Commerce Server Desktop Business Tools: Unsuccessful Attempt to Run on Mac OSX

I use .Net framework more than 10 years and long time ago wanted to try Mono. But, for web development it wasn't useful. Users see only frontend and does care what is under hood. Finally I have found task how I can try Mono: it is Commerce Server Desktop Business Tools.

Sitecore Commerce 8.1 powered by Commerce Server is shipped with two option of store management: Desktop Business Tools and Merchandising Manager. Merchandising Manager is SPEAK web application that allows to manage store from web application. Desktop Business Tools is set of Windows applications that also allows to manage store. Desktop Business Tools has much more features comparing Merchandising Manager. And if you have an option what to use I prefer Desktop Business Tools. Mac OSX users don't have such option(same for Linux users if someone uses Linux on desktop). But Desktop Business Tools are written majorly using .Net framework. What if we try to run them using Mono?

First of all you should forget about installer. You should install Desktop Business Tools on Windows machine and then copy all from C:\Program Files (x86)\Commerce Server 11 to your Mac. After copying and attempt to run 

sudo mono -v CatalogManager.exe

you will see that it requires additional assemblies, e.g. CommerceServer.Core.Catalog.dll. They could be added to Mogo GAC using gacutil (very similar as on Windows) or you should copy them from Commerce Server 11\Assemblies to Commerce Server 11\Business User Applications\bin. Trying to run again CatalogManager.exe via Mono again unsuccessful.  Commerce Server Business tools contains references to Windows unmanaged assemblies: msi.dll, kernel32.dll, user32.dll. You couldn't have them on Mac OSX.  But you could remove this references from code by changing Commerce Server Desktop Business Tools assemblies. Fortunately these reference are not related with business logic and you can replace with something that have similar logic or make stubs that return constants for some methods. Now we can see empty Catalog Manager window, but still get error: 

"System.ArgumentException: A null reference or invalid value was found [GDI+ status: InvalidParameter]

  at System.Drawing.GDIPlus.CheckStatus (Status status) <0x2e486d8 + 0x0016b> in <filename unknown>:0 "

It is error in Mono itself so I stopped here. Google says that it is probably Mono bug. But Mono is cross-platform. Let's check if we can run Commerce Server Desktop Business Tools on Windows and Linux using Mono.

On Windows it works badly: there are a lot of appearance bugs and wizards don't work at all.

However you don't need to run it on Windows by Mono, here you have .Net framework.

On Ubuntu it works in a same way as on Windows, but probably looks a little bit better:

Conclusion: I managed to run Commerce Server Desktop Business Tools with Mono on Windows and Ubuntu. But as it was not designed to work on this platform it is very buggy. You can use it for management already existed content(everything that doesn't require wizards). For Mac OS I faced with Mono error, but I think that it is possible to run tools on Mac, probably you should try different Mono versions. And you always are able to setup Desktop Business Tools on Windows server and use RDP to it to manage anything in your store. It is much more better way!

P.S. I skipped few actions in description to make it faster:

• Changing location of configuration files (there is no AppData folder on Mac or Linux)
• Disabling tracing (it doesn't work)

And I don't recommend to use Commerce Server Desktop Business Tools anywhere except Windows platform. One thing that addition could be checked: how it is running under Wine? But it task for next time.

Sitecore and IIS URL Rewrite module

    URL Rewrite is quite popular IIS module. It is SEO tool that allows you to improve site crawling by search engines. You can do a lot of things using it:

• Add or remove trailing slash
• Enforce lower case URLs
• Use canonical hostnames
• Redirect to HTTPS
• etc.

    But it should be used very carefully with big systems, where you are unable to control everything. As example I'll show which problems could cause thoughtless URL rewrite configuration with Sitecore. The example that is given below correspond only to configuration CM and CD on one machine, otherwise you are free to configure URL rewriting on CD, but don't do anything on CM.

    Simplest URL rewriting rule is "Remove Trailing Slash". You can add this rule by using predefined templates inside IIS embedded wizard.

  

    This rule redirect all requests from "http://yourawesomewebsite.com/page1/" to "http://yourawesomewebsite.com/page1". It helps to avoid of indexing one your page twice, wrong resolving it by analytics, etc. But URL Rewrite rules has one bad feature, while redirecting they transfer POST request to GET. Let see how it can breaks Sitecore functionality.

