DEV Community: Noraa Junker

Overview over Microsoft's developer tools for Windows

Noraa Junker — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 20:51:50 +0000

If you just started programming on Windows this blog article might be interesting for you. I will give you an overview over the different tools Microsoft offers for developers. I will also give you some hints on how to get started with them. What this article won't cover are IDEs like Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code, as the article is more about helper tools.

Source of the images used: Microsoft and Microsoft Learn

Dev Home

To start I have to mention Dev Home. From here you can set up your development machine with the right tools, settings and repositories. You're also able to create a dashboard with different widgets that show you information about your development environment.

As Dev Home is relatively new it's still in preview, but still there are already two extensions available for it:

Microsoft PowerToys

On every developers PC Microsoft PowerToys should not be absent. PowerToys is a collection of tools that help you to be more productive. The tools are open source and can be found on GitHub. Following an excerpt of my favorite tools (although all are great):

Always on Top

Always on Top allows you to pin a window onto the foreground, before any other windows. So even when it looses focus it will stay on top of all other windows.

Color Picker

Color Picker allows you to pick a color from your screen. It will show you the color code in many different formats, so you can easily use it in your code or your image editing software.

Tip: You can create your own custom formats that meet your needs.

File Explorer Add-ons

File Explorer Add-ons add a bunch of Thumbnail providers and Preview handlers to Windows Explorer. This allows you to see a preview of your markdown files, SVGs, source code files and many more.

Tip: In the settings for File Explorer Add-ons under "Source code files" you can activate "Try to format the source for preview". This will format JSON and XML files automatically in the preview window.

Keyboard Manager

Keyboard manager allows you to remap keys and shortcuts. From remapping Alt+R to Alt+Shift+R or even remapping to a sequence of characters like Ctrl+Alt+Shift+D to "Hello World" everything is possible.

Tip: I use this tool to remap Shift+F1 to F13, Shift+F2 to F14 and so on. This allows me to use the F13-F24 keys for shortcuts in my applications.

PowerRename

PowerRename allows you to rename multiple files at once. You can use regular expressions to find and replace text in the file names.

PowerToys Run

PowerToys Run is a tool that allows you to quickly search for applications, files, folders and many more (Check out all the plugins in the settings). You can also use it to quickly run commands or do quick calculations.

Quick Accent

As the last item on this list I want to mention Quick Accent. Quick Accent allows you to quickly insert special characters into your text by simply holding the key for the character you want to insert. For example if you want to insert an "ä" you simply hold the "a" key and select the "ä" from the popup with the arrow keys.

Tip: If you hold shift plus a key you will get the uppercase version of the character.

Windows subsystem for Linux

Windows subsystem for Linux (WSL) allows you to use different linux distributions on your Windows PC.

This means you don't longer need quirks to run Linux applications on Windows.

Even GUI apps are supported.

Tip: If WSL ever locks up you can force the termination of a distribution by running wsl --terminate <distribution name> in PowerShell or the command line.

Windows subsystem for Android

Also worth mentioning if you're developing Android apps is the Windows subsystem for Android. It allows you to run Android apps directly on your Windows PC.

More information

WinGet

WinGet is a package manager for Windows, which comes pre-installed with Windows 11. It allows you to install applications from the command line. It's similar to apt-get on Linux.

Just enter winget install <package name> to install a package.

Tip: You can also use WinGet to install and update applications from the Microsoft Store.

Windows Terminal

As already seen in the screenshots in the WSL section Windows Terminal is a great tool to work with the command line. It allows you to open multiple tabs and panes and organize them at your needs. You can also customize the look of the terminal as you please.

Tip 1: In the settings add a shortcut for quake mode. This allows you to open a dockable terminal window with a shortcut from anywhere.

Tip 2: Use oh-my-posh to customize your terminal prompt and make working in your terminal even more fun.

Closing words

Whether you're a beginner or an experienced developer,whether you use these tools or not, have fun developing on Windows! And make it your own! Please reach out to me on X (Twitter) or per email and let me know what tools you're using. I hope this article was helpful and you were able to learn something new.

