Category: Visual Studio

.Net, HTML, IIS, Sitecore, Visual Studio, Web, XML

Sitecore Error (SOLVED): An item name cannot contain any of the following characters: \/:?”\-|[] (controlled by the setting InvalidItemNameChars)

Jared Meredith

You may have ran into an issue during deployments when trying to publish in the past where you have seen this message:

“An item name cannot contain any of the following characters: \/:?”<>\-|[] (controlled by the setting InvalidItemNameChars)”

In order to help move forward on this you need to disable the default ItemNameValidation settings if you are having some deployment issues.

To do that (would only recommend temporarily) you can follow the steps below:

Add a config file to App_Config/Include named z.DisableItemNameValidation.config and put this in it:

<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <settings>
      <setting name="ItemNameValidation">
        <patch:attribute name="value"></patch:attribute>
      </setting>
    </settings>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

Again, when you are finished I would recommend taking this back out of your files to keep things as standard as possible.

.Net, AWS, IIS, Programming, Security, Troubleshooting, Visual Studio, Web

AWS Elastic Beanstalk ebextensions: Update the IIS App Pool using commands to another App Pool Identity

Jared Meredith

So I had a .Net application that needed to leverage the Network Service application identity instead of the OOB ApplicationPoolIdentity that comes with a default shipped EBS windows server with IIS. The solution? An ebextenion of course!

0) We’re going to have a step 0 assuming you already have a development AWS account with credits to push servers to Elastic Beanstalk. If you have not do this part then do some reading here: https://aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/

1) Once you have an account and have configured your Visual Studio environment to your account appropriately then proceed to open your VS solution.

2) Create a folder in your solution called .ebextensions

3) Create your config file (if you don’t have an editor Notepad++ will do) within that folder and edit it in YAML format

The following example below will update the DefaultAppPool app identity to Network Service leveraging powershell and the commands/command features:

files:
  "C:\\Robo\\Update_App_Pool.ps1":
    content: |
      Write-Verbose 'Update the application pool'
      Set-Location C:\\Robo
      import-module WebAdministration
      Set-ItemProperty IIS:\AppPools\DefaultAppPool -name processModel.identityType -value 2
  
commands:
  update_app_pool: 
    command: powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File "C:\\Robo\\Update_App_Pool.ps1"
    ignoreErrors: False
    waitAfterCompletion: 0

4) Save the Deploy this with your application into EBS you should see the updated app pool identity as the application is deployed.

Hope this helps. Questions are welcome!

If you want to venture deeper into this then start here: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/customize-containers.html

Validate here: http://www.yamllint.com/

.Net, CRM, IIS, MVC, Programming, Security, SharePoint, Sitecore, Troubleshooting, Visual Studio, Web, Web Service, Windows

Solved: The length of the URL for this request exceeds the configured maxUrlLength value.

Jared Meredith

Anyone ever run into the following before? I ran into this regarding a request into the SharePoint Rest API.

The length of the URL for this request exceeds the configured maxUrlLength value.

This because the IIS default maximum length for an URL is 260 characters. If a URL request is longer, the above error will occur.

To fix this you can increase the maxURLlength value, add it to your web.config file in the IIS virtual Directory.

<configuration>

  <system.web>

    <httpRuntime maxUrlLength="5000" />

  </system.web>

</configuration>

It will be likely you will already have most of this snippet in place so don’t break your config; just add the maxUrlLength property into your existing httpRuntime section and you should be good to go. Do know any web.config changes may cause a service interruption so test in dev, beta, QA and pre-prod before ever changing in prod! Hope this helps, questions are welcome!

.Net, IIS, Troubleshooting, Visual Studio, Web, Windows

Solved: Method not found: ‘!!0[] System.Array.Empty()’.

Jared Meredith

If you are getting a message for your recently developed .Net application when you publish to the server to the effect of:

ssnetframeworkerror

Chances are the server you are deploying to does not have the appropriate framework to support your app.

Download the Microsoft .Net Framework 4.6.1 and install it to resolve this. It will likely require a server reboot to complete it so don’t do it on prod mid-day! Hope this helps, questions are welcome!

.Net, IIS, Programming, Troubleshooting, Visual Studio, Web, XML

Troubleshooting “Could not load file or assembly ‘DotNetOpenAuth.Core, Version=4.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=2780ccd10d57b246’ or one of its dependencies”

Jared Meredith

The Issue:

After I had updated my .Net Core on my developer machine to a newer version I went to debug a web application I had and received this error:

Could not load file or assembly 'DotNetOpenAuth.Core, Version=4.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=2780ccd10d57b246' or one of its dependencies. The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131040)

The Problem:

Here is what I had in my config prior to the update install:

<runtime>
    <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
      <dependentAssembly>
        <assemblyIdentity name="DotNetOpenAuth.Core" publicKeyToken="2780ccd10d57b246" />
        <bindingRedirect oldVersion="1.0.0.0-4.0.0.0" newVersion="4.1.0.0" />
      </dependentAssembly>
      <dependentAssembly>
        <assemblyIdentity name="DotNetOpenAuth.AspNet" publicKeyToken="2780ccd10d57b246" />
        <bindingRedirect oldVersion="1.0.0.0-4.0.0.0" newVersion="4.1.0.0" />
      </dependentAssembly>
      <dependentAssembly>
        <assemblyIdentity name="EntityFramework" publicKeyToken="b77a5c561934e089" />
        <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-6.0.0.0" newVersion="6.0.0.0" />
      </dependentAssembly>
    </assemblyBinding>
  </runtime>

I had outdated references in my config file.

The Solution:

Ensure your references get updated after you update your development environment.

Here is what I updated to:

  <runtime>
    <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
      <dependentAssembly>
        <assemblyIdentity name="DotNetOpenAuth.AspNet" publicKeyToken="2780ccd10d57b246" culture="neutral" />
        <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-4.3.0.0" newVersion="4.3.0.0" />
      </dependentAssembly>
      <dependentAssembly>
        <assemblyIdentity name="DotNetOpenAuth.Core" publicKeyToken="2780ccd10d57b246" culture="neutral" />
        <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-4.3.0.0" newVersion="4.3.0.0" />
      </dependentAssembly>
      <dependentAssembly>
        <assemblyIdentity name="EntityFramework" publicKeyToken="b77a5c561934e089" />
        <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-6.0.0.0" newVersion="6.0.0.0" />
      </dependentAssembly>
    </assemblyBinding>
  </runtime>

Hope that helps. Questions are always welcome.