Building a Big Bad Build Button

I'm a long time Arduino fan / tinkerer... and as a hobbyist I've always been troubled by the amount of grunt-work that needs to be done on even the smallest of projects. Things have changed - a lot.

The people behind FEZ Domino and TinyCLR are pretty awesome... the Blackwidow from Async Labs is fantastic... but for me, all that is the landscape of microcontrollers pale in comparison to what is happening with Netduino and the Netduino Plus.

So... what about the Big Bad Build Button?

First, we need something to build right? If you have a Continuous Integration (CI) server already setup you can skip over this step. If you don't, you can use CruiseControl.NET; it should only take a few minutes to install and setup a skeleton project.

Next, we will need to zero-in on the trigger that's used to kick off a build... Charles Proxy can make short work of it if the tool is web-based. Schwaaaa... red arrow!

That's the line we are interested in... the POST is to ViewFarmReport.aspx with those variables. Now we need something that can send that juicy little bit to the CI server [stage left: enters Netduino wearing a mask, cape, and stretchy pants]. Let's throw down some free IDE ( C# Visual Studio 2010 Express ) and a little HttpWebRequest love.

  string url = "http://10.10.10.141/ccnet/ViewFarmReport.aspx";
  string vars = "projectName=Big+Bad+Build+Button&serverName=local&ForceBuild=Force";
  System.Text.UTF8Encoding ue = new System.Text.UTF8Encoding();
  byte[] postData = ue.GetBytes(vars);
 
  HttpWebRequest webReq = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
  webReq.Method = "POST";
  webReq.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
  webReq.ContentLength = postData.Length;
 
  Stream st = webReq.GetRequestStream();
  st.Write(postData, 0, postData.Length);
  st.Close();

Slap a big button on the Netduino and you're good to go.

You can do this on Arduino you say? You're right... to a point. The Arduino is a great tool for most prototyping needs but churning prototypes into production is a different story. What if you needed to support cookies? ...or passing complex credentials? SSL?

Netduino Plus ($59) and the .NET Micro Framework has you covered. Arduino ($29 base + $45 for an Ethernet shield)... not so much.

Ok - back to the regularly scheduled Flash, Flex, AIR, and ActionScript program.

[ source: Big Bad Build Button - VS.NET Project ]

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Building a Big Bad Build Button