Bootstrap 3, LESS, Bundling, and ASP.NET MVC

Until Twitter Bootstrap v3, I would have recommend that you use dotLess to compile and bundle your LESS files. However, it is now a known issue that the current build of dotLess does not support Bootstrap 3, or more specifically that it does not support LESS 1.4; and worse yet, there is no fix in sight.

So, how can you use Bootstrap LESS with MVC?

I recommend using BundleTransformer. It is an amazingly feature rich set of extensions for System.Web.Optimization. The BundleTransformer.Less extension provides easy to use LESS transformations (already up to LESS 1.5) and bundling support that wires up straight into your pre-existing BundleCollection configuration. For more information about everything that BundleTransformer has to offer, check out this article.

Now here is how you setup Bootstrap 3 and BundleTransformer for ASP.NET:

Required NuGet Packages

1. Twitter.Bootstrap.Less
2. BundleTransformer.Less
3. BundleTransformer.MicrosoftAjax
4. JavaScriptEngineSwitcher.Msie

Unit Testing and Dependency Injection, with xUnit InlineData and Unity

Inversion of control is great because it makes your code more testable; but you usually still have to write tests for each implementation of your interfaces. So what if your unit testing framework could just work directly with your container to make testing even easier? Well, xUnit can!

Below we define a custom data source for our xUnit theories by extending the InlineDataAttribute. This allows our data driven unit tests to resolve types via a container, and then inject those resolved objects straight into our unit tests.

Bottom line: This allows us to test more with less code!

The rest of post is very code heavy, so I strongly recommend that you start out by taking a look at sections 1 and 2 to get an idea of what we are trying to accomplish. :)

1. Example Interfaces and Classes
2. Example Unit Tests
3. IocInlineDataResolver
4. UnityInlineDataAttribute

Check Properties of a Dynamic Object in .NET

How can you avoid a RuntimeBinderException when working with dynamics?

In JavaScript, checking if an object implements a property is easy; so why can't it be that easy to check dynamics in C#? Well, it sort of is!* If you are using an ExpandoObject, you need only cast it to a Dictionary and check and see if it contains the desired key.

* Offer only valid with ExpandoObject. **
** See sample code for participating interfaces.***
*** Visit your local Visual Studio installation for details.

Unshelve to a Different Branch in TFS

Love it or hate it, TFS has a lot of features; some are just more discoverable than others.

Team Foundation Server has the ability to unshelve between branches, but it requires Microsoft Team Foundation Server Power Tools to do so. Once you have installed these, simply follow these two steps to move a shelveset from one branch to another:

1. Navigate to the root of your project.
2. Fill in and execute the following command:

Unshelve Command:

tfpt unshelve "[ShelveSetName]" /migrate /source:"[SourcePath]" /target:"[TargetPath]"

Example:

cd c:/code/
tfpt unshelve "Demo Shelveset" /migrate /source:"$/DemoProject/branch" /target:"$/DemoProject/trunk"

Enjoy,
Tom