James Newton-King

Archives

Archives / 2008 / August
  • Aug 30 2008

    TechEd 2008

    Tomorrow I fly up to TechEd NZ 2008. Intergen is running the hands on labs again so expect to see groups of people in striking yellow camo pants.

    Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals ... except the weasel.

    As always Intergenites are also presenting a number of sessions:

    • SOA205 - Extending the Application Platform with Cloud Services - Chris Auld
    • SOA209 - The Road to "Oslo" : The Microsoft Services and Modeling Platform - Chris Auld
    • OFC301 - Creating Content Centric Publishing Sites with MOSS 2007 - Mark Orange, Zac Smith
    • OFC305 - Best Practice ECM with SharePoint 2007 - Michael Noel, Mark Orange
    • OFC404 - Open XML Development Turning SharePoint Data into Microsoft Office Documents - James Newton-King, Reed Shaffner

    Yup I am presenting at TechEd! I'm not sure which I am more of: excited or nervous. Good times.

  • Aug 25 2008

    Json.NET 3.0 Released

    I warned ya - that colored chalk was forged by Lucifer himself! JSON's popularity continues to grow. In the few months since Json.NET 2.0 was released it has been downloaded over 5000 times and lots of new feedback has been posted in project's forum. This release of Json.NET adds heaps of new features, mostly from your suggestions, and fixes all known bugs!

    Silverlight Support

    Json.NET now supports running on the browser within Silverlight. The download includes Newtonsoft.Json.Silverlight.dll which can be referenced from Silverlight projects.

    The Silverlight build the library shares the same source code as Json.NET and it is identical to use.

    LINQ to JSON even easier to use

    There have been lots of little changes to LINQ to JSON in this release but the main one in Json.NET 3.0 is that the two primary classes now implement common .NET collection interfaces.

    JObject implements IDictionary<TKey, TValue> and JArray implements IList<T>. Working with these classes is now just like any other list or dictionary!

    Serializer Improvements

    Along with incorporating many small improvements, the big new addition to the Json.NET 3.0 serializer is JsonConverterAttribute.

    JsonConverterAttribute can be placed on a class and defines which JsonConverter you always want to use to serialize this class with instead of using the default serializer logic.

    JsonConverterAttribute can also be placed on a field or property to specify which converter you want to use to serialize that specific member.

    public class Person
    {
      // "John Smith"
      public string Name { get; set; }
     
      // "2000-12-15T22:11:03"
      [JsonConverter(typeof(IsoDateTimeConverter))]
      public DateTime BirthDate { get; set; }
     
      // new Date(976918263055)
      [JsonConverter(typeof(JavaScriptDateTimeConverter))]
      public DateTime LastModified { get; set; }
    }

    Changes

    Here is a complete list of what has changed.

    • New feature - Silverlight Json.NET build.
    • New feature - JObject now implements IDictionary, JArray now implements IList.
    • New feature - Added JsonConverterAttribute. Used to define a JsonConverter to serialize a class or member. Can be placed on classes or fields and properties.
    • New feature - Added DateTimeFormat to IsoDateTimeConverter to customize date format.
    • New feature - Added WriteValue(object) overload to JsonWriter.
    • New feature - Added JTokenEqualityComparer.
    • New feature - Added IJEnumerable. JEnumerable and JToken now both implement IJEnumerable.
    • New feature - Added AsJEnumerable extension method.
    • Change - JsonSerializer does a case insensitive compare when matching property names and constructor params.
    • Change - JObject properties must have a unique name.
    • Bug fix - Internal string buffer properly resizes when parsing long JSON documents.
    • Bug fix - JsonWriter no longer errors in certain conditions when writing a JsonReader's position.
    • Bug fix - JsonSerializer skips multi-token properties when putting together constructor values.
    • Bug fix - Change IConvertible conversions to use ToXXXX methods rather than casting.
    • Bug fix - GetFieldsAndProperties now properly returns a distinct list of member names for classes than have overriden abstract generic properties.

    Donate

    You can now support Json.NET by donating. Json.NET is a free open source project and is developed in personal time.

    Marge: "What do you kids want to do with your hundred dollars?" Lisa: "I'm going to donate mine to PBS!" Bart: "There's a special, one hundred tacos for one hundred bucks!" Marge: "Tacos? Public broadcasting? I won't have you wasting your money."

    Links

    Json.NET CodePlex Project

    Json.NET 3.0 Download - Json.NET source code and binaries

    kick it on DotNetKicks.com

  • Aug 15 2008

    Intergen Wins 2008 Microsoft Partner Of The Year Award

    Last night Intergen, my most excellent employer, won Microsoft Partner Of The Year Award for New Zealand.

    Microsoft said we won the award because of our commitment to delivering solutions to our clients across the entire Microsoft Application Stack. Intergen was recognised as the only partner who can truly offer solutions that span the breadth from .NET development through MOSS, BI, CRM, NAV etc. Special mention was also made of the work we did in support of the Office Open XML standard.

    Chris was on hand to accept the award. He was rather blasé about the whole thing...

    Fame was like a drug, but what was even more like a drug were the drugs.