| DotNetKicks.com Links |
| ASP.net global exception handling and custom error page ... This is a post about the usage of global exception handling. Here you can find a short piece of code which does exactly what it promises, and also makes use of a custom error page which shows exceptions in great detail. | Go |
| Server.Transfer() in an UpdatePanel ... This is a short explanation why you can't use a Server.Transfer() call within an event fired by a control in an UpdatePanel.
The reason why you can't use a Server.Transfer() in an UpdatePanel is more and more obvious when you think about what AJAX is. We only request small pieces of markup which replace little portions of a page, the whole point of AJAX is to avoid downloading the whole page again. ... | Go |
| Combining independent widgets on ASP.NET MVC pages ... As great as ASP.NET MVC is, it doesn't have such an easy way to set up reusable controls or "widgets". Steven Sanderson explains a technique similar to MVC Contrib's "subcontrollers", but much simpler. | Go |
| Introduction to ASP.NET MVC for VISUG - Presentation materials ... Yesterday evening, I did a presentation on the ASP.NET MVC framework for VISUG (Visual Studio User Group Belgium). I really hope everyone got a good feel on what the ASP.NET MVC framework is all about and what it takes to build an ASP.NET MVC application. Thank you Pieter Gheysens for inviting me for this talk! And thank you audience for being interested for over an hour and a half!
A recorded version of this presentation will be available later, for the moment you'll have to do with the presentation materials. The download contains the slides, the Hello World application and the testing demo. The CarTrackr application can be found on CodePlex. | Go |
| Styling a TreeNode with CssClass ... A custom TreeNode which allows styling using the CssClass property | Go |
| ValidationSummary displayed multiple times in UpdatePanel ... This is a solution for the ValidationSummary control displaying the alert multiple times when using it in an UpdatePanel | Go |
| Client side validation using Validation Application blocks ... Enterprise validation application provides us a ready made framework by which we can implement dynamic validation easily in our project. In case you are not aware of the basics you can watch my 20 minutes exclusive video on the same at http://www.questpondvd.com/EnterpriseApplicationBlock/EnterpriseApplicationBlock.html
By using enterprise validation blocks you can create validation in a dynamic fashion and the validations can be invoked depending on the user logged in. Now let's understand one of the biggest drawbacks of the validation blocks and let's see how we can address the same. | Go |
| Project Management Costing FAQ ... This is a short and sweet FAQ which iterates through the most common metrics which will help you judge your project health. | Go |
| Why I Abandoned Silverlight for ASP.NET MVC ... Why? Because even though Silverlight has a super-cool UI model, gives you mini .NET framework, and let's you program in C#, it still can't give me what I really want: my domain objects.
So now I'm using ASP.NET MVC, and I'm loving it. I can build a clean, testable UI layer that leverages the full power of my domain model. Add in some jQuery for AJAX, and I can leverage the client to get partial page updates while still leveraging the server to generate the UI. From my perspective, a beautiful compromise. | Go |
| Handling Unknown Controller Actions In ASPNET MVC ... Using the HandleUnknownAction method for a better user experience and potentially lead the user to what they were really after. | Go |
| Usage of doPostBack in a real environment ... Many atricles describes about "__doPostBack". But here I am trying to say some real practical ways to use it and also mentioned some precautions waant to take before use it. Believe me this article derived from my practical experience and will continue only such items from my side, as only those thing will help a developer. | Go |
| Dynamic Data - Custom Metadata Providers ... This is really just an addition to Matt Berseth's article Dynamic Data And Custom Metadata Providers from August 24, 2008, all I wanted to do was add the same features to the Table/Class not just the Columns/Properties. So you can see the full explanation over at Matt Berseth's blog. So here are the listings: | Go |
| Scott Hanselman: ASP.NET MVC and the new IIS7 Rewrite Module ... "Last year I noticed that there were 11 ways to get to my blog. Literally 11 different URLs and it wasn't helping me my ranking in the search engines. I wrote about this in detail and how I used ISAPI_Rewrite to fix it up.
