Mouthful!  Long subject, short post.  I need to be able to pull comments out of Facebook Notes and back into a BlogEngine.NET site. 

I'm starting by playing around with an extension for BlogEngine.NET that incorporates the comments widget, giving an admin page for the blog owner to enter application API key.  So you can see the results of that here (if I haven't inactivated the widget yet)

If you'd like the code, there's a link below. 

And here are a few notes on the code.

This extension uses
admin tool - User controls\FacebookNotes\adminNotesComments.aspx
extension code:  \BL\Extensions\FaceBookNotes.cs

Copy the files into included folders.  It won't work until you plug in your Facebook APIKey into the admin page.  You'll find the admin page on extensions admin list after you copy these files to their folders and restart your blog application.

Facebook instructions for embedding the comments widget directly:
http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=198

FacebookNotes_1.0.zip (6.92 kb)

I needed to know the Active Directory username of the current user from my Silverlight app.  The Silverlight control is running from a Sharepoint site. 

It seems that this isn't as easy as you would think.  I found several ways, but the one I ended up using wasn't one of them.

1. Page.User.Identity.Name.Split('\\')[1];  - this would work from code behind or even in alligator tags in front end - but my Sharepoint page wouldn't allow them.
2. var wshshell=new ActiveXObject("wscript.shell");
   var username=wshshell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings("%usern ame%");

For i As Integer = 0 To Request.ServerVariables.Count - 1
Response.Write(Request.ServerVariables.Keys(i) & " : <br /> [ " & Request.ServerVariables(i) & " ] <br /> ")
Next

This one is totally hard to do under any type of security scenario.

1. HttpContext.Current.Profile.UserName  - again, this would work from code behind or even in alligator tags in front end - but my Sharepoint page wouldn't allow them.
2. <script type="text/vbscript" language="VBscript">
   Dim X
   set X = createobject("WSCRIPT.Network")
   dim U
   U=x.UserName
   'MsgBox "username: " & U
   </script>
   <script type="text/javascript" language="Javascript">
       var a = U;
       $("#name").text(a.toString());
   </script>

Hard to even print these two that use active x!  But for the sake of completeness, here they are.

AND - The way I used:

When my Silverlight app is loaded, the first thing I do is send a web service request to add a list item to a log list.  The list has only one field, that is Title.  So I add an "application opened" record to the log.   What I get in return is an xml confirmation that the record was added - the confirmation contains the name of the logged in user - which is their active directory name.  I just parse the correct element out "ows_Author" using XLinq and have what I needed.

Is this weird?  Cause I wouldn't be surprised!  Anyway, it works for me.

I've used BlogEngine.Net for a CMS a few times now and I'm happy with the way it has worked out for the very small business sites that I maintain.   I'm comfortable in this programming environment and so that's why I choose it over WordPress.

Its easy to modify so that each BlogEngine.Net category is directed to a separate page.  So, in the case of one of my customers when they want a news page that they can update and also a tips page that they can update – I set it up like this.  Create a category called news and a category called tips in the Admin area.

Here's how I set it up.  In the [User controls] folder is a control called PostList.ascx.  I added a property to this control called PageCategory.

Here's the code from the .aspx page which will set the PageCategory properly for the page:

 
<%@ Register Src="User controls/linksSide.ascx" TagName="linksSide" TagPrefix="uc2" %>
<%@ Register Src="User controls/PostList.ascx" TagName="PostList" TagPrefix="uc1" %>
<%@ Import namespace="BlogEngine.Core"%>
<asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="head" runat="server">
</asp:Content>
<asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentPlaceHolder1" runat="server">
<div id="divError" runat="Server" />
<uc2:linksSide ID="LinksSide1" PageCategory="cleaningtips" runat="server" />
<uc1:PostList ID="PostList1" PageCategory="cleaningtips" runat="server" />
</asp:Content>

 Here's the code which implements the PageCategory property inside of PostList.ascx. 

Basically, it all comes down to making sure the only posts which display are those which  match the category.

  ( Linq would work great on this)

foreach (Category cat in Category.Categories)
{

	string name = cat.Title;
	if (name.Equals(PageCategory))
	{
	
		List<Post> visiblePosts = cat.Posts.FindAll(delegate(Post p) { return p.IsPublished; });
		if (Posts == null || visiblePosts.Count == 0)
		{
			hlPrev.Visible = false;
			hlNext.Visible = false;
			return;
		}
		else
		{
			hlPrev.Visible = true;hlNext.Visible = true;
		}
	
		LoadAll(visiblePosts);
		break;
	
	}
}