https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog Blogging about dev, .NET and Optimizely en-us Dariusz Woźniak Dariusz Woźniak Tue, 17 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/fuzzy-dates-library https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/fuzzy-dates-library Recently I've been working on a project that requires parsing temporal expressions. I've created a library that provides a comprehensive EBNF grammar for representing fuzzy, uncertain, and complex temporal expressions. Tue, 17 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak ebnfsparqlgrammarlocaledatetimeside-project https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/autohotkey-em-en-dash https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/autohotkey-em-en-dash Learn how to quickly type em and en dashes on Windows using a simple AutoHotkey script Mon, 28 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak autohotkeyautomationproductivity https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/disable-find-indexing https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/disable-find-indexing When, for example, importing large amounts of data to Optimizely Commerce, automatic indexing can cause performance issues. Learn how to temporarily disable Find indexing during import jobs. Sun, 27 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak EPiServerOptimizely https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/shouldly-scrubbing https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/shouldly-scrubbing Shouldly's ShouldMatchApproved() provides a powerful approval testing mechanism that includes scrubbing capabilities to handle dynamic content in your test assertions. This post explores how to leverage scrubbers effectively, including a custom JSON scrubber implementation. Tue, 15 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak C-Sharpunit-testingautomated-testing https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/how-to-remove-deleted-media-from-content https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/how-to-remove-deleted-media-from-content How to programmatically remove broken media references in Optimizely Commerce when encountering the Media is not found validation error during publishing Fri, 11 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak optimizelyepiserver https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/fossed https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/fossed Recent shifts in the .NET ecosystem have seen several popular libraries move towards commercial licenses. I created FOSSED, a resource hub to help developers understand these changes and find free, open-source alternatives Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak C-Sharpside-project https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/gettimestamp https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/gettimestamp Unraveling the mystery behind the GetTimestamp property in Optimizely Search & Navigation (Find) and how it actually represents the indexing time, not content creation or modification time Wed, 09 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak OptimizelyEpiserver https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/using-user-impersonation https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/using-user-impersonation Learn the correct way to execute code as a specific Optimizely user using user impersonation feature. Tue, 08 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak optimizelyepiserver https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/opti-addons-remove-obsolete-cms-properties https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/opti-addons-remove-obsolete-cms-properties Optimizely does not remove non-code CMS properties by a default - This article describes how to remove obsolete CMS data and introduces yet another the Opti.Addons project. Mon, 27 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak EPiServerOptimizelyOpti.Addonsside-project https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/default-view https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/default-view Optimizely uses preview on-edit view as a default. However, some may prefer edit view as a default. Here is how to do it via code. Wed, 22 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak EPiServerOptimizely https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/how-to-unit-test-class-with-service-locator-update https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/how-to-unit-test-class-with-service-locator-update It has been a year since I wrote the article about unit testing with ServiceLocator. But, there are two things worth updating - replacing obsolete FormatterServices and use scoped service provider. Tue, 19 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak EPiServerOptimizelyunit testingdependency injection https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/how-to-check-if-culture-exists https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/how-to-check-if-culture-exists How to efficiently check if a given culture exists in .NET? Tue, 08 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak C-SharpLocalePerformance https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/how-to-remove-obsolete-commerce-data https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/how-to-remove-obsolete-commerce-data By default Optimizely code does not remove properties from the database when you remove them from the code - This article describes how to remove obsolete Commerce data and introduces the Opti.Addons project. Fri, 27 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak EPiServerOptimizelyOpti.Addonsside-project' https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/swap-via-deconstruction https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/swap-via-deconstruction One of the feature of the C# allows to swap values via deconstruction (without using temporary variable). It was introduced while ago (C# 7.0), but I oversaw it. It's a nice feature that allows to swap values in a very elegant way. Thu, 12 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak C-Sharp https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/charles-proxy https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/charles-proxy Charles is a tool that enables to view all HTTP(S) traffic between the current system and the Internet. Here I will show how to setup Charles to catch the localhost traffic with the example of ASP.NET Core and the EPiServer Foundation project. Sun, 08 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak C-SharpEPiServerOptimizely https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/search-inspect-query https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/search-inspect-query Optimizely Search & Navigation (a.k.a. EPiServer Find) is a powerful engine but, as