Fast forward to this year and the IIS7 team has been taking advantage of IIS7's modular design to release a bunch of new modules out-of-band." | Go |
| Microsoft Gold Partner Program as a General Selling Point is a Complet ... I don't know how many shops I've seen, interviewed with, or even worked at that wave the "We're a Microsoft Gold Partner" geek flag waved around as if without knowing the place, we automatically are supposed to assume the shop is a credible development shop. Most of these are waved by non-technical managers that know nothing about quality code. This means nothing to me in terms of credibility & quality, and it's clearly just a marketing term that only benefits Microsoft and somehow makes employers think they should be proud that they are a Gold Partner. It's like giving an office worker a Certificate because they passed the HTML For Dummies course to hang on their cubes at work. | Go |
| Delicious tagged ASP.NET Links |
| Best practices for creating websites in IIS 6.0 - Omar AL Zabir blog on ASP.NET Ajax and .NET 3.5 | Go |
| Exploring Caching in ASP.NET | Go |
| An Introduction to jQuery - Part 1: The Client Side | Go |
| Using jQuery to enhance ASP.NET AJAX progress indication | Encosia | Go |
| ASP.NET website Continuous Integration+Deployment using CruiseControl.NET, Subversion, MSBuild and Robocopy - Omar AL Zabir blog on ASP.NET Ajax and .NET 3.5 | Go |
| Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - ASP.NET MVC and the new IIS7 Rewrite Module | Go |
| jQuery and Microsoft - ScottGu's Blog | Go |
| Scott Gu Blog Links |
| Silverlight 2 Released ... Today we shipped the final release of Silverlight 2. You can download Silverlight 2, as well the Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend 2 tool support to target it, here . Cross Platform / Cross Browser .NET Development Silverlight 2 is a cross-platform browser plugin that enables rich media experiences and .NET RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) within the browser. Silverlight 2 is small in size (4.6MB) and takes only 4-10 seconds to install on a machine that doesn't already have it. It does not require the .NET Framework to be installed on a computer to run - the Silverlight setup download includes everything necessary to play video or run applications. Developers can write Silverlight applications using any .NET language (including VB, C#, JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby). Silverlight provides a rich set of features for development including: WPF UI Framework : Silverlight 2 includes a rich UI framework that makes building rich Web applications much easier. In includes a powerful graphics and animation engine, as well as rich support for higher-level UI capabilities like controls, layout management, data-binding, styles, and template skinning. The WPF UI Framework in Silverlight is a compatible subset of the WPF UI Framework features in the full .NET Framework, and enables developers to re-use skills, controls, code and content to build both rich cross browser web applications, as well as rich desktop Windows applications. Rich Controls : Silverlight 2 includes a rich set of built-in controls that developers and designers can use to quickly build applications. The Silverlight 2 release includes core form controls (TextBox, CheckBox, RadioButton, ComboBox, etc), built-in layout management panels (StackPanel, Grid, Panel, etc), common functionality controls (Slider, ScrollViewer, Calendar, DatePicker, etc), and data manipulation controls (DataGrid, ListBox, etc). All Silverlight controls support a rich control templating model, which enables developers and designers to collaborate together to build highly polished solutions. Rich Networking Support : Silverlight 2 includes rich networking support. It includes out of the box support for calling REST, WS*/SOAP, POX, RSS, and standard HTTP services. It supports cross domain network access (enabling Silverlight clients to directly access resources and data from resources on the web). It also includes built-in sockets networking support. Rich Base Class Library : Silverlight 2 includes a rich .NET base class library of functionality (collections, IO, generics, threading, globalization, XML, local storage, etc). It includes rich APIs that enable HTML DOM/JavaScript integration with .NET code. It includes LINQ and LINQ to XML library support (enabling easy transformation and querying of data), as well as local data caching and storage support. The .NET APIs in Silverlight are a compatible subset of the full .NET Framework. Rich Media Support : Silverlight 2 includes built-in video codecs for playing high definition video, as well as for streaming it over the web (including both live and on-demand support). Silverlight includes support for adaptively switching video bitrates on the fly based on network conditions (enabling users to avoid seeing the dreaded "buffering..." message), placing and metering ads within video streams, as well as enabling content protection. The final Silverlight 2 release delivers a tremendous amount of power and flexibility that enables you to really push the boundaries of what can be done in a browser, and enable great end user experiences. Silverlight Customers Over the last few months a number of very high profile sites have successfully launched using the beta releases of Silverlight 2. In August, NBC hosted the Olympics live on nbcolympics.com and served up 1.3 billion page views, 70 million video streams, and 600 million minutes of video content - makin | Go |
