Introduction
After first discovering CodeProject and using it, I was yet again amazed at the value that such sites provide developers. Reviewing the site and its features reminded me of all the times I had wished that I had not made personal code folders. When we all do this, teams of developers seem to write duplicate versions of code, whether it be a string splitter or something much more complicated. Being a beginner to .NET development, I decided to write a simple code repository and host it on the my website, so that I can paste my code snippets in a location that I can always gain access to, and so CodeBank was born.
Configuration
First we need to ensure your machine meets the following prerequisites:
- IIS is installed
- SQL Server 2000 is installed
- The .NET framework is installed
- Any patches are installed with respect to the above 3 items.
Note that if you installed Visual Studio in order to debug on this machine, and the machine is a PDC (Domain Server) you will not be able to use the interactive debugging. Microsoft disabled this feature for security reasons.
When you have downloaded the zip file to a temporary location, you should have a directory labeled codebank. Please follow the tasks in order for the site to be operational.
- Copy the CodeBank directory to your root web directory. e.g. d:\inetpub\wwwroot\codebank.
- Create an IIS virtual directory for the following:
- Codebank - virtual directory for CodeBank.
- ProjectCaseStudies - virtual directory where case studies are uploaded for each project you create.
- ProjectUploads - virtual directory where code files are uploaded for each project you create.
- Ensure that IIS and ASPNET users have access to be able to write to projectcasestudies and projectuploads.
- Set these shares to Everyone initially. When the application uploads correctly, you can adjust the security accordingly.
- Start up SQL Server 2000 Enterprise manager and create a blank database named codebank
- Right click the newly created database codebank and select to restore a database from backup.
- Navigate to the codebank\sql directory and select the file named codebank.bak.
- Click OK to restore
- Navigate to the Web.Config file located in the root of codebank directory and make the appropriate changes to the
<APPSETTINGS> entries
Web.config
In adherence with good coding standards, Microsoft recommends placing custom settings in the web.config file. I felt it was a relevant place for the database and other web settings. Please ensure that you change these according to your database username, password and respective file paths.
appSettings
add key="CONNECTION_STRING"
value="server=servername or ip address;database=codebank;
user id=your username;password=your password"
add key="FILE_PATH"
value="x:\your web directory path\codebank\projectuploads\"
add key="FILE_VIRTUAL_DIRECTORY"
value="http://<your domain or machine name>/codebank/projectuploads/"
add key="CASE_PATH"
value="x:\<your web directory path>\codebank\projectcasestudies\"
add key="CASE_VIRTUAL_DIRECTORY"
value="http://<your domain or machine name>/codebank/projectcasestudies/"
appSettings
Thanks
I would like to mention a thanks to CodeProject for inspiration and special thanks to my former colleague James Coleman for his direction.
