New BlogEngine.NET Extension - Toolbox

For years I have found useful tools/tricks from online collections of links and resources and I recently decided I wanted to be able to easily do this in BlogEngine.NET.  Much like the QuickerLinks extension from ckincincy I envisioned collecting my links in one centralized area and being able to quickly distribute them through posts.  However, I also had a few other features in mind...

  • Link Categories
  • Link Category Descriptions
  • Link Descriptions
  • Centralized Links Toolbox Page

Enter my new Toolbox extension!  You can view a live example of this extension on my toolbox page.  I only have one category listed at this time as I plan to release new links each week under a variety of categories.  Let's get our hands dirty now and talk about the setup of this extension.

Part 1 - Deploy the Code
First download the zip file that contains our admin pages, Xml data file, and BlogEngine.NET extension class file.  Deploy each file to their respect location (see the Installation Notes text file in the zip download for more details).  You then need to deploy the following line of code to your Web.sitemap file. 


   1: <siteMapNode url="~/admin/pages/Toolbox.aspx" title="Toolbox"  description=""  roles="administrators, editors"/>

That's it! We are now ready to utilize the Toolbox extension.  I will be creating a screencast shortly and will update this post with that video showing how to get started with the extension.  The most important step is creating a new page for your toolbox collection to be displayed on and update our extension settings.  I have created a page titled "toolbox" and you can see in the second screenshot below that the value is entered in my settings.  There is another setting that allows you to toggle whether link descriptions are displayed.  Enjoy!

Admin Page Screenshot
Toolbox Extension Admin Page

Toolbox Extension Settings Screenshot
Toolbox Extension Settings

Download Toolbox.zip (8.64 kb)
Download Screencast (.wmv)

Update: Bug fixed in App_Code/Toolbox.cs for serving multiple links in a post.
Another Update: See my comment below on the bug fixes for the toolbox extension.

Kick It!

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Comments

Posted on 02.9.2008 09:41 AM #

Paul Tumeltyt

Paul Tumeltyt gb
Hi Danny, nice extension! You are missing a .com from your link to the toolbox page.

I've just implemented the extension, ironically, to create a list of BE.Net extensions! I can't however get the page to display the list. Do I need any code in the page, or does the extension just look for a page named the name in the settings?

Paul.

Posted on 02.9.2008 14:37 PM #

Danny

Danny us
Hi Paul - thanks for picking up that oversite with the link. You are exactly right - the extension is looking for a page to match the title of the page you set in the extension settings. My page is named "toolbox" so I've set the extension setting to "toolbox" and my links show up. =]

Let me know if you have any issues getting it to execute. You do not have to included any body content for the page - it will be overwritten. You may provide a description that will appear at the top of the page before the links.

Posted on 02.9.2008 17:48 PM #

Paul Tumelty

Paul Tumelty gb
Hi Danny,

I got it working just after I posted the message. It seemed to take a few reloads of the page before the old version was thrown out of the cache and the new version was rendered.

I'm compiling a list of BE.Net extensions using this and will be posting it on my site soon!

Posted on 02.12.2008 15:37 PM #

Mike

Mike us
Nice extension. I just added it to our internal developer blog we use for passing links, project updates, etc to the dev team. I did a test post on the including items in posts using the tag, and found 2 issues. The first is the tag I was using was not getting repopulated on EDIT. it is because I was using bad value, BUT it was getting saved and displayed in the grid properly. I was using "DevFusC#2VB" as the tag, when I clicked edit on the item, the textbox only got "DevFusC" put into it, and then that would get stored. The second is the tags are case sensitive, not really an issue per se, but a gotcha more like. I will probably try changing that in the code, but am not a regex expert, or even a beginner, so may be SOL. I can use them, if someone else writes them ;)

Great work on the extension! And thanks!

Posted on 02.12.2008 15:45 PM #

Danny

Danny us
Hi Mike,
Thanks for the information. I will update the extension to ignore case on the tags this evening. That should only take a couple of minutes.

I will also look into the special character issue and test that more thoroughly and come up with a solution one way or the other.

Posted on 02.12.2008 16:29 PM #

Mike

Mike us
I took a look at the code, and the regex does have the option IgnoreCase set on it, so from my limited regex use expreience it should be matching them. It might be somehting in the replacements, not matching but I have to get back to work. ;)

Thanks for the fast response!

Posted on 02.12.2008 18:30 PM #

Danny

Danny us
OK I have fixed a few bugs in the extension. Previously, special characters would break certain fields and case was not being properly ignored when including a tag like "[toolbox:someLINK]" in a blog post. I have fixed those issues. Also, "tags" now require alphanumeric characters.

Thanks for the assistance in locating these issues Mike & Paul!

Posted on 02.13.2008 22:15 PM #

Justin Wendlandt

Justin Wendlandt us
Hey very nice extension. Two things.
1) Convention for BE is to put custom pages / controls for admin stuff inside ~/admin/User Controls/ ...
2) Instead of messing with your sitemap, might as well let the ExtensionManager do it's work for you.

ExtensionManager.SetAdminPage("Toolbox", "~/admin/User Controls/Toolbox.aspx");

Add that to your extension for the toolbox and no sitemap modification needed.