| October 10th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, jQuery, IIS ... Here is the latest in my link-listing series . Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page and Silverlight Tutorials page for links to popular articles I've done myself in the past. ASP.NET Best Practices for Creating ASP.NET websites with IIS 6.0 : Omar Al Zabir, author of the excellent Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5 book , has a great article that details best practices to follow when setting up a site on IIS 6.0. Definitely worth reading and book-marking. ASP.NET Dynamic Data Videos using VB: Bill Burrows has put together an awesome series of videos that show off how to use the new ASP.NET Dynamic Data support provided in .NET 3.5 SP1. You can find more links to ASP.NET Dynamic Data tutorials in my last link post here . Exploring Caching in ASP.NET : Abhijit Jana has a nice article that discusses caching options with ASP.NET. If you are interested in another nice (but not well known) caching technique, you might also want to check out my prior Tip/Trick post on "Donut Caching" using the ASP.NET 2.0 Output Cache Substitution feature . Routing with WebForms : Wally McClure has a nice podcast that describes how to use the new ASP.NET routing infrastructure in .NET 3.5 SP1 with Web Forms based pages. A lot of people mistakenly think this feature only works with ASP.NET MVC applications - when in reality it also works with web forms pages (in fact all ASP.NET Dynamic Data sites use it). ASP.NET Continuous Integration and Deployment using CruiseControl.NET, Subversion, MSBuild and Robocopy : Omar Al Zabir has another great article - this time on implementing continuous integration with ASP.NET. ASP.NET AJAX and jQuery An Introduction to jQuery (Part 1) : Rick Strahl has posted an excellent article that introduces jQuery, and walks-through how to take advantage of it within ASP.NET pages. New AJAX Support for Data-Driven Web Apps : Bertrand Le Roy has written a great MSDN article that describes some of the new ASP.NET AJAX features available in preview form today. Also check out his blog posts here and here to learn more about how the new client-side data templating feature support. Using jQuery to enhance ASP.NET AJAX progress indication : Dave Ward has a cool article that describes how to integrate jQuery functionality with the ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanel control to enable better progress indication status. ASP.NET AJAX: Enabling Bookmarking and the Browser's Back Button : Scott Mitchell continues his excellent series on ASP.NET AJAX and discusses how to add history points to an AJAX-enabled web page so that visitors can bookmark it, as well as to enable back/forward browser navigation. This is a new feature added to ASP.NET in .NET 3.5 SP1. 46 ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit Tutorials : Christian Wenz has published 46 super useful tutorials in both VB and C# that show of how to perform common scenarios with the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. Microsoft Web Platform Web Platform Installer: Make it easy to setup for web development : Scott Hanselman has a nice post that shows off the new "Microsoft Web Platform Installer" we are building that provides an easy way to quickly install every Microsoft web component out there - and quickly get a machine ready for web development. Hope this helps, Scott | Go |
| October 2nd Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Dynamic Data ... Here is the latest in my link-listing series . Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page and Silverlight Tutorials page for links to popular articles I've done myself in the past. ASP.NET Amazon EC2 Support for Windows and ASP.NET: Big news announced this week: Amazon will be offering Windows Server 2008 as an option in their EC2 service. This enables you to use ASP.NET, IIS7 and SQL Server in the cloud. Using ASP.NET WebForms, MVC and Dynamic Data in a Single Application : Scott Hanselman has a nice post that demonstrates how you can have a single ASP.NET application that uses ASP.NET WebForms, MVC, WebServices and Dynamic Data. You have the flexibility to mix and match them however you want, which allows you to always use the right tool depending on the specific job. Modifying Data with the ListView's EditItemTemplate : Matt Berseth has a great post that talks about how to use the ASP.NET 3.5 ListView control to enable in-place editing scenarios - with total html markup control. 4 New Grouping Grid Skins: Vista, Bold, Win2k3 and Soft : Matt Berseth has another nice post that demonstrates how to skin the ASP.NET ListView control to enable some sweet data grouping scenarios. Unlocking and Approving User Accounts : Scott Mitchell posts another in his great series of articles on ASP.NET security (click here for all the articles in the series). This article talks about how you can setup administration pages that allow admins to lock out and approve user accounts using the ASP.NET Membership system. Adding OpenID to you website in conjunction to ASP.NET Membership : Dan Hounshell has a nice article that discusses how to add OpenID authentication support to your web-site, and use it in conjunction to ASP.NET's built-in membership system. ASP.NET MVC MVC Membership with Preview 5 : Troy Goode posts an update of his popular MVC Membership template that works with ASP.NET MVC Preview 5. It provides a set of administration pages you can use for user/role management, as well as adds support for OpenID and Windows LiveID. MVC Flickr Xplorer : Mehfuz Hossain has a cool ASP.NET MVC sample application posted that enables a nice picture explorer for FlickR photos. ASP.NET Dynamic Data Simple 5 Table Northwind Example : Matt Berseth kicks off his ASP.NET Dynamic Data tutorial series with a nice post that shows how to build a simple 5 table application using ASP.NET Dynamic Data with .NET 3.5 SP1. Dynamic Data And Custom Metadata Providers : Matt continues the series and covers the MetadataType attribute, and how you can use it to annotate your entities with additional metadata. Dynamic Menu for your Dynamic Data: Matt continues and covers how to add a data-driven menu to the site. Customizing the Delete Confirmation Dialog : Matt continues and demonstrates how to build a nice UI experience when deleting records in a dynamic data application. Experimenting with YUI's DataTable and DataSource Controls : Matt experiments with how to use client-side AJAX components together with dynamic data. Hope this helps, Scott | Go |