Sitecore 8 has List Manager Lanchpad  application. It uses MVC approach for communication client with server. And as good MVC practice controller action are marked with method attributes. Delete list, delete folder, move list and others are marked only with [HttpPost] attribute. They do not allow [HttpGet]. And unfortunately client side JavaScript code call this method with trailing slash. E.g.:

http://yourawesomewebsite.com/sitecore/api/ssc/ListManagement/Actions/%7B0264829E-6680-49EB-85B8-703EF9414BA5%7D/DeleteListById/

URL Rewrite module will remove trailing slash and translate this request from POST to GET. As result we will get error:

How this issue could be solved:

1. Do not use URL Rewrite module with complex website which work you could not fully control. Or use only with a part of site that you fully control. It is CD part for Sitecore.
2. Rewrite URL Rewrite rule. In our example it could be "^(((?!ListManagement).*)/$" instead of standard "(.*)/$"  
3. Use URL Rewrite module alternatives, as example ISAPI_Rewrite

Sitecore PageExtenders: non greedy approach

   There is great Sitecore feature: Page Extenders. It allows you to insert any HTML code to your pages. However inaccurate usage of it can harm your site.
   

    Once I installed Federated Experience Manager on Sitecore 7.2 I was unable to get it worked. For some reasons JavaScript on its pages failed. After deeper investigation I found that on any FxM request to server I got incorrect JSON. It was well formed, but at the end string

<input name="SC_ANALYTICS_PAGE" type="hidden" id="SC_ANALYTICS_PAGE" value="ecbb31a2-4c43-494d-88a1-811994213a89" /> 

was added. I figured out that this string was added by SBOS Accelerator module that was installed few days before. Reason of adding this string was greedy PageExеnder. It added this string everywhere, except few sites(shell, modules_shell). Such behavior also break some admin pages, e.g.: ShowConfig.aspx.

   After fixing this problem I can make conclusion: that in general it is much more better to specify where PageExtender should insert controls rather than specify where it should not insert controls. Even if you add a lot of exceptions, you could not cover by your exceptions everything that could appear in custom solutions. 

Sitecore Social Connected 2.1: Second Life

     After installation of Sitecore Social Connected 2.1 on Sitecore 7.2 following this reference (with few unusual steps for modules) I found out that I am not able to add Facebook and Twitter accounts. It was not a problem of this module. It was caused by changes in these social networks APIs. Trying to google solution I found it for Twitter. It was pretty easy, just replace one assembly with another.

   
    Error, that is appeared in log:
ERROR Value was either too large or too small for an Int32.
Exception: System.OverflowException
Message: Value was either too large or too small for an Int32.
Source: mscorlib
   at System.Number.ParseInt32(String s, NumberStyles style, NumberFormatInfo info)
   at System.Convert.ToInt32(String value)
   at TweetSharp.TwitterService.GetAccessToken(OAuthRequestToken requestToken, String verifier)
   at Sitecore.Social.Twitter.Networks.Providers.TwitterProvider.AuthGetAccessToken(AuthArgs args)
   at Sitecore.Social.Client.Connector.SocialLogin.ProcessRequest(HttpContext httpContext)

   Could be fixed in 2 steps:

1. Downloading newer Social Connected 3.0 module
2. Unzipping and replacing TweetSharp.dll in your Sitecore

   I tried to find some similar solution for error with Facebook API:
"Invalid Scopes: offline_access, publish_stream, read_stream. This message is only shown to developers. Users of your app will ignore these permissions if present. Please read documentation for valid permissions at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/permissions".
But there was no ready to use solution. Problem was inside:

private void AddPermissionsToRequest(GetAccountCredentialsRequest accountCredentialsRequest, string networkName)
{
 string a;
 if ((a = networkName.ToLowerInvariant()) != null)
 {
  if (a == "facebook")
  {
   accountCredentialsRequest.Permissions.Add("offline_access", string.Empty);
   accountCredentialsRequest.Permissions.Add("publish_stream", string.Empty);
   accountCredentialsRequest.Permissions.Add("manage_pages", string.Empty);
   accountCredentialsRequest.Permissions.Add("read_stream", string.Empty);
   return;
  }
...

