Solving Issues - Pain and More Pain

[Renegade]

Well, I finally solved a stupid problem. The solution was to remove a single attribute from an XML node. I'd been through a trillion different routes, and finally found it.

The problem came from an upgraded web.config file going from IIS6 to IIS7, in which the attribute got added. Sigh...

Anyways... Just one of those things. Lost more time over it than I care to admit, but eventually got it working. YAY~!

Lesson learned: Sometimes things just aren't that complicated, and going back to basics can save a lot of time.

[Armando]

That type of thing happened to me a lot lately, and it involved XML (and character encoding).

Will focus on improving my problem solving algorithms...

[Ath]

the attribute got added

What did that pesky attribute look like? (so we know what to avoid )

[f0dder]

XML - Pain and More Pain

There, fixed the topic for you.

[Renegade]

the attribute got added

What did that pesky attribute look like? (so we know what to avoid )

It won't help.

Let me delay the long explanation for a bit. Here's why:

http://cynic.me/2011/03/01/opening-up-software-business-for-complete-transparency/

I'm considering that, and am planning a post with code on the mini application I just finished (it's draft quality, but it's solid and it works).

The short version is that I ended up with:

preCondition="managedHandler"

Here:

Code: (xml)

<system.webServer>
      <modules>
          <add name="UrlRewriteModule" type="UrlRewritingNet.Web.UrlRewriteModule, UrlRewritingNet.UrlRewriter" preCondition="managedHandler" />
      </modules>
</system.webServer>

Removing it solved the problem.

XML - Pain and More Pain

There, fixed the topic for you.

Actually, I'm quite good with XML and really like it (beats INI any day). It wasn't the XML itself that was the problem. It was the addition of that attribute that slipped past, and that I assumed was needed for IIS7.

XML specifications that are massively large, like that for a web.config file, are simply unmanageable, but not because they are XML. They're unmanageable because they're so complex, and errors aren't readily apparent sometimes.

[Ath]

XML specifications that are massively large, like that for a web.config file, are simply unmanageable, but not because they are XML. They're unmanageable because they're so complex, and errors aren't readily apparent sometimes.

That's my biggest fear with .NET stuff, that I mess up all those massive and complex gazillion attribute elements, by making one trivial typo
And the error messages thrown aren't helpful at all, usually it's something like "Initialization error" or "Exception was thrown..." without any useful stacktrace.

[Renegade]

I find most XML issues are pretty easy to track down. This one was silent, and emerged as 404, 404.4 and different 5xx errors.