| jQuery and Microsoft ... jQuery is a lightweight open source JavaScript library (only 15kb in size) that in a relatively short span of time has become one of the most popular libraries on the web. A big part of the appeal of jQuery is that it allows you to elegantly (and efficiently) find and manipulate HTML elements with minimum lines of code. jQuery supports this via a nice "selector" API that allows developers to query for HTML elements, and then apply "commands" to them. One of the characteristics of jQuery commands is that they can be "chained" together - so that the result of one command can feed into another. jQuery also includes a built-in set of animation APIs that can be used as commands. The combination allows you to do some really cool things with only a few keystrokes. For example, the below JavaScript uses jQuery to find all <div> elements within a page that have a CSS class of "product", and then animate them to slowly disappear: As another example, the JavaScript below uses jQuery to find a specific <table> on the page with an id of "datagrid1", then retrieves every other <tr> row within the datagrid, and sets those <tr> elements to have a CSS class of "even" - which could be used to alternate the background color of each row: [Note: both of these samples were adapted from code snippets in the excellent jQuery in Action book] Providing the ability to perform selection and animation operations like above is something that a lot of developers have asked us to add to ASP.NET AJAX, and this support was something we listed as a proposed feature in the ASP.NET AJAX Roadmap we published a few months ago. As the team started to investigate building it, though, they quickly realized that the jQuery support for these scenarios is already excellent, and that there is a huge ecosystem and community built up around it already. The jQuery library also works well on the same page with ASP.NET AJAX and the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. Rather than duplicate functionality, we thought, wouldn't it be great to just use jQuery as-is, and add it as a standard, supported, library in VS/ASP.NET, and then focus our energy building new features that took advantage of it? We sent mail the jQuery team to gauge their interest in this, and quickly heard back that they thought that it sounded like an interesting idea too. Supporting jQuery I'm excited today to announce that Microsoft will be shipping jQuery with Visual Studio going forward. We will distribute the jQuery JavaScript library as-is, and will not be forking or changing the source from the main jQuery branch. The files will continue to use and ship under the existing jQuery MIT license. We will also distribute intellisense-annotated versions that provide great Visual Studio intellisense and help-integration at design-time. For example: and with a chained command: The jQuery intellisense annotation support will be available as a free web-download in a few weeks (and will work great with VS 2008 SP1 and the free Visual Web Developer 2008 Express SP1). The new ASP.NET MVC download will also distribute it, and add the jQuery library by default to all new projects. We will also extend Microsoft product support to jQuery beginning later this year, which will enable developers and enterprises to call and open jQuery support cases 24x7 with Microsoft PSS. Going forward we'll use jQuery as one of the libraries used to implement higher-level controls in the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit, as well as to implement new Ajax server-side helper methods for ASP.NET MVC. New features we add to ASP.NET AJAX (like the new client template support ) will be designed to integrate nicely with jQuery as well. We also plan to contribute tests, bug fixes, and patches back to the jQuery open source project. These will all go through the standard jQuery patch review process. Summary We are really excited to be able to partner w | Go |
| Silverlight 2 Release Candidate Now Available ... This evening we published the first public release candidate of Silverlight 2. There are still a small handful of bugs fixes that we plan to make before we finally ship. We are releasing today's build, though, so that developers can start to update their existing Silverlight Beta2 applications so that they'll work the day the final release ships, as well as to enable developers to report any last minute showstopper issues that we haven't found internally (please report any of these on the www.silverlight.net forums). Important: We are releasing only the Silverlight Developer Runtime edition (as well as the VS and Blend tools to support it) today, and are not releasing the regular end-user edition of Silverlight. This is because we want to give existing developers a short amount of time to update their applications to work with the final Silverlight 2 APIs before sites are allowed to go live with it. There are some breaking changes between Beta2 and this RC, and we want to make sure that existing sites can update to the final release quickly once the final release is out. As such, you can only use the RC for development right now - you can't go live with the new APIs until the final release is shipped (which will be soon though). You can download today's Silverlight Release Candidate and accompanying VS and Blend support for it here . Note that Expression Blend support for Silverlight 2 is now provided using Blend 2.0 SP1. You will need to install Blend 2.0 before applying the SP1 service pack that adds Silverlight 2 support. If you don't already have Blend 2.0 installed you can download a free trial of it here . Beta2->RC API Updates Today's release candidate includes a ton of bug fix and some significant performance optimization work. Today's release candidate also includes a number of final API tweaks designed