Ok, it is only constants, lets change them:

1. Open ILDASM
2. Dump Sitecore.Social.Client, Version=2.1.0.0 to some.il file
3. Replace "offline_access", "publish_stream", "read_stream" with "publish_pages", "user_posts", "public_profile". It is not strict correspondence, it should be deeply investigated, but these permissions will be enough to create and post social messages.
4. Using ILASM, assemble some.il into Sitecore.Social.Client and copy it to our Sitecore bin folder

But after trying to add Facebook account we get new error message:

ERROR The given key was not present in the dictionary.

Exception: System.Collections.Generic.KeyNotFoundException

Message: The given key was not present in the dictionary.

Source: mscorlib

   at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.get_Item(TKey key)

   at Sitecore.Social.Facebook.Networks.Providers.FacebookProvider.GetDisplayName(Account account)

   at Sitecore.Social.Facebook.Client.Wizards.AddNetworkAccount.PageControls.FacebookWaitForAuthPageControl.GetFacebookAccount(Application application, String accessTokenSecret)

   at Sitecore.Social.Facebook.Client.Wizards.AddNetworkAccount.PageControls.FacebookWaitForAuthPageControl.GetAccountDisplayName()

   at Sitecore.Social.Client.Wizards.AddNetworkAccount.PageControls.WaitForAuthPageControl.CheckAuthStatus()

   After investigation I figured out that problem is inside:

public string GetDisplayName(Account account)
{
 System.Collections.Generic.IDictionary<string, object> accountData = this.GetAccountData(account, "/me");
 if (accountData == null)
 {
  return null;
 }
 return string.Format("{0} {1}", accountData["first_name"], accountData["last_name"]);
}

   Now Facebook returns only "name" instead of "first_name" and "last_name" separately. Guess, how we will solve this problem? Following similar steps that we have for previous fix we get new version of Sitecore.Social.Facebook.dll assembly. After copying it to Sitecore bin folder we are able to add Facebook account, create and publish posts with it.

Yahoo! We gave Sitecore Social Connected 2.1 second life.

P.S. Probably it is not all problems that could appear with changes in Facebook and Twitter APIs, but described above method fixes at least part of them. Use this solution on your own risk!

Debugging optimized managed code in Sitecore (any other website) / Disable JIT Optimization

Latest Sitecore installation contains assemblies build with checked optimization flag. It causes troubles when you attach to w3wp(IIS) process and try to debug them. There is known way how to disable JIT Optimization:

Disabling Runtime Optimization:

1. Close any application that may be using the optimized binaries.
2. Navigate to the folder containing the binaries.
3. Create a new file named BINARYNAME_WITHOUT_THE_EXTENSION.ini
   E.g. If I do not want MyApp.exe to be optimized, and then create an INI file named MyApp.ini.
   E.g. If I do not want MyAppHelper.dll to be optimized, and then create an INI file named MyAppHelper.ini.
4. Open the INI file.
   Add the following text:
   [.NET Framework Debugging Control]
   GenerateTrackingInfo=1
   AllowOptimize=0
5. Save the file.
6. Now you are ready to debug the application with optimization disabled.
7. Note that you will have to create the INI file for each dll/exe that contains the code you want to debug.
8. So the best way to go about this is to create a small windows app that will create an INI file for all files (exe and dll) in a particular folder.

But it does not work when you attach to w3wp process… It happens because IIS uses assemblies from ASP.Net Temporary folder, e.g. C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\Temporary ASP.NET Files. So, you should open your solution from folder on IIS and start debug from VS.

There are a lot of DLL files in Sitecore BIN folder and I decided to write powershell script that will create ini files for all assemblies.

Get-ChildItem (Get-Item -Path ".\" -Verbose).FullName -Filter *.dll | 
Foreach-Object{
    $newName = $_.DirectoryName +"\"+ [System.IO.Path]::GetFileNameWithoutExtension($_) + ".ini"
    "[.NET Framework Debugging Control]
    GenerateTrackingInfo=1
    AllowOptimize=0" | Out-File $newName
    Write-host $newName
}

Use and enjoy :-)

Sitecore 8 Roles Dependencies

Here is Sitecore 8 roles graph with installed ExM and WFFM:

Some remarks:

1) New roles: List Manager Editors, Experience Explorer, Analytics Advanced Testing, Sitecore Client Bucket Mangement, Analytics Maintaining

Sitecore Roles Graph

 

Here is visualization of Sitecore Roles Graph for Sitecore 7.2: