MOSS 2007: Get Shared Services User Profile without “Manage User Profile” permission

For a custom functionality I’m developing for my customer I needed to retrieve the user profile logged on the application. To accomplish this task SharePoint object model provides the class UserProfileManager which allows you to query user profile properties.

There is only a tip when you write your code to access the user profile properties, in fact you can use two different piece of code to accomplish that:

1. if you instance a new UserProfileManager (see the commented code below on 7th row) you could have problem and receive the following error:
   
   “You must have manage user profiles administrator rights to use administrator mode.”
   
   This is due to the fact that to instance a UserProfileManager you need administration right on SharePoint Shared Service.
2. Instead of the creation of a new instance of UserProfileManager class, you can get an already present instance using ProfileLoader class (see row 8, 9 and 10 below). In this way you can access to a read-only version of UserProfileManager class which permits you to query every properties of the user profile you have requested (see all the example below).

   1:  public UserProfile GetUserProfile(string loginName)

   2:  {

   3:      UserProfile userProfile;

   4:      using (var Site = new SPSite(SiteId))

   5:      {

   6:          var ctx = ServerContext.GetContext(Site);

   7:          //var upm = new UserProfileManager(ctx, true);

   8:          var profile = ProfileLoader.GetProfileLoader(ctx);

   9:          var upm = profile.GetUserProfileManager();

  10:          var spUserProfile = upm.GetUserProfile(loginName);

  11:   

  12:          userProfile = new UserProfile(spUserProfile.ID)

  13:            {

  14:                Login = loginName,

  15:                PreferredName = spUserProfile["PreferredName"] != null ? 

  16:                  spUserProfile["PreferredName"].Value as string : string.Empty,

  17:                  

  18:                Manager = spUserProfile["Manager"] != null ? 

  19:                  spUserProfile["Manager"].Value as string : string.Empty,

  20:                  

  21:                Name = spUserProfile["FirstName"] != null ? 

  22:                  spUserProfile["FirstName"].Value as string : string.Empty,

  23:                  

  24:                Surname = spUserProfile["LastName"] != null ? 

  25:                  spUserProfile["LastName"].Value as string : string.Empty

  26:            };

  27:   

  28:      }

  29:   

  30:      return userProfile;

  31:  }

 

Particular thanks to my friend Michele who supported and suggested me on how to resolve this problem.

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TFS 2010: TF270015: 'MSTest.exe' returned an unexpected exit code. Expected '0'; actual '1'.

If you try to build an “old” Visual Studio 2008 solution with the new Team Foundation Server 2010 and after the build you try to execute automatic unit test project inserting the following directive inside your build project:

<MetaDataFile Include="$(BuildProjectFolderPath)/&lt;your vsmdi file>.vsmdi">
   <TestList>yourtestproject.UnitTest</TestList>
<MetaDataFile>

your build probably will fail with the following nice error:

TF270015: 'MSTest.exe' returned an unexpected exit code. Expected '0'; actual '1'.

After a Google search (see references below) I’ve found that the problem could be due to the fact that TFS 2010 can only build test project written in .NET 4.0.

For now there’s no fix available to resolve this problem (as you can see here) and there’s no timing about a Microsoft hotfix (QFE) release.

References:

• http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/tfsbuild/thread/1c67aa6b-b628-42d6-bd7a-9e42f2e4afad
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2476200/tfs-2010-rc-does-not-run-visual-studio-2008-mstest-unit-tests
• http://matthewrowan.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!CCB05A30BCA0FF01!4952.entry

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MOSS 2007: “The evaluation version of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for this server has expired”

If you receive this error when you try to access to SharePoint Shared Service on your machine, don't panic. It's a problem due to SP2 installation. You can find more detail and hotfix about this problem here.

Reference:

• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971620

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Insert a Watermark with iTextSharp

iTextSharp is a very good open source library to manage file in pdf format. You can find many examples on how you can use this powerful library inside your application in this tutorial, but in this post I want to focus on a way to create a watermark and insert it inside in an existing pdf document.

This need come up from a project for my current customer who need to create a pdf document from a office file (Word, Excel and PowerPoint format) with a watermark reporting user name (user claiming the copy of the document). So, the approach I used to accomplish the requirement foresee the following steps:

1. First, I create a bitmap with the text I want to render in the watermark;
2. then, I insert the bitmap created inside my pdf document using iTextSharp library.

