When utilizing the Ajax Modal Popup Extender, I kept receiving the following message:

htmlfile: Invalid pointer

After doing some heavy searching I discovered the error I was getting was because the panel that the modal popup extender was referencing had visibility that was set incorrectly. In the panel, I had set the attribute for visibility attribute to false.

visibility

style

   style:"display:none"

Hope this helps!

Linq is a very fun tool to work with, but every now and then I get something that stumps me for a moment. Thank goodness for Google and Bing.

LINQ: Sequence contains no elements

I found the answer to this on Jon Gallant's Blog in this article.

If you call Single to get an object from your DB and the object doesn't exist you will get an InvalidOperationException.

return this.DataContext.MemberDaos.Single(m => m.MemberID == id);

Instead of Single, use SingleOrDefault, which will return null if the object doesn't exist.

return this.DataContext.MemberDaos.SingleOrDefault(m => m.MemberID == id);

After making the necessary changes my problem was instantly solved. However I also ran into the opposite problem as shown below.

LINQ: Sequence contains more than one element.

I found that this one will happen when you use SingleOrDefault() or a query that will possibly return more than one element. In this instance I found it was better for me to use FirstOrDefault(). Using FirstOrDefault() rather than First() gave me the same benefit of getting back a null if there wasn't an element match.

Thanks Jon!

If you have been following me via some form of the internets, you would know that I jump around a lot.  Some would say it is ADD, but I like to think of it as my own personal progression for always becoming better.

Something I've noticed in my attempt to keep multiple blogs is that I enjoy it.  I love to write, and writing for multiple blogs is not the problem.  The time I spend on it, however, is a problem. 

As most of you know I am a wife and a mother.  After working full time and coming home to take care of house and family related issues, getting online to blog or post on social networks can become time consuming and take away from the things that mean the most to me - my family.

Because of this, I have created this "portal".  It wont be just personal, just technical, just crafty, or whatever else I want to get into.  As time permits I will move articles from my blogs to this portal for retention purposes.  Eventually it will even have a mini shop, as I try to raise money for the small business I have always wanted to start.  

Most importantly, though, is that it will be easier to manage and in this way, less time consuming.  This would lead to more time for being with my family and working on my business, but still keep me "connected" if you would call it that with a personal place to collect, share, and vent.

So for those of you used to me jumping around, here's my next home.  Who knows if it will be my last. ;)

Note:  If you have noticed old articles popping up in the feed it is because of me bringing in old posts from my blogs.  Sorry for the confusion.

The other day I was having a hard time getting one of my queries to work that need to check if a varchar field that was nullable was in fact null.  Sometimes the field was populated as an empty string, though, so it made using Is Null difficult.  After some searching I found to use NullIf, and that seemed to solve my issue.  Here are some examples below.

--For this example declare an empty string and null string
DECLARE @EmptyVarchar Varchar(25)
DECLARE @NullVarchar Varchar(25)
 
SET @EmptyVarchar = ''
SET @NullVarchar = NULL
 
--Now select the string using empty, or using null if to convert it to null
SELECT
  1 AS Select_All_Example,
  @EmptyVarchar AS JustEmpty,
  NullIf(@EmptyVarchar,'') AS ConvertedEmpty,
  @NullVarchar AS JustNull
 
 
--Now do the same, except this time check against if the EmptyVarchar is null
--Notice in the results you can't compare it to null this way
SELECT
  1 AS Empty_Is_Null_Example,
  @EmptyVarchar AS JustEmpty,
  NullIf(@EmptyVarchar,'') AS ConvertedEmpty,
  @NullVarchar AS JustNull
WHERE
  @EmptyVarchar IS NULL
 
--Now do the same, except this time check against if the EmptyVarchar is null,
--but this time convert it using NullIf
SELECT
  1 AS Converted_Empty_Is_Null_Example,
  @EmptyVarchar AS JustEmpty,
  NullIf(@EmptyVarchar,'') AS ConvertedEmpty,
  @NullVarchar AS JustNull
WHERE
  NullIf(@EmptyVarchar,'') IS NULL
 
--Now do the same, except this time check against if the NullVarchar is null
SELECT
  1 AS Null_Is_Null_Example,
  @EmptyVarchar AS JustEmpty,
  NullIf(@EmptyVarchar,'') AS ConvertedEmpty,
  @NullVarchar AS JustNull
WHERE
  @NullVarchar IS NULL