first item is 
    // not null or empty, return false.
    if (err.Length > 1 && !String.IsNullOrEmpty(err[0].ToString()))
    {
      // TODO: Log each in the EventViewer
      return false;
    }
    else return true;
  }
  catch (Exception ex)
  {
    // TODO: Log in the EventViewer
    return false;
  }
}

I need to do the same into MarkLogic so I'll post that snippet here as soon as it's done.

Using the ASP.NET AdRotator Control for Text-Only Ads

Here's a pathetic little hack to leverage the ASP.NET AdRotator control to generate text-only ads.

In your ASPX page:

<asp:AdRotator
  ID="AdRotator1"
  AdvertisementFile="~/App_Data/DidYouKnow.config"
  runat="server"
  OnAdCreated="AdRotator1_CustomAdCreated"/>

<asp:HyperLink
  ID="HyperLink1"
  runat="server"
  NavigateUrl="#"></asp:HyperLink>

In your code-behind page:

public void AdRotator1_CustomAdCreated(object sender, AdCreatedEventArgs e)
{
  AdRotator1.Visible = false;
  HyperLink1.Text = e.AlternateText;
  HyperLink1.NavigateUrl = e.NavigateUrl;
}

In your XML file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Advertisements>
  <Ad>
    <NavigateUrl>target.aspx</NavigateUrl>
    <AlternateText>Did You Know Item 1</AlternateText>
  </Ad>
  <Ad>
    <NavigateUrl>target.aspx</NavigateUrl>
    <AlternateText>Did You Know Item 2</AlternateText>
  </Ad>
  <Ad>
    <NavigateUrl>target.aspx</NavigateUrl>
    <AlternateText>Did You Know Item 3</AlternateText>
  </Ad>
</Advertisements>

Getting Server and Other HTTP Information in a Class in an ASP.NET App

Another tidbit I can never remember when I need it. You're working on an ASP.NET website and you have a class that needs to access the Request or Response information, for example. Use HttpContext.Current as in the sample below.

_name = HttpContext.Current.Request.ServerVariables["SERVER_NAME"];

Removing Noise Words from a String with XQuery

MarkLogic doesn't offer a way to do stop words (a/k/a suppression lists a/k/a noise words) by default for various reasons -- and I didn't want to block them from being used in searches -- but I was asked to remove them from consideration when using hit highlighting. Here's the code I used to remove a fixed set of noise words from a user's search string.

define variable $NOISE_WORDS as xs:string*
{
 (: \b is a word boundary. This catches beginning,
    end, and middle of string matches on whole words. :)
 ('\bthe\b', '\bof\b', '\ban\b', '\bor\b',
  '\bis\b', '\bon\b', '\bbut\b', '\ba\b')
}

define function remove-noise-words($string, $noise)
{
 (: This is a recursive function. :)
 if(not(empty($noise))) then
   remove-noise-words(
     replace($string, $noise[1], '', 'i'),
     (: This passes along the noise words after
        the one just evaluated. :)
     $noise[position() > 1]
   )
 else normalize-space($string)
}

let $source-string1 := "The Tragedy of King Lear"
let $source-string2 := "The Tragedy OF King Lear These an"
let $source-string3 :=
 "The Tragedy of the an of King Lear These of"
let $source-string4 := "The of an of"
(: Need to handle empty result if all noise words,
  as in #4 above. :)
let $final :=
 remove-noise-words($source-string1, $NOISE_WORDS)
return $final