being a black box, it might be difficult to diagnose its behavior when things go wrong. This article describes how to make a deep dive into the search engine and get the insights about the underlying query. Fri, 23 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak EPiServerOptimizely https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/do-not-use-thread-to-resolve-current-language https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/do-not-use-thread-to-resolve-current-language Using thread to resolve the current language in Optimizely is not recommended. Here is why and how to fix it. Tue, 23 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak EPiServerOptimizelyLocale https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/get-content-reference-from-code https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/get-content-reference-from-code This is a very simple recipe on how to get content from the entry/node code in the Optimizely. Let's dig in! Mon, 22 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak EPiServerOptimizely https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/how-to-get-anonymous-user-id-via-anonymousidfeature https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/how-to-get-anonymous-user-id-via-anonymousidfeature Optimizely allows to obtain the ID of the anonymous user (even if the user is logged in). One of the example of the usage is merging cart when the user logs in. Mon, 12 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak EPiServerOptimizely https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/order-number-generator https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/order-number-generator There might be a need to generate a custom order number in Optimizely Commerce. This post shows how to do it. Wed, 24 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak EPiServerOptimizely https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/get-current-content-in-iselectionfactory https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/get-current-content-in-iselectionfactory Recently I struggled with getting data for the current content in the ISelectionFactory context. Here is the solution. Fri, 05 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak EPiServerOptimizely https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/how-to-fix-argumentexception-unable-to-load-type-of-plugin https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/how-to-fix-argumentexception-unable-to-load-type-of-plugin Recently I encountered the following error - System.ArgumentException, Unable to load type (IPlugin type). This post will show you how to fix it. Thu, 04 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak EPiServerOptimizely https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/skip-validation-of-cart https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/skip-validation-of-cart Optimizely invokes its internal validators for the cart processing by default. This article describes how to skip this validation in scenarios where custom validation logic is in place, or we don't want UI to update the cart when viewing it. Fri, 22 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak EPiServerOptimizely https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/debugging-multithreaded-code-in-csharp https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/debugging-multithreaded-code-in-csharp Debugging multi-threaded applications might be challenging. Setting a breakpoint in a multi-threaded context might be run multiple times, making the debugging process difficult. However, JetBrains Rider allows you to make one simple trick to debug only a single thread for a certain breakpoint. Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak C-SharpRider https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/debugging-evaluation-and-logging https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/debugging-evaluation-and-logging When it comes to debugging, there might be a case when the load of calls to the breakpoint is significant. Or, we want to log some data while debugging. In this case, it is useful to do not suspend the execution and evaluate the breakpoint condition and log the result (In JetBrains Rider). Fri, 01 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak C-SharpRider https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/how-to-unit-test-class-with-service-locator https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/how-to-unit-test-class-with-service-locator Some testing classes may have a dependency to the ServiceLocator, so the dependencies are injected via property, for example. That makes class more difficult to unit test. In this post I will present how to write unit test for a class with dependency to ServiceLocator, with the real world example of Optimizely. Fri, 10 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak EPiServerOptimizelyunit testingdependency injection https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/test-unmockable-ctor https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/test-unmockable-ctor In some cases, there are classes with constructors that are impossible to mock with proxy-based mocking frameworks (such as Moq, FakeItEasy, NSubstitute, etc). In this article, I will present how to create a test for class that is impossible to mock. Thu, 09 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak C-Sharpunit testing https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/optimizely-automatically-register-dependencies https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/optimizely-automatically-register-dependencies How to automatically register dependencies in Optimizely? (also in any other project that uses Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection library) Tue, 07 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak EPiServerOptimizelydependency injection https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/optimizely-create-asset-programatically https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/optimizely/optimizely-create-asset-programatically The blog post explains how to create an asset folder programmatically in Optimizely CMS. Mon, 06 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak EPiServerOptimizely https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/non-cls-exception https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/non-cls-exception Is catch the same as catch(Exception)? Not exactly. There is a small subtle nuance that causes catch(Exception) to be not hit. Sun, 05 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak C-Sharp https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/hello-world https://dariuszwozniak.net/blog/hello-world That is the time for saying goodbye to the old blog and welcome to the new one! Thu, 02 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT Dariusz Woźniak meta