Foreach loops on multidimensional arrays in PHP

Noraa Junker — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 06:17:26 +0000

Inspired by https://bit.ly/3psMXqD

If you have a multidimensional array you don’t have to procced it like this:

<?php
    $array = [
        ["AA", "AB", 
            ["ACA", "ACD"]
        ],
        ["BA", "BB", 
            ["BCA", "BCD"]
        ],
        ["CA", "CB", 
            ["CCA", "CCD"]
        ],
    ];

    foreach($array as $a){
        foreach($a as $b){
            if(is_array($b)){
                foreach($b as $c){
                    echo "$c ";
                }
            }else{
                echo "$b ";
            }
        }
    }
?>

You can simply make it like this:

<?php
    $array = [
        ["AA", "AB", 
            ["ACA", "ACD"]
        ],
        ["BA", "BB", 
            ["BCA", "BCD"]
        ],
        ["CA", "CB", 
            ["CCA", "CCD"]
        ],
    ];

    foreach($array as list($a, $b, list($c, $d))) {
        echo "$a $b $c $d ";
    };
?>

For every new dimension you just need to add a new dimension of the list() function.

Looping through letters and dates in PHP with the for loop

Noraa Junker — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 16:58:41 +0000

Inspired by: https://bit.ly/2ZmgKGT and https://bit.ly/3u7oSZO

Did you know that you can loop through letters in a for loop? It’s simple as the example below shows:

<?php
    for($char = 'A'; $char != 'AA'; $char++){
        echo $char.' ';
    }
?>

The result:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

After Z it’s starting from AA to AZ to ZZ and then from AAA to AAZ to AZZ to BAA and so on.
It can’t go before A. That means the following code just prints out a bunch of A's:

<?php
    for($char = 'A'; $char != 'AA'; $char--){
        echo $char.' ';
    }
?>

You can also loop through dates:

<?php
    $start = strtotime("2021-01-01");
    $end = strtotime("2021-02-01");
    $count = strtotime("+2 day", $date);
    for($date = $satrt; $date < $end; $date = $count) {
        echo date("Y-m-d", $date)."<br />";
    }
?>

This example prints out every second date between the January 1st and February 1st.

System32 Discovery #4 - The secret behind the System32 folder

Noraa Junker — Sun, 06 Mar 2022 06:50:52 +0000

⚠️ Warning!

Messing around with system32 files without knowing what you’re doing can demage your system! The author doens’t take any responsibility for demaged systems and installations.

Introduction

You may know the System32 folder as the folder where all the system files are located. But that's not necessarily true. All these applications, dll files and other stuff are so called hard links.

What is a hard link?

You surely know shortcuts in Windows. These can also be called soft links. If you remove or rename a softlink file it will not have any affect on the other file. It's just a pointer to where the file is located.

A hard link for comparsion is two times the same file, just at different location. If you rename the file on one end it will also get renamed on the other end.

Why?

So, why are these files all hardlinks?

Because you can execute all the commands from this folder directly. You don't have to go first into the folder where they are really located and then execute explorer logonui, etc.

With all these files in one folder it's easier to index them all.

Where are they really?

They are mostly in package folders in the %windir%/WinSxS folder.

The package name has the following pattern:

[target platform]_([platform])_[name]_[id]_[version]_[language]_[hash]

[target platform]

The targeted platform: x86, wow64, msil or amd64

[platform]

Optional indicator of the platform.
For example:

system
Microsoft-Windows
bth

[name]

The package name. If the name is too long ... will replace a part of the name.

e.g.:

basicrender.inf.resources
s..store-adm.resources
syncres.resources

[id]

Unknown

[version]

The version of the system

[language]

The language of a package

[hash]

Unknown

System32 Discovery #3 - System information

Noraa Junker — Sun, 06 Mar 2022 06:46:52 +0000


Application title	System Information
File name	msinfo32.exe
File name stands for	MicroSoft Information
Syntax	`Msinfo32.exe [/?] [/nfo Path] [/report Path] [/computer ComputerName]`
Type	Application/Console Application
File description	System Information
WinSxS package	`md64_microsoft-windows-msinfo32-exe`

⚠️ Warning!

Messing around with system32 files without knowing what you’re doing can demage your system! The author doens’t take any responsibility for demaged systems and installations.

Overview

The system information displays information about the hardware, system drivers, the Windows installation and other things of your or a remote computer.