Just thought you would like to know!

Posted on 02.13.2008 22:26 PM #

Justin Wendlandt

Justin Wendlandt us
Ok strike that last comment, I understand what it does now. Yes I wish there was an easier way to have a settings page AND a custom admin page.

Posted on 02.14.2008 11:07 AM #

Danny

Danny us
Hi Justin,
Thanks for that information - I didn't know that was available. I'll make the modification tonight and upload the new files.

Posted on 02.23.2008 10:20 AM #

Gordon

Gordon de
Hi,
"Toolbox" is a very nice extension. But I have a little problem: Everything works fine except that the page with the toolbox isn't displayed after the first click. The visitor has to reload the page or must click a second time on the link. (you can see this behavior here: www.gordon-breuer.de/page.aspx

Any idea how I can get rid of this behavior?

Thanks and have a nice day,
Gordon

Posted on 03.8.2008 09:08 AM #

Christian

Christian se
Gordon: Did you manage to fix this problem?
I have the same problem and have not managed to find a fix for it. I have rebooted my webserver, cleared the cache and such but the problem remains.


Great extension though!

Posted on 03.10.2008 19:53 PM #

Danny

Danny us
@Gordon/Christian,
This is a bug that was reported to me recently, but due to vacation I have not yet fixed it. I will make the necessary fix and try to release it in the next few days. I apologize for the wait, and thanks for the feedback!

Posted on 04.23.2008 12:08 PM #

Codes Web

Codes Web es
thanks you

Posted on 05.8.2008 07:27 AM #

Andre Tagesgeld

Andre Tagesgeld de
Toolbox is really a nice extension, thank you very much!

Posted on 05.25.2008 05:21 AM #

David

David bz
Very interesting website. Keep up the outstanding work and thank you...

Posted on 05.27.2008 16:19 PM #

Siam Sunshine

Siam Sunshine th
Hi danny. Nice blog mate. Keep on creating extensions for BlogEngine.Net I thank you for what you've contributed already, well done mate.

Posted on 06.9.2008 14:31 PM #

Mohammad

Mohammad dk
Helloo. great plugin - can you also use this as a FAQ list and all the links opens as target/id in the same page?

Best regard,
Mohammad

Posted on 08.2.2008 05:35 AM #

Enrico

Enrico de
nice extension, thanks

Posted on 08.21.2008 13:02 PM #

Chris

Chris us
Great extension! Any update on the toolbox page not showing immediately, though?

Posted on 09.19.2008 10:31 AM #

Webdesigner

Webdesigner de
I love your extension. Very useful. Thanks!

Posted on 10.26.2008 00:13 AM #

Oyun indir

Oyun indir au
Helloo. great plugin - can you also use this as a FAQ list and all the links opens as target/id in the same page?

Posted on 10.28.2008 13:16 PM #

Wayne John

Wayne John us
Danny, does the latest release here have a fix for the "first render not showing a complete list" error? You know, the one where you need to hit refresh once you're on the page to see ALL the links?

After you were spammed by whomever, I didn't see a reply that it was fixed in the current release.

I have it in action here: http://www.waynejohn.com/page/Links.aspx

(Hit refresh to see all the links) Smile

Posted on 10.29.2008 05:28 AM #

Darren

Darren gb
How about allowing you to have multiple toolbox pages per site?

Posted on 11.2.2008 05:53 AM #

LowGenius

LowGenius us
Danny -

A second vote for multiple link pages? I know I probably should just be more selective - lol - but I've got a rather wide range of interests, and they don't necessarily mesh with each other smoothly. The way it's going right now, I'll end up with a 900K link page. I'd really love to run multiple instances of Toolbox. Would creating 'duplicate' toolboxes - say, renaming all the relevant [toolbox] strings in filenames (and the sitemap addition) to [toolboxN] where N could be any number, or something similar? It seems like this would be the fastest way of dealing with multiple TB pages, but I don't know enough about ASP.Net & BE yet to feel confident in trying it for fear of breaking something really badly...

Beyond that - thanks for a great extension, man. I look forward to using it (and it helps clear out my widgetzone a bit lol)

Posted on 11.4.2008 11:52 AM #

Danny

Danny
Thanks for the suggestions guys. I'm in the process of redesigning my blog and adding a few things, but I plan to roll out the next version of my extensions very soon (Social Bookmarks, Toolbox, etc.). I'll update once I have come up with a good way to implement these ideas.

Cheers!

Posted on 11.5.2008 14:18 PM #

Wayne John

Wayne John us
Thanks for the update Danny! Looking forward to it!

Posted on 11.12.2008 12:49 PM #

Wayne John

Wayne John us
Hey Danny, here's some insight for you to use. I just added a new category, and the id of the new category in the xml datastore was the same as the prior id, thus I had 2 categories with an id of 3. This is one bug.

There is also the 'click refresh to see all' issue.

Just a heads up for ya, love the control otherwise!

Posted on 11.20.2008 10:01 AM #

Site ekle

Site ekle uy
Danny, does the latest release here have a fix for the "first render not showing a complete list" error? You know, the one where you need to hit refresh once you're on the page to see ALL the links?

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