to fix differences between Silverlight and the full .NET Framework. Most of these changes are relatively small (order of parameters, renames of methods/properties, movement of types across namespaces, etc) although there are a number of them. You can read this blog post and download this document to get a listing of the known API breaking changes made from the Beta2 release. We have updated the styles of the controls shipped with Silverlight, and have also modified some of the state groups and control template names they use. When upgrading from Beta2 you might find it useful to temporarily remove any custom style templates you've defined, and get your application functionality working using the RC first - and then after that works add back in the styles one style definition at a time to catch any rename/behavior change issues with them. If you find yourself stuck with an question/issue moving from Beta2 to the RC, please report it on the www.silverlight.net forums (Silverlight team members will be on there helping folks). If after a day or two you aren't getting an answer please send me email (scottgu@microsoft.com ) and I can help or connect you with someone who knows the answer. New Controls Today's release candidate includes a bunch of feature additions and tweaks across Silverlight 2, as well as in the VS and Blend tools targeting it. In general you'll find a number of nice improvements across the controls, networking, data caching, layout, rendering, media stack, and other components and sub-systems. Over the next few months we will be releasing a lot of new Silverlight 2 controls (more details on these soon). Today's release candidate includes three new core controls - ComboBox, ProgressBar, and PasswordBox - that we are adding directly to the core Silverlight runtime download (which is still only 4.6MB in size, and only takes a few seconds to install): At runtime these controls by default look like: The ComboBox in Silverlight 2 supports standard DropDownList semantics. In addition to statically defining items like above, you | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Preview 5 and Form Posting Scenarios ... This past Thursday the ASP.NET MVC feature team published a new "Preview 5" release of the ASP.NET MVC framework. You can download the new release here . This "Preview 5" release works with both .NET 3.5 and the recently released .NET 3.5 SP1. It can also now be used with both Visual Studio 2008 as well as (the free) Visual Web Developer 2008 Express SP1 edition (which now supports both class library and web application projects). Preview 5 includes a bunch of new features and refinements (these build on the additions in "Preview 4" ). You can read detailed "Preview 5" release notes that cover changes/additions here . In this blog post I'm going to cover one of the biggest areas of focus with this release: form posting scenarios. You can download a completed version of the application I'll build below here . Basic Form Post with a Web MVC Pattern Let's look at a simple form post scenario - adding a new product to a products database: The page above is returned when a user navigates to the "/Products/Create" URL in our application. The HTML form markup for this page looks like below: The markup above is standard HTML. We have two <input type="text"/> textboxes within a <form> element. We then have an HTML submit button at the bottom of the form. When pressed it will cause the form it is nested within to post the form inputs to the server. The form will post the contents to the URL indicated by its "action" attribute - in this case "/Products/Save". Using the previous "Preview 4" release of ASP.NET we might have implemented the above scenario using a ProductsController class like below that implements two action methods - "Create" and "Save": The "Create" action method above is responsible for returning an html view that displays our initial empty form. The "Save" action method then handles the scenario when the form is posted back to the server. The ASP.NET MVC framework automatically maps the "ProductName" and "UnitPrice" form post values to the method parameters on the Save method with the same names. The Save action then uses LINQ to SQL to create a new Product object, assigns its ProductName and UnitPrice values with the values posted by the end-user, and then attempts to save the new product in the database. If the product is successfully saved, the user is redirected to a "/ProductsAdded" URL that will display a success message. If there is an error we redisplay our "Create" html view again so that the user can fix the issue and retry. We could then implement a "Create" HTML view template like below that would work with the above ProductsController to generate the appropriate HTML. Note below that we are using the Html.TextBox helper methods to generate the <input type="text"/> elements for us (and automatically populate their value from the appropriate property in our Product model object that we passed to the view): Form Post Improvements with Preview 5 The above code works with the previous "Preview 4" release, and continues to work fine with "Preview 5". The "Preview 5" release, though, adds several additional features that will allow us to make this scenario even better. These new features include: The ability to publish a single action URL and dispatch it differently depending on the HTTP Verb Model Binders that allow rich parameter objects to be constructed from form input values and passed to action methods Helper methods that enable incoming form input values to be mapped to existing model object instances within action methods Improved support for handling input and validation errors (for example: automatically highlighting bad fields and preserving end-user entered form values when the form is redisplayed to the user) I'll use the remainder of this blog post to drill into each of these scenarios. [AcceptVerbs] and [ActionName] attributes In our sample above we implemented ou | Go |
