I was listening to an episode of DNR featuring Chris Patterson who is behind MassTransit, an open source .net service bus.  I’d recently been working a little with NServiceBus so I was interested to hear his take on the subject.  One of the interesting things to come out of the interview was a quick mention of another of his projects, Automatonymous, which is a .net state machine that operates in a fluent interface.

So for example:

public class BigComplexStateMachine :
    StateMachine<BigState>
{
    //declare states
    public State InProcess { get; set; }
    public State Delayed { get; set; }
    public State OnHold { get; set; }
    public State Delivered { get; set; }
    //you get 'complete' and 'initial' for free


    //declare events
    public Event Ordered { get; set; }
    public Event Delay { get; set; }
    public Event Hold { get; set; }
    public Event<CustomEventData> Deliver { get; set; }



    //must NOT have arguments
    public BigComplexStateMachine()
    {
        //inform the statemachine of your states
        State(() => InProcess);
        State(() => Delayed);
        State(() => OnHold);
        State(() => Delivered);

        //inform the statemachine of your events
        Event(() => Ordered);
        Event(() => Delay);
        Event(() => Hold);
        Event(() => Deliver);
        

        //define transitions
        Initially(
            When(Ordered)
                .Then(state=> { /*do cool stuff */ })
                .TransitionTo(InProcess)
        );

        During(InProcess,
            When(Deliver) //notice the new param available
            .Then((state, @event) => { /* do cool stuff */ })
            .TransitionTo(OnHold)
        );

        //so on and so forth
        /*
         * During(state, When(event).[StuffIWantToDo].TransitionTo(state));
         */
        Anytime(When(Hold) //also support an anytime concept
            .Then(state=> { /*cool stuff*/ })
            .Complete() //convenience method
            
            );
    }
}

Adding this to your registry will give you the ability to build/clean/rebuild projects using the right click in windows explorer.  It uses .net 4.0 version of msbuild.  Just paste this into a .reg file and run it.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.sln] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.slnshell] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.slnshellBuild] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.slnshellBuildcommand] 
@="cmd.exe /K ""%%windir%%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe" "%1" /t:build"" 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.slnshellClean] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.slnshellCleancommand] 
@="cmd.exe /K ""%%windir%%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe" "%1" /t:clean""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.slnshellRebuild] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.slnshellRebuildcommand] 
@="cmd.exe /K ""%%windir%%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe" "%1" /t:rebuild""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.csproj] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.csprojshell] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.csprojshellBuild] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.csprojshellBuildcommand] 
@="cmd.exe /K ""%%windir%%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe" "%1" /t:build""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.csprojshellClean] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.csprojshellCleancommand] 
@="cmd.exe /K ""%%windir%%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe" "%1" /t:clean""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.csprojshellRebuild] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.csprojshellRebuildcommand] 
@="cmd.exe /K ""%%windir%%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe" "%1" /t:rebuild""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.vbproj] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.vbprojshell] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.vbprojshellBuild] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.vbprojshellBuildcommand] 
@="cmd.exe /K ""%%windir%%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe" "%1" /t:build""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.vbprojshellClean] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.vbprojshellCleancommand] 
@="cmd.exe /K ""%%windir%%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe" "%1" /t:clean""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.vbprojshellRebuild] 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.vbprojshellRebuildcommand] 
@="cmd.exe /K ""%%windir%%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\MSBuild.exe" "%1" /t:rebuild""

Visual Studio has a nice “Go to definition” shortcut, but with our MVP pattern we are doing a lot of work against interfaces, which means that quite often going to definition actually takes us to a method in an interface.  For example:

Dim e As IEmployee = New Employee(1234)
Call e.GiveRaise(1.05)

If you did “Go to Definition” on “GiveRaise” you would not end up in the Employee class, but rather than IEmployee interface.

This plugin helps fix that problem.

I ended up skipping that part where he sets up the keyboard shortcut in favor of just using right click, but if you want to set that up you might find that the menu item he talks about is missing.  To get that dialog to show up use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+O.

If you try using Fiddler you might notice that it’s very difficult to use localhost and get fiddler to show your traffic.

Here’s a trick: put a “.” after localhost in your browser URL.

So instead of browsing to http://localhost/whatever.aspx, you use http://localhost./whatever.aspx.