The other annoyance is how best to transform a list of objects into a IEnumerable<SelectListItem> collection cleanly with the special case of handling a default value. I have started to approach this with extension methods and am very happy with how it is working.

Transforming your List<MyObject> to IEnumerable<SelectListItem>

Our current data tier has a manager class for each object type. When that object type is going to be used in a select list, I add an extension to IEnumerable<MyObject> like so:

    public static class MyObjectManagerExtensions
    {
        public static IEnumerable AsSelectList(this IEnumerable list, int? value)
        {
            return (from item in list
                    select new SelectListItem
                    {
                        Selected = value.HasValue && item.Id == value.Value,
                        Text = item.Name,
                        Value = item.Id.ToString()
                    });
        }
    }

To support the option of a default value, I have an extension method that applies to IEnumerable:

    public static class SelectListExtension
    {
        public static IEnumerable WithDefault(this IEnumerable list, string defaultLabel = "Select one...", string value = "")
        {
            return (new[] { new SelectListItem { Text = defaultLabel, Value = value } }).Concat(list);
        }
    }

Here is an example of an actually call to this methods in:

ViewBag.MyObject = myObjectManager
                       .GetAllMyObjectBy(isForFoo: true, orderBy: MyObjectColumns.Name)
                       .AsSelectList(myObjectId)
                       .WithDefault();

I realized today one way to solve this might be to support creating a .skip or .skip-TARGET (so in our case, .skip-production and .skip-staging) files. Than add a batch or simple program to scan the project directory (for script, can use “dir /S /B FILENAME” seems to be equivalent of UNIX “find FILENAME”) and add a skip for the directory. That way anyone can add the skip option and it is clear in source control what is and what is not getting pushed out.

It seems like a simple enough idea to implement…

        public static int PercentComplete(this ModelStateDictionary modelStateDictionary, int? ScalePercentWithValueAsZero = null, int? MaxValue = 100)
        {
            int totalItems = 0;
            int validItems = 0;
            int percentComplete = 0;

            if (MaxValue.HasValue && (MaxValue.Value < 0 || MaxValue.Value > 100))
                throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("MaxValue must between 0 and 100!");

            if (modelStateDictionary.IsValid)
            {
                percentComplete = MaxValue.Value;
            }
            else
            {
                foreach (var item in modelStateDictionary)
                {
                    totalItems++;
                    if (item.Value.Errors.Count == 0)
                        validItems++;
                }

                if (totalItems > 0)
                    percentComplete = (100 * validItems) / totalItems;

                if (ScalePercentWithValueAsZero.HasValue)
                {
                    if (ScalePercentWithValueAsZero.Value >= percentComplete)
                    {
                        percentComplete = 0;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        percentComplete = Convert.ToInt32(Math.Ceiling((double)(percentComplete - ScalePercentWithValueAsZero.Value) / (100 - ScalePercentWithValueAsZero.Value) * 100));
                    }
                }

                if (MaxValue.HasValue)
                {
                    percentComplete = percentComplete * MaxValue.Value / 100;
                }
            }

            return percentComplete;
        }

And if a model has a particularly complicated percentage complete calculation in which one needs to manually check some things and add to the total that can be done:

        public int CustomPercentComplete(Func<int?, int?, int> PercentComplete)
        {
            // scale percent complete 50-100% as 0-100%
            int basePercentAsZero = 50;

            // actually, scale 50-100% as 0-91%
            int max = 91;            

            // call default PercentComplete
            int percentComplete = PercentComplete(basePercentAsZero, max);

            // implement here your custom percente complete for the remaining 9%

            return percentComplete;
        }

An example of calling the custom percentage complete calculator on your model:

        myModelInstance.CustomPercentComplete(ModelState.PercentComplete);

And if you need to call either calculator but your controller action doesn’t bind to an instance of the model you need to calculate the percentage on, you can add a method in your controller like this one (hopefully there is a better way — let me know if you know of one):