| Quick Update ... I've received a number of (very nice) emails recently asking if I was ok - since my blog has been silent the last few weeks (and much of the summer). Just to address people's concerns - I'm alive and well. :-) I've just been on vacation the last 6 weeks, and have unfortunately not had free time to post (I've been changing a lot of diapers). I am still on vacation another week before I officially return to work. I did get a chance to write up a quick post this weekend that covers some of the new ASP.NET MVC Preview 5 features, though, that will hopefully provide some interim reading until I can resume a more regular posting schedule over the next month when I get back into the office. Thanks, Scott P.S. Somewhat to my embarrassment I started a Part1/Part2 post on "Preview 4" right before I left for vacation, and didn't have time to finish part 2 before "Preview 5" came out. I am going to post this lost segment (which covered AJAX) later this month and write it against the latest preview build. P.P.S. People often ask me whether I write my own blog. Yep - I actually really do write every single post. Hopefully my absence the last 6 weeks provides some evidence to support this. :-) | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Preview 4 Release (Part 1) ... The ASP.NET MVC team is in the final stages of finishing up a new "Preview 4" release that they hope to ship later this week. The Preview 3 release focused on finishing up a lot of the underlying core APIs and extensibility points in ASP.NET MVC. Starting with Preview 4 this week you'll start to see more and more higher level features begin to appear that build on top of the core foundation and add nice productivity. There are a bunch of new features and capabilities in this new build - so much in fact that I decided I needed two posts to cover them all. This first post will cover the new Caching, Error Handling and Security features in Preview 4, as well as some testing improvements it brings. My next post will cover the new AJAX features being added with this release as well. Understanding Filter Interceptors Action Filter Attributes are a useful extensibility capability in ASP.NET MVC that was first added with the "Preview 2" release. These enable you to inject code interceptors into the request of a MVC controller that can execute before and after a Controller or its Action methods execute. This enables some nice encapsulation scenarios where you can easily package-up and re-use functionality in a clean declarative way. Below is an example of a super simple "ScottGuLog" filter that I could use to log details about exceptions raised during the execution of a request. Implementing a custom filter class is easy - just subclass the "ActionFilterAttribute" type and override the appropriate methods to run code before or after an Action method on the Controller is invoked, and/or before or after an ActionResult is processed into a response. Using a filter within a ASP.NET MVC Controller is easy - just declare it as an attribute on an Action method, or alternatively on the Controller class itself (in which case it will apply to all Action methods within the Controller): Above you can see an example of two filters being applied. I've indicated that I want my "ScottGuLog" to be applied to the "About" action method, and that I want the "HandleError" filter to be applied to all Action methods on the HomeController. Previous preview releases of ASP.NET MVC enabled this filter extensibility, but didn't ship with pre-built filters. ASP.NET Preview 4 now includes several useful filters for handling output caching, error handling and security scenarios. OutputCache Filter The [OutputCache] filter provides an easy way to integrate ASP.NET MVC with the output caching features of ASP.NET (with ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 you had to write code to achieve this). To try this out, modify the "Message" value set within the "Index" action method of the HomeController (created by the VS ASP.NET MVC project template) to display the current time: When you run your application you'll see that a timestamp updates each time you refresh the page: We can enable output caching for this URL by adding the [OutputCache] attribute to the our Action method. We'll configure it to cache the response for a 10 second duration using the declaration below: Now when you hit refresh on the page you'll see that the timestamp only updates every 10 seconds. This is because the action method is only being called once every 10 seconds - all requests between those time intervals are served out of the ASP.NET output cache (meaning no code needs to run - which makes it super fast). In addition to supporting time duration, the OutputCache attribute also supports the standard ASP.NET output cache vary options (vary by params, headers, content encoding, and custom logic). For example, the sample below would save different cached versions of the page depending on the value of an optional "PageIndex" QueryString parameter, and automatically render the correct version depending on the incoming URL's querystring value: You can also integrate with the ASP.NET Database Cache Invalidation feature - which allows you t | Go |