All categories

System Summary
- Hardware Resources
- Conflicts/Sharing
- DMA
- Forced Hardware
- I/O
- IRQs
- Memory
- Components
- Multimedia
  - Audio Codecs
  - Video Codecs
- CD-ROM
- Sound Device
- Display
- Infrared
- Input
  - Keyboard
  - Pointing Device
- Modem
- Network
  - Adapter
  - Protocol
  - WinSock
- Ports
  - Serial
  - Parallel
- Storage
  - Drivers
  - Disks
  - SCSI
  - IDE
- Printing
- Problem Devices
- USB
- Software Environment
- System Drivers
- Environment Variables
- Print Jobs
- Network Connections
- Running Tasks
- Loaded Modules
- Services
- Program Groups
- Start-up Programs
- OLE Registration
- Windows Error Reporting

Arguments

`/?`

Opens the help article to System Information: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/topic/description-of-microsoft-system-information-msinfo32-exe-tool-10d335d8-5834-90b4-8452-42c58e61f9fc.

`/nfo Path`

Saves an nfo file to the specified path. If the path doesn't end with .nfo it will be appendend.

`/report Path`

Saves an txt file to the specified path.

`/computer ComputerName`

Opens the system information for the specifid computer.

More Information

KB300887

How to send messages to the Office 365 Company portal

Noraa Junker — Sat, 05 Mar 2022 06:35:28 +0000

This blog post shows you how to the Office 365 company portal.

The steps for sending messages to Microsoft Intune are the same.

Open the Office 365 admin center.
In the nav bar click on "show all".

Then click on "Endpoint Manager".

A new tab should open. There click on "Tenant administration".

Then select "Custom notifications".

Now you can set a title and the message you want to appear.

Click on "Next".
Now you can select the groups that this message should be send to. Just click on "Add groups", choose them and click on "select".

Now you can click on "next", review your message and then select "create".

After a few minutes a push notifications will appear on the devices connected to the company.

More informations

On Microsoft Docs.

Access overwritten built-in functions in PHP

Noraa Junker — Tue, 01 Mar 2022 08:26:22 +0000

PHP has many built in functions. Normally you can’t override them. The only exception: If you’re in another namespace. But how can you then access the real function again? Simply add a backslash before the functions name and the built-in function get called.

Example:

<?php  
    namespace test{
        function phpversion(){
            return "Not the real phpversion";
        }
        echo phpversion()."<br />";
        echo \phpversion()."<br />";
        echo phpversion()."<br />";
    }
?>

This will output something like:

Not the real phpversion
8.0.0
Not the real phpversion

Get temporary dictionary in PHP

Noraa Junker — Sun, 27 Feb 2022 16:51:48 +0000

Inspired by: https://bit.ly/2NaI8oN

If you want to get a temporary dictionary you could use sys_get_temp_dir(). But this doesn’t guarantee that you have write access to this dictionary. So, you can also get the upload_tmp_dir property from the php.ini file.

You can combine this for simplicity in a function:

<?php
    function get_temp():string{
        // Returns a temporary dictionary path.
        // When it can't find one, it returns false.
        if(is_writable(sys_get_temp_dir())){
            return sys_get_temp_dir();
        }elseif(is_writable(ini_get("upload_tmp_dir"))){
             return ini_get("upload_tmp_dir");
        }else{
            return false;
        }
    }
    echo get_temp();
?>

Or the short form:

<?php
    function get_temp():string|bool{
        return is_writable(sys_get_temp_dir())?sys_get_temp_dir():(is_writable(ini_get("upload_tmp_dir"))?ini_get("upload_tmp_dir"):false);
    }
?>

How to buffer text to the client with PHP

Noraa Junker — Sun, 27 Feb 2022 16:41:38 +0000

When you look over the internet there are many people, who say it isn’t possible anymore to buffer text to the clients browser. Earlier it was possible, but not anymore. That’s not true. It’s just a bit more complicated.

At the very beginning of the file (before doctype!) you have to set the following code:

<?php
    header('Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8');
    ini_set('zlib.output_compression',0);
    ini_set('implicit_flush',1);
    ob_end_clean();
    set_time_limit(0);
?>

And now you can use flush() every time you want to output something to the client.

An example:

<?php
    header('Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8');
    ini_set('zlib.output_compression',0);
    ini_set('implicit_flush',1);
    ob_end_clean();
    set_time_limit(0);

    echo "Hello World<br />";
    flush();
    sleep(3);
    echo "Hello World after 3 seconds";
    flush();
?>

The client now sees Hello World and after 3 seconds Hello World after 3 seconds.

The best way is to simply write a new function that outputs a string and then instantly flushes.