        // Work around for getting percentage complete when in another action where the model is not the application
        // like so:
        // int percentComplete = MyPercentComplete(application);
        private int MyPercentComplete(MyApplication application)
        {
            return Convert.ToInt32(MyPercentCompleteAction(application).Content);
        }

        // Work around for getting percentage complete when in another action where the model is not the application
        // like so:
        // int percentComplete = Convert.ToInt32(MyPercentComplete(application).Content);
        private ContentResult MyPercentCompleteAction(MyApplication application)
        {
            return Content(application.CustomPercentComplete(ModelState.PercentComplete).ToString());
        }

So the prior version has a bug — it works fine if the scaling value is 50 however it fails at other values. Whoops! That has been fixed and now we have a MaxValue scaler too. The MaxValue scaler is useful if you want to calculate the percentage done as maxing out at say 91% because you want to manually calculate the remaining 9%.

    public static class ModelStatePercentCompleteCalculator
    {
        // Very rough but reusable % complete calculator that is an extension so can be
        // called simply as ModelState.PercentComplete() in a controller action. Iterates
        // over the items in ModelState returns percentage complete where a complete field
        // is seen as having no errors. If the ModelState.IsValid returns true, the
        // model is 100% complete.
        //
        // ScalePercentWithValueAsZero: if you calculate the % done on a model and it says say 40%
        // really it is 0% than set ScalePercentWithValueAsZero=40 and it'll treat 40% as 0% and
        // scale it appropriately to 100 or maxValue
        //
        // MaxValue: if you want the maximum value to be less than 100 than set it here so you can
        // accomodate calculating to 100% based on some other criteria too (which you're
        // responsible for)
        public static int PercentComplete(this ModelStateDictionary modelStateDictionary, int? ScalePercentWithValueAsZero = null, int? MaxValue = 100)
        {
            int totalItems = 0;
            int validItems = 0;
            int percentComplete = 0;

            if (MaxValue.HasValue && (MaxValue.Value < 0 || MaxValue.Value > 100))
                throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("MaxValue must between 0 and 100!");

            if (modelStateDictionary.IsValid)
            {
                percentComplete = MaxValue.Value;
            }
            else
            {
                foreach (var item in modelStateDictionary)
                {
                    totalItems++;
                    if (item.Value.Errors.Count == 0)
                        validItems++;
                }

                if (totalItems > 0)
                    percentComplete = (MaxValue.Value * validItems) / totalItems;
            }

            if (ScalePercentWithValueAsZero.HasValue && ScalePercentWithValueAsZero.Value > 0 && percentComplete >= ScalePercentWithValueAsZero)
            {
                percentComplete = (percentComplete - ScalePercentWithValueAsZero.Value) / (MaxValue.Value - ScalePercentWithValueAsZero.Value) * 100;
            }
            else
            {
                percentComplete = percentComplete / 100 * MaxValue.Value;
            }

            return percentComplete;
        }

        public static int PercentComplete(this ModelStateDictionary modelStateDictionary)
        {
            int totalItems = 0;
            int validItems = 0;
            int percentComplete = 0;

            if (modelStateDictionary.IsValid)
            {
                percentComplete = 100;
            }
            else
            {
                foreach (var item in modelStateDictionary)
                {
                    totalItems++;
                    if (item.Value.Errors.Count == 0)
                        validItems++;
                }

                if (totalItems > 0)
                    percentComplete = (100 * validItems) / totalItems;
            }

            return percentComplete;
        }

This is some very useful information. It’s somewhat frustrating that msdeploy is similar to rsync but seems much less functional from the stand point of what is baked in for rules. And this approach is unofficial and all that so…

public static void RegisterAreaRoute(RouteCollection routes) {
    routes.MapRoute(
        "MyRouteName",
        "{*path}",
        new
        {
            // options
        },
        new[] { "_Namespace_.Areas._Area_Name_.Controllers" }
    ).DataTokens.Add("area", _Area_Name_);
}