| Silverlight 2 Beta2 Released ... Silverlight 2 Beta2 was released today. You can download both Silverlight 2 Beta2 and the Visual Studio and Expression Blend tools support to target it here . Beta2 adds a lot of new features (more details below), but is still a 4.6 MB download that takes less than 10 seconds to install on a machine. It does not require the .NET Framework or any other software to be installed for it to work, and all features work cross-browser on both Mac and Windows machines. These features will also be supported on Linux via the Moonlight 2 release. Silverlight 2 Beta2 supports a go-live license that allows you to start using and deploying Silverlight 2 for commercial applications. There will be some API changes between Beta2 and the final release, so you should expect that applications you write with Beta2 will need to make some updates when the final release comes out. But we think that these changes will be straight-forward and relatively easy, and that you can begin planning and starting commercial projects now. You can build Silverlight Beta2 applications using the VS 2008 Tools for Silverlight and Expression Blend 2.5 June Preview downloads. You can download both of them here . The VS 2008 Tools for Silverlight download works with both VS 2008 and the recent VS 2008 SP1 beta release. UI and Control Improvements Silverlight 2 Beta2 includes a bunch of work in the UI and Control space: More Built-in Controls In Beta 1 only a few controls were included with the core Silverlight setup. Most common controls (including Button, ListBox, Slider, etc) were shipped within separate assemblies that you had to bundle with your applications (which increased the app download size). Beta 2 now installs 30+ of the most common controls as part of the core Silverlight 2 download. This means that you can now build Silverlight 2 applications that use core controls that are as small as 3kb in size - making Silverlight application downloads small and startup time fast. In addition to the core controls included with the base Silverlight 2 setup, we are also this week shipping additional higher-level controls that are implemented in separate assemblies that you can then reference and include with your applications. This includes controls like DataGrid (more details on its new Beta2 features below), Calendar (now with multi-day selection and blackout date support in Beta2), and a TabPanel control (new in Beta2). We ultimately expect to ship over a 100 controls for Silverlight. Control Template Editing Support One of the most powerful features of the WPF and Silverlight programming model is the ability to completely customize the look and feel of controls. This allows developers and designers to sculpt the UI of controls in both subtle and dramatic ways, and enables a tremendous amount of flexibility. I covered these concepts a little in my previous Silverlight Control Templating blog post here . This week's Expression Blend 2.5 June Preview now adds designer support for editing control templates - which makes it easy for you to quickly change the look of any control without having to drop-down to XAML source to-do it. To see control template editing in action, just drag/drop two Slider controls onto the Expression Blend design surface: We might decide that the slider head in the default Slider control template is too large and wide for our application. To use control template editing to change it, we can right-click on one of the sliders in the designer and select the "Edit Control Parts" context menu item. We can choose to create a new empty control template for our slider (and start from scratch), or alternatively edit a copy of the built-in control template (and start from that and tweak it): After we choose to edit a copy of the existing control template, Blend will prompt us to create and name a re-usable style resource that we'll define our control template wit | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Support with Visual Web Developer 2008 Express ... Last week I blogged about the ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 release . One important thing I forgot to mention about this release is that you can now use it with both Visual Studio 2008 as well as the free Visual Web Developer 2008 Express edition. The SP1 release of Visual Web Developer 2008 Express adds support for both class library projects as well as web application projects (previously only web site projects could be used with it). This new support is useful in itself, as well as in enabling both ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight project support with VWD Express. If you install the Visual Web Developer Express SP1 Beta you can start using ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 with it immediately. Important: ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 does not require SP1 to be installed if you are using Visual Studio 2008. ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 will work with both VS 2008 and VS 2008 SP1 just fine. You can learn more about the new VWD Express support for ASP.NET MVC from the VS Web Tools team blog here . This post also includes a free web download that provides ASP.NET MVC Test project support for NUnit-based unit tests. You can use these NUnit project templates with both Visual Studio 2008 as well as with Visual Web Developer Express 2008. Hope this helps, Scott | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 Release ... This morning we released the Preview 3 build of the ASP.NET MVC framework. I blogged details last month about an interim source release we did that included many of the changes with this Preview 3 release. Today's build includes some additional features not in last month's drop, some nice enhancements/refinements, as well as Visual Studio tool integration and documentation. You can download an integrated ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 setup package here . You can also optionally download the ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 framework source code and framework unit tests here . Controller Action Method Changes ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 includes the MVC Controller changes we first discussed and previewed with the April MVC source release , along with some additional tweaks and adjustments. You can continue to write controller action methods that return void and encapsulate all of their logic within the action method. For example: which would render the below HTML when run: Preview 3 also now supports using an approach where you return an "ActionResult" object that indicates the result of the action method, and enables deferred execution of it. This allows much easier unit