While trying to merge my code into my original web site, written in JScript, I got a strange error. I added a link from this new blog's Nav Bar (on the left) to the index.asp page, and when I ran the debugger I received:

Further investigation into the error shows that you cannot run the Visual Studio web server and navigate to an .asp page. When I tested this on the IIS server normally, it linked as expected. My guess is that there is no way to configure VS to work around this (and a search on the net tends to confirm this).

I needed a list placeholder for the list of blogs on the left hand side. Then I would write a piece of code in the load of the master page which would iterate over the files in this folder and find all the files with a date as the file name, look at the header tag inside the file, and create a URL to add to the list. First stop, the Bulleted List:

<asp : BulletedList runat="server" ID="BlogList" DisplayMode="HyperLink" />

As there are always many ways to skin this cat, I decided to first try the brute force, all in the code behind. In the Page Load code for the master page, I added the following:

            ListItem a_newItem = new ListItem("April 4, 2009 - Developing a .Net Blog", "20090404.aspx");
            BlogList.Items.Add(a_newItem);

So far, so good. I don't really like the bullet, so I look for just a generic list. I want something which I can later bind to, if I ever want to move away from populating the list from the code behind. Let's now try out the Repeater:

<asp:Repeater runat="server" ID="BlogListRepeater">
    <ItemTemplate>
        <asp:HyperLink runat="server" NavigateUrl='<%# Eval("Value") %>' Text='<%# Eval("Text") %>' ></asp:HyperLink>
    </ItemTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>

Now, of course, I need a new list to be a data source to the repeater. I like the ListItems object, so lets stick with that.

            ArrayList a_array = new ArrayList();
            ListItem a_newItem = new ListItem("April 4, 2009 - Developing a .Net Blog", "20090404.aspx");
            a_array.Add(a_newItem);
            BlogListRepeater.DataSource = a_array;
            BlogListRepeater.DataBind();

Last thing to do is Figure out the real list of items from a directory listing:

        protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            // create the data source
            ArrayList a_array = new ArrayList();
            // find any aspx files in the current directory
            FileInfo [] a_fileInfos = (new DirectoryInfo(Server.MapPath(".")).GetFiles("*.aspx"));
            foreach (FileInfo a_fileInfo in a_fileInfos)
            {
                // blog files have the date, in yyyymmdd format as the file name
                string a_name = a_fileInfo.Name.Substring(0, a_fileInfo.Name.IndexOf('.'));
                if (a_name.Length == 8)
                {
                    string a_year = a_name.Substring(0, 4);
                    string a_month = a_name.Substring(4, 2);
                    string a_day = a_name.Substring(6, 2);
                    string a_formattedDate = a_month + "/" + a_day + "/" + a_year;
                    DateTime a_result;
                    if (DateTime.TryParse(a_formattedDate, out a_result))
                    {
                        // looks like a blog file
                        string a_fileLink = a_fileInfo.Name;
                        // default a string in case there is no <title> tag in the file
                        string a_linkText = "Entry on " + a_formattedDate;
                        using (StreamReader a_sr = new StreamReader(a_fileInfo.FullName))
                        {
                            // ok, find the Title
                            string a_file = a_sr.ReadToEnd();
                            const string a_titleString = "<title>";
                            int a_ix, a_ix2;
                            if ((a_ix = a_file.IndexOf(a_titleString, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase)) > -1 &&
                                (a_ix2 = a_file.IndexOf("</title>", StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase)) > -1)
                            {
                                // found it.  Extract everything between the tags
                                a_ix += a_titleString.Length;
                                a_linkText = a_file.Substring(a_ix, a_ix2 - a_ix);
                            }
                        }
                        // add the found blog to the list of blogs
                        ListItem a_newItem = new ListItem(a_linkText, a_fileLink);
                        a_array.Insert(0, a_newItem);
                    }
                }
            }
            // assign the source to the repeater, and we're off to the races
            BlogListRepeater.DataSource = a_array;
            BlogListRepeater.DataBind();
        }
 
 

The rest is the job of the eye candy specialists... Lacking that, perhaps I will mess with the colors a bit.

One thing I could actually do would be to save the array of blog entries into a Context. But file operations are so fast these days, I wouldn't bother considering it (unless of course this blog starts to get a million hits a day!)