Bitmap creation is very easy using dot Net Framework classes. So, I developed the Watermark class with default constructor requiring the text to render:

   1:  public Watermark(string watermarkText)

   2:          {            

   3:              Text = watermarkText;

   4:              TextFont = new Font("Arial", 25, FontStyle.Bold);

   5:              Inizialize();

   6:          }

TextFont is an auto property that consumer can modify to change watermark font. In the constructor I also initialize the Watermark instance setting the resolution DPI, the scale factor and I calculate the bitmap size (width and height in pixel) using the following method:

   1:  private const int DEFAULT_SCALE_RATIO = 24;

   2:   

   3:  private void Inizialize()

   4:  {

   5:      ScaleFactor = DEFAULT_SCALE_RATIO;

   6:      Position = WatermarkPosition.Central;

   7:      BackGroundColor = Color.Transparent;

   8:      BrushColor = Color.LightGray;

   9:   

  10:      using (var bitmap = new Bitmap(1, 1))

  11:      {

  12:          bitmap.SetResolution(DPI, DPI);

  13:          using(var g = Graphics.FromImage(bitmap))

  14:          {

  15:              Height = Convert.ToInt32(g.MeasureString(Text, TextFont).Height);

  16:              Width = Convert.ToInt32(g.MeasureString(Text, TextFont).Width);

  17:          }

  18:      }

  19:  }

It is necessary to scale the bitmap because you could have resolution problems when you use it with iTextSharp library (see paragraph Impact on the resolution in iTextSharp tutorial).

To get the desired bitmap I created the following public methods:

• one to get the image with original size
• one to get scaled image

   1:  public Image GetImage()

   2:  {    

   3:      var bitmap = new Bitmap(Width, Height);

   4:      var image = CreateImage(bitmap, TextFont);

   5:      return image;

   6:   

   7:  }

   8:   

   9:  public Image GetScaledImage()

  10:  {

  11:      var bitmap = new Bitmap(ScaledWidth, ScaledHeight);

  12:      var image = CreateImage(bitmap, ScaledTextFont);

  13:      return image;

  14:  }

where ScaledWidth and ScaledHeight are:

   1:  public int ScaledWidth

   2:  {

   3:      get { return Width *100 / ScaleFactor; }

   4:  }

   5:   

   6:  public int ScaledHeight

   7:  {

   8:      get { return Height *100 / ScaleFactor; }

   9:  }

The last thing is the CreateImage method which really makes the work:

   1:  private const float DEFAULT_IMAGE_DPI = 72f;

   2:   

   3:  private Image CreateImage(Bitmap bitmap, Font font)

   4:  {

   5:      bitmap.SetResolution(DEFAULT_IMAGE_DPI, DEFAULT_IMAGE_DPI);

   6:      using(var g = Graphics.FromImage(bitmap))

   7:      {

   8:          SetGraphicsProperty(g);

   9:   

  10:          var sizef = g.MeasureString(Text, font);

  11:          g.Clear(BackGroundColor);

  12:   

  13:          var text = Text;

  14:          var width = bitmap.Width;

  15:   

  16:          if (Repeater)

  17:          {

  18:              while (width%sizef.Width > 0)

  19:              {

  20:                  text += " - " + Text;

  21:                  width -= Convert.ToInt32(sizef.Width);

  22:              }

  23:          }

  24:   

  25:          g.DrawString(text, font, new SolidBrush(BrushColor), 0, 0,

  26:                       new StringFormat(StringFormatFlags.FitBlackBox));

  27:          g.Flush();

  28:      }

  29:      return bitmap;

  30:  }

Repeater is an auto-property to create a bitmap with text repeated many times necessary to fill all the bitmap width.This is required, for example, when I want a watermark positioned along all document margins.

BackgroundColor and BrushColor are two auto-property which permit to customize watermark look & feel.

SetGraphicsProperty method just initializes some image properties (see here for more details):

private static void SetGraphicsProperty(Graphics g)

{

    // Set the System.Drawing.Graphics object property SmoothingMode to HighQuality 

    g.SmoothingMode = SmoothingMode.AntiAlias;

    // Set the System.Drawing.Graphics object property CompositingQuality to HighQuality

    g.CompositingQuality = CompositingQuality.HighQuality;

    // Set the System.Drawing.Graphics object property InterpolationMode to High

    g.InterpolationMode = InterpolationMode.High;

    g.PixelOffsetMode = PixelOffsetMode.HighQuality;

    g.TextRenderingHint = TextRenderingHint.AntiAlias;

}

Now that we have our watermark, we can work on PDF document where we want insert it. To accomplish this I create the PDFDocument class:

   1:  using iTextSharp.text;

   2:  using iTextSharp.text.pdf;

   3:   

   4:  public class PDFDocument

   5:  {

   6:   

   7:      private PDFDocument(Guid Id)

   8:      {

   9:          ID = Id;

  10:          Watermarks = new List<IWatermark>();

  11:      }

  12:   

  13:      public PDFDocument(Guid id, byte[] binaryFile, string fileName) : this(id)

  14:      {

  15:          binary = binaryFile;

  16:          var pdfReader = new PdfReader(binaryFile);

  17:          if(pdfReader.NumberOfPages == 0 ) 

  18:              throw new Exception("Document does not contain any page!");

  19:          var pageSize = pdfReader.GetPageSizeWithRotation(1);

  20:          PageWidth = Convert.ToInt32(pageSize.Width);

  21:          PageHeight = Convert.ToInt32(pageSize.Height);

  22:          PageRotationInDegree = pageSize.Rotation;

  23:          FileName = fileName;

  24:      }

  25:      

  26:  ...