testing of actions (without requiring the need to mock anything). It also enables much cleaner composition and overall execution control flow. For example, we could use LINQ to SQL within our Browse action method to retrieve a sequence of Product objects from our database and indicate that we want to render a View of them. The code below will cause three pieces of "ViewData" to be passed to the view - "Title" and "CategoryName" string values, and a strongly typed sequence of products (passed as the ViewData.Model object): One advantage of using the above ActionResult approach is that it makes unit testing Controller actions really easy (no mocking required). Below is a unit test that verifies the behavior of our Browse action method above: We can then author a "Browse" ViewPage within the \Views\Products sub-directory to render a response using the ViewData populated by our Browse action: When we hit the /Products/Browse/Beverages URL we'll then get an HTML response like below (with the three usages of ViewData circled in red): Note that in addition to support a "ViewResult" response (for indicating that a View should be rendered), ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 also adds support for returning "JsonResult" (for AJAX JSON serialization scenarios), "ContentResult" (for streaming content without a View), as well as HttpRedirect and RedirectToAction/Route results. The overall ActionResult approach is extensible (allowing you to create your own result types), and overtime you'll see us add several more built-in result types. Improved HTML Helper Methods The HTML helper methods have been updated with ASP.NET MVC Preview 3. In addition to a bunch of bug fixes, they also include a number of nice usability improvements. Automatic Value Lookup With previous preview releases you needed to always explicitly pass in the value to render when calling the Html helpers. For example: to include a value within a <input type="text" value="some value"/> element you would write: The above code continues to work - although now you can also just write: The HTML helpers will now by default check both the ViewData dictionary and any Model object passed to the view for a ProductName key or property value to use. SelectList and MultiSelectList ViewModels New SelectList and MultiSelectList View-Model classes are now included that provide a cleaner way to populate HTML dropdowns and multi-select listboxes (and manage things like current selection, etc). One approach that can make form scenarios cleaner is to instantiate and setup these View-Model objects in a controller action, and then pass them in the ViewData dictionary to the View to format/render. For example, below I'm creating a SelectList view-model class over the | Go |
| May 20th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, .NET, Visual Studio, Silverlight, WPF ... Apologies for the sparseness of my posting the last few weeks - work and life have been busy here lately. Below is a new post in my link-listing series to help kick things up a little. Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page and Silverlight Tutorials page for links to popular articles I've done myself in the past. ASP.NET Bulk Inserting Data with the ListView Control : Matt Berseth continues his awesome posts with one that shows how to handle bulk-editing of data using the ASP.NET ListView control in .NET 3.5. Master-Detail with the GridView, DetailsView, and ModalPopup Controls : Another great post from Matt that describes how to cleanly handle a common data entry scenario. Creating Great Thumbnail Images in ASP.NET : A really nice blog post by a different Matt that details an approach that generates high quality (and small) thumbnail images. Warning the User when Caps-Lock is on : Scott Mitchell has a nice article that describes how to automatically detect and warn users in login pages when the caps-lock button is on. ASP.NET Perf Issue: Large numbers of application-restarts due to virus scanners : Tess Ferrandez has a great post that details a debug session to determine why an ASP.NET application was restarting frequently (causing performance slowdowns). The issue was a virus scanner that was causing files to be constantly updated. Make sure to check out the logging code you can add to your application to identify restart causes like this. ASP.NET AJAX ASP.NET AJAX Progress Bar Control : Matt Berseth has another great article that describes his new ASP.NET AJAX Progress Bar control. Faster Page Loading By Combining Multiple JavaScript files in Batch : Omar Al Zabir (founder of PageFlakes.com and author of the great Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5 book) has a good article that describes the performance benefit of merging multiple JavaScript file downloads. Note that .NET 3.5 SP1 will include a new script combiner feature that helps make doing this even easier. Create ASP.NET AJAX Server Controls using the ScriptControl base class : Chris Pietschmann has a nice article that talks about how to build new ASP.NET AJAX server controls by deriving from the built-in ScriptControl base class. Inline Edit Box and Postback Ritalin Beta : Dave Ward and Mike Davis have created a new CodePlex project for their popular Inline Edit Box and PostBack Ritalin ASP.NET AJAX controls. .NET 7 Ways to Simplify your code with LINQ : Igor Ostrovsky has a great blog post that talks about new code techniques you can use to improve your code using .NET 3.5 and the new language and LINQ features in it. Visual LINQ Query Builder for LINQ to SQL : Mitsu Furuta has created a cool Visual Studio designer that allows you to graphically construct LINQ to SQL queries. Also make sure to download download the latest LINQPad utility - which is invaluable for learning LINQ and trying out LINQ queries. DataContracts without Attributes (POCO support): Aaron Skonnard has a good post that talks about a nice usability change with .NET 3.5 SP1 that allows you to serialize POCO (plain old objects) