Thursday, May 28, 2015

How to install the Notepad++ language file for the PowerQuery formula language

The PowerQuery product is explaind here: Introduction to Microsoft Power Query for Excel
As of the moment of this writing, the editor for the “M” language does not offer color syntax or intellisense. One way to aid in writing formulas is provided by Matt Mason who made a Notepad++ language file for M.
You can download the language file from his webpage Notepad++ language file for the Power Query formula language (“M”)
The downloaded file is called “mlang_npp.xml”.
Next we need to install the language file in Notepad++
  • Open Notepad++
  • From the menu bar select Language > Define your language…
  • In the ‘user defined language’ dialog window, click on the ‘Import…’ button
    In the ‘Open file’ dialog window, browse to your download folder, select “mlang_npp.xml” and click ‘Open’.
  • The file should load and you see a success dialog box, click OK.
  • Close the ‘user defined language’ dialog window.
  • Close Notepad++ and reopen.
  • Open the Language menu, at the bottom you will see the “M” language choice, below “Define your language…” (not in the M submenu).
  • With the “M” language selected, the code in your editor has syntax highlighting and syntax folding.
Most likely Microsoft will add syntax highlighting some time in the future. For now the Notepad ++ solution is helpful to build complex “M” statements.

Monday, May 04, 2015

Migrating my Postman collections from one MS-Windows system to another

Right now I’m in the process of migrating developer stuff from my old MS-Windows pc to a new one. On the old machine I’ve used the Postman tool often to test and deploy new web-services. After having installed the tool on the new pc I wanted to copy my collections from the old pc. This article describes how to accomplish this.

  • Start Postman on the old system
  • My collections
    image
  • In the Menu Bar click on the Settings icon
    image
  • In the Settings dialog window, click on the Data tab
    image
  • Click on the Download button to download your collections in a dump file. The ‘Save As’ dialog window opens. Select a name and location on a file share that can be reached by the new PC.
    image
  • Save the file.
  • Close the Postman tool on the old PC.
  • Start the Postman tool on the new PC.
  • In the Menu Bar click on the Settings icon.
  • In the Settings dialog window, click on the Data tab.
  • This time click on the ‘Select file’ button in the ‘Import Data’ section.
  • In the ‘Open file’ dialog select the postman dump file you created in the file share.
  • Click Open and that’s it. My collections are now available on the new PC.