New release of DNNReports
After our first C# version of DNNReports (a simple long time around module for presenting data from various any database), we decided to give the module an extra lift and move the code to the next level.
My colleague Mark van de Vries implemented the DNN8 style of handling settings. This makes maintaining the code of the module easier but bumps the minimum required DNN version to from DNN 7.3.2 to DNN 8. We considered that a good tradeoff.
Razor visualizer
We looked around on GitHub and found a Razor visualizer implementation, that once was developed by Daniel Mettler to be used as an extension of DNNReports. Written in VB.net we converted it into C# (of course). It took some work to move this visualizer into DNNReports extensions part and we succeeded halfway: it will run .cshtml Razor scripts, but currently, it picks these Razor scripts from the standard DNN Razor module. There is currently no option to load new Razor scripts as visualizers.
Since the Razor visualizers works (sort of), we decided to leave the basic implementation of the Razor visualizer in place for people to play around. We will do a better implementation in an upcoming release. But at the same time, we hope that there is anyone around who is willing to contribute produce a Pull Request to cover a better implementation of the Razor visualizer.
No bugs left?
While producing this release, we also solved all bugs that were documented as issues on GitHub and cleaned-up the installation zip file of 6.1.0. The install zip for 6.0.0 installed some irrelevant files, 6.1.0 does not do that and includes a cleanup for the superfluous files of 6.0.0
More releases and modules in the works
In the meantime, we are working on a new release of DNNEvents and also a first-time release of the C# version of IndentitySwitcher, a very useful module for developers (or admins), to easily switch between users on a site. IdentitySwicther is a C# version of the VB.net module made by ErikVB some years ago. We use Erik's module a lot during development (don't work harder, work smarter).
The conversion to C# is again a learning experience for my colleague Mark, one of our developers. He is becoming quite experienced in converting DNN modules from VB.net to C#, replacing deprecated DNN API calls with newer ones, implementing DNN8 style handling of settings, implementing DNNtc style MSBuild automatic install packaging and cleaning up the code using ReSharper. In the meantime, I am also stimulating him to implement unit tests in the converted modules. It takes some time, but he is learning the job very well!