  27:   

  28:  }

The constructor of my entity require the id, the binary data and the file name.
Note that here I’m using iTextSharp library and, in particular, the PDFReader class in iTextSharp.text.pdf namespace; in this way I can set some useful properties about document in question, such as page width, height and rotation. I also define an auto property to add desired watermarks to my pdf document:

    public IList<Watermark> Watermarks

    {

        get;

        set;

    }

And now the main point of the class. With GetDocumentWithWatermark method, I process the pdf document to insert the real watermark picture:

   1:  public byte[] GetDocumentWithWatermark(bool protect)

   2:  {

   3:      using (var outputStream = new MemoryStream())

   4:      {

   5:      var pdfReader = new PdfReader(binary);

   6:      var pdfStamper = new PdfStamper(pdfReader, outputStream);

   7:   

   8:      foreach (var watermark in Watermarks)

   9:      {

  10:          using (var bitmap = watermark.GetScaledImage())

  11:          {

  12:          var image = Image.GetInstance(bitmap, BaseColor.WHITE );

  13:          

  14:          var numberOfPages = pdfStamper.Reader.NumberOfPages;

  15:   

  16:          for (var i = 1; i <= numberOfPages; i++)

  17:          {

  18:              var pageSize = pdfStamper.Reader.GetPageSizeWithRotation(i);

  19:              PdfContentByte waterMarkContent = null;

  20:              switch (watermark.Position)

  21:              {

  22:                  case WatermarkPosition.Right:

  23:                      image.RotationDegrees = 90;

  24:                      image.Rotate();

  25:                      image.ScalePercent(watermark.ScaleFactor);

  26:                      image.SetAbsolutePosition(pageSize.Width - 

  27:                                                  image.ScaledWidth, 0);

  28:                      waterMarkContent = pdfStamper.GetOverContent(i);

  29:                      break;

  30:                  case WatermarkPosition.Central:

  31:                      image.RotationDegrees = WATERMARK_ANGLE;

  32:                      image.Rotate();

  33:                      image.ScalePercent(watermark.ScaleFactor);

  34:                      image.SetAbsolutePosition(pageSize.Width/2 - 

  35:                                                  image.ScaledWidth/2,

  36:                                                pageSize.Height/2 - 

  37:                                                  image.ScaledHeight/2);

  38:                      waterMarkContent = pdfStamper.GetUnderContent(i);

  39:                      break;

  40:                  case WatermarkPosition.Left:

  41:                      image.RotationDegrees = 90;

  42:                      image.Rotate();

  43:                      image.ScalePercent(watermark.ScaleFactor);

  44:                      image.SetAbsolutePosition(0, 0);

  45:                      waterMarkContent = pdfStamper.GetOverContent(i);

  46:                      break;

  47:              }

  48:   

  49:              if (waterMarkContent != null) 

  50:                  waterMarkContent.AddImage(image, true);

  51:          }

  52:          }

  53:      }

  54:      pdfStamper.Close();

  55:      pdfReader.Close();

  56:      return outputStream.ToArray();

  57:      }

 

as you can see I use iTextSharp class such as PdfReader and PdfStamper to manipulate the document and then, in the switch code segment, I create and position the image according to I want a central, left or right watermark. Note that I call two different method of pdfStamper instance:

• GetUnderContent method: allow to put my watermark a level lower the current document layout. This is the best solution when I set central watermark and I want that document text and image are over the watermark
• GetOverContent method: allow to set watermark upper all document content. Because left and right watermark stay on document margin, could be very useful put it over all content especially when you are manipulating pdf file coming from a PowerPoint document conversion which can have non-transparent background image.

Note that I have repeated the operation for all the page inside the pdf document because page layout could be change (horizontal or vertical page layout).

References:

1. iTextSharp library
2. iTextSharp tutorial
3. http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/71961/Creating-a-Simple-Sheet-Designer-in-Csharp.aspx

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VirtualBox: Shrink guest volume

Today, I tried to increase space on my working notebook. I usually work in virtual environment and in the last period I’ve found very cool VirtualBox virtualization product.

From a first analysis, I found that the logical space occupied by guest disk was less than the physical space on my hard disk (32 GB versus 37 GB). Unfortunately VirtualBox UI don’t provide any tools to shrink volume such as in MS Virtual PC. So, I had a short search on Google and I found out a couple of very interesting posts to  accomplish the task.