For example:

<?php
    function output($text){
        echo $text;
        flush();
    }
?>

System32 Discovery #2 - Phone dialler

Noraa Junker — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 19:05:54 +0000


Application title	Phone Dialler
File name	dialer.exe
File name stands for	Dialer
Syntax	`dialer.exe`
Type	Application
File description	Microsoft Windows Phone Dialler
Real path	`%windir%\WinSxS\amd64_microsoft-windows-tapicore_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.22526.1000_none_c511b7f7427de12a\dialer.exe`

⚠️ Warning!

Messing around with system32 files without knowing what you’re doing can demage your system! The author doens’t take any responsibility for demaged systems and installations.

Watch video!

Overview

The Windows Phone Dialler allows the user to create a connection over a dial-up connector to other phone numbers.

It doesn't allow you to send or receive data, it just creates the connection.

Speed dial

You can save up to 8 Speed dial numbers.

How to emulate a modem.

I used the free trial version of Virtual modem to simulate a modem.

System32 Discovery #1 - Bluetooth file transfer dialog

Noraa Junker — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 19:01:14 +0000


Application title	Bluetooth file transfer
File name	fsquirt.exe
File name stands for	File Squirt
Syntax	`fsquirt.exe [-send\
Type	Application
File description

⚠️ Warning!

Messing around with system32 files without knowing what you’re doing can demage your system! The author doens’t take any responsibility for demaged systems and installations.

Watch video!

Overview

The Bluetooth file transfer dialog allows you to transfer files over Bluetooth.

The main entry point is a page wher you can select if you want to send or receive files:

Send files dialog:

Receive files dialog:

Arguments

{% raw %}`-send`

Opens directly the send files screen.

`-receive`

Opens directly the receive files screen.

More information

You can find more information in the Microsoft Docs.

System32 Discovery #0 - Introduction

Noraa Junker — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 18:59:21 +0000

⚠️ Warning!

Messing around with system32 files without knowing what you’re doing can demage your system! The author doens’t take any responsibility for demaged systems and installations.

Watch video!

Introduction to the System32 Discovery series

Welcome to this new blog/video series, where we will cover all the applications/dll's and other stuff inside the system32 folder of Windows.

There will be no special order of the items we will cove. I hope I can with this series help people to discover sides of Windows they never knew existed.

For every blog entry there will be a short video on my channel. Please subscribe if you don't want to miss a part of this series.

Feedback is more then welcome. If you have feedback let me know about it in the comments.

What's the System32 folder

The system 32 folder is located at C:/Windows/System32. It contains many hard links to Windows System files like Notepad, Remote Desktop, Control Panel and much more.

How to launch a System32 app

You can use type the name in the conmmand line or the run dialog (win+r).

For example you can launch Windows Explorer with the run dialog:

DEV Community: Noraa Junker

Overview over Microsoft's developer tools for Windows

Dev Home

Microsoft PowerToys

Always on Top

Color Picker

File Explorer Add-ons

Keyboard Manager

PowerRename

PowerToys Run

Quick Accent

Windows subsystem for Linux

Windows subsystem for Android

WinGet

Windows Terminal

Closing words

Foreach loops on multidimensional arrays in PHP

Looping through letters and dates in PHP with the for loop

System32 Discovery #4 - The secret behind the System32 folder

⚠️ Warning!

Introduction

What is a hard link?

Why?

Where are they really?

[target platform]

[platform]

[name]

[id]

[version]

[language]

[hash]

System32 Discovery #3 - System information

⚠️ Warning!

Overview

All categories

Arguments

/?

/nfo Path

/report Path

/computer ComputerName

More Information

How to send messages to the Office 365 Company portal

More informations

Access overwritten built-in functions in PHP

Get temporary dictionary in PHP

How to buffer text to the client with PHP

System32 Discovery #2 - Phone dialler

⚠️ Warning!

Overview

Speed dial

How to emulate a modem.

System32 Discovery #1 - Bluetooth file transfer dialog

⚠️ Warning!

Overview

Arguments

{% raw %}-send

-receive

More information

System32 Discovery #0 - Introduction

⚠️ Warning!

Introduction to the System32 Discovery series

What's the System32 folder

How to launch a System32 app

`/?`

`/nfo Path`

`/report Path`

`/computer ComputerName`

{% raw %}`-send`

`-receive`