Agile Development

SQL - Dynamic Order By clause

Have you ever wanted a stored procedure to order it's results dynamically? The ORDER BY clause is the place to start but normally relates to a series of columns that's hard-coded. If you want this clause to change depending on some input, you can adapt the following SQL. It contains a switch statement that compares the value of a parameter against pre-defined string column names. When a match is found, the respective clause is inserted. You can also specify the direction (ascending/descending) which doubles the amount of case options.

declare @orderBy nvarchar(max)
set @orderBy = 'columnName'
 
-- 0 Descending
-- 1 Acsending
declare @orderByDirection int
set @orderByDirection = 0
 
select *
from tableName
order by
    case when @orderBy = 'columnName' and @orderByDirection = 0
        then columnName end desc,
    case when @orderBy = 'columnName' and @orderByDirection = 1
        then columnName end

ASP.NET MVC - UserControls and IPrincipal

This is my first post on ASP.NET MVC so I'm gonna keep it short and sweet (I'm sure they'll be plenty more to come :-D).

On a MVC View Page, you can access the user that has been previously authenticated with ease:

<%= User.Identity.Name %>

Unfortunately, you can't do the same in an MVC View User Control because they don't have a property called User. Instead, you have to use the ViewContext property which is available on any MVC View:

<%= ViewContext.HttpContext.User.Identity.Name %>