Here, summarized the steps:

1. Defrag your guest disk using windows defrag,
2. Download the following tool (SDelete) and copy and extract it in your virtual environment,
3. Open a console in guest system, go to SDelete directory and type the following command:
   
   sdelete -c c:\
   
   where C:\ is the volume to shrink.
4. Shutdown the virtual machine.
5. In the host environment open a console, go to VirtualBox directory (in my case was: “C:\Program Files\Sun\VirtualBox”)
6. Type the following command:
   
   VBoxManage.exe modifyvdi <your path to vdi file>\file.vdi compact

The last operation is the slowest and requires about 20 minutes (probably depends on machine and file size).

Assumptions:

VirtualBox version: 3.1.4

Host O.S.: Windows 7 x64

Guest O.S.: Windows 2008 x86

References:

• How to compact a VirtualBox virtual disk image (VDI)
• How To Shrink Your Virtualbox VM And Free Up Space For Your Hard Disk
• SDelete v1.51

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How to use Office 2007 Automation in Windows 2008 service

I’ve lost approximately 3 days about this topic. I read tens of posts by finally I’ve understood…

I’m working on a solution including a file conversion from a document in MS Office 2003 format (doc, xls, ppt) to PDF.

To do this I’ve seen several products base on a windows service which utilize MS Office 2007 or Open Office capabilities to export your documents in PDF format.

I’m not very satisfy to accomplish the requirements with a product, so I started to investigate different examples to create my custom solution.

I started with the following projects hosted on “The Code Project” portal.

• Generate PDF Using C#

• Convert Word-Documents to PDF on an ASP.NET Server

While the first example is pretty easy to try (the only trouble is to find the correct version of Open Office to install :-)), the second hides unpredictable scenarios. In fact, after the test of the Office automation using the simple application form in the example, I try to export the code in a windows service process. The code is the same you can find in this MSDN article:

   1: try

   2: {

   3:     // Open the source document.

   4:     wordDocument = wordApplication.Documents.Open(

   5:         ref paramSourceDocPath, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing,

   6:         ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing,

   7:         ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing,

   8:         ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing,

   9:         ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing,

  10:         ref paramMissing);

  11:  

  12:     // Export it in the specified format.

  13:     if (wordDocument != null)

  14:         wordDocument.ExportAsFixedFormat(paramExportFilePath,

  15:             paramExportFormat, paramOpenAfterExport, 

  16:             paramExportOptimizeFor, paramExportRange, paramStartPage,

  17:             paramEndPage, paramExportItem, paramIncludeDocProps, 

  18:             paramKeepIRM, paramCreateBookmarks, paramDocStructureTags, 

  19:             paramBitmapMissingFonts, paramUseISO19005_1,

  20:             ref paramMissing);

  21: }

  22: catch (Exception ex)

  23: {

  24:     // Respond to the error

  25: }

  26: finally

  27: {

  28:     // Close and release the Document object.

  29:     if (wordDocument != null)

  30:     {

  31:         wordDocument.Close(ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing,

  32:             ref paramMissing);

  33:         wordDocument = null;

  34:     }

  35:  

  36:     // Quit Word and release the ApplicationClass object.

  37:     if (wordApplication != null)

  38:     {

  39:         wordApplication.Quit(ref paramMissing, ref paramMissing,

  40:             ref paramMissing);

  41:         wordApplication = null;

  42:     }

  43:     

  44:     GC.Collect();

  45:     GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers();

  46:     GC.Collect();

  47:     GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers();

  48: }

I need to tell you that my dev environment is based on Windows Server 2008 (x86) with the latest SP. When I tried to convert the first doc file using the service, I receive the bitter newness. Despite the code were the same, convert process failed. Debugging, I found out that Word could not open the file and returned a null object (see row 13 in above code block).
Google searching response, further the “Microsoft does not support Office server side automation (for version till 2007 – see here)” notice, says that other guys experienced in same problem using Windows 2008 services (see this post). So, I tried the same custom service in a virtual machine with Windows Server 2003 and all went well. With an in deep search I’ve found other very usefully posts regarding Windows 2008 Server family lack about a particular folders. In detail:

• for x64 system is necessary to create the following folder:
  C:\Windows\SysWOW64\config\systemprofile\Desktop
• for x86 system:
  C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\Desktop

After this little tip, also Windows Server 2008 service resumed to work well providing the Office automation desired.

References:

• Generate PDF Using C#
• Convert Word-Documents to PDF on an ASP.NET Server
• Saving Word 2007 Documents to PDF and XPS Formats
• Considerations for server-side Automation of Office
• Word Automation through Windows service (Windows Server 2008) - Problem
• Excel 2007 automation on top of a Windows Server 2008 x64
• Word Interop Not Working In A Scheduled Task

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