Free Azure Storage Explorers

When working with Azure you’ll eventually work with storage (blob, table, …). Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a simple way to browse through the content of your Azure storage? And wouldn’t it be nice if you also use the same tool to access your local Azure storage emulator?

Here are two tools that do exactly that. And in addition they are free.

The first tool is “Azure Storage Explorer” provided by Neudesic. This tool is open source, hosted on Codeplex. It is licensed under the “Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL)”. I’ve used this tool for several months now and was very valuable, allowing moving files, copying files, creating containers, deleting containers, etc. You can set up all your storage accounts, including local development storage and then access it without having to enter credentials again. It remembers your access keys.

The second tool is “CloudBerry Explorer for Windows Azure” provided by CloudBerry. This tools is available as freeware. I just downloaded it and played with it for a little while, so can’t provide any detailed insights yet.

Having a tool for browsing your Azure storage content is a handy tool for developers as well. That’s why I thought it would be worth mentioning here.

Happy coding!

NullReferenceException in Html.ValidationSummary()

I was implementing a view using ASP.NET MVC, MVC 4 in this case but I suspect the version is irrelevant. I received a NullReferenceException when any validation failed, ie the model state was invalid.

The stack trace was close to useless and looked similar to the following:

at ASP._Page_Views_Issue_Create_cshtml.Execute() in c:\projects\au\AgileTraxx\Web\Views\Issue\Create.cshtml:line 26
at System.Web.WebPages.WebPageBase.ExecutePageHierarchy()
at System.Web.Mvc.WebViewPage.ExecutePageHierarchy()
at System.Web.WebPages.StartPage.RunPage()
at System.Web.WebPages.StartPage.ExecutePageHierarchy()
at System.Web.WebPages.WebPageBase.ExecutePageHierarchy(WebPageContext pageContext, TextWriter writer, WebPageRenderingBase startPage)
at System.Web.Mvc.RazorView.RenderView(ViewContext viewContext, TextWriter writer, Object instance)
at System.Web.Mvc.BuildManagerCompiledView.Render(ViewContext viewContext, TextWriter writer)
at System.Web.Mvc.ViewResultBase.ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context)
at System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.InvokeActionResult(ControllerContext controllerContext, ActionResult actionResult)
at System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.<>c__DisplayClass1a.<InvokeActionResultWithFilters>b__17()
at System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.InvokeActionResultFilter(IResultFilter filter, ResultExecutingContext preContext, Func`1 continuation)

Line 26 which the stack trace referring to was:

Html.ValidationSummary();

This wasn’t much help either. It took me a lot of experimentation to find out that in this particular case the property Model of the view was null. Once I set the model for this view, it all went nicely.

Note that not always it is obvious from scanning the code that one didn’t set the model for a view. Therefore I’m blogging my experience here and to give the recommendation that should you encounter the same or similar behavior, to the following:

1. Set a breakpoint on the line where the exception is thrown.
2. Debug the application
3. When the breakpoint is hit, enter “Model” in the “Immediate Window” in Visual Studio and check whether it outputs “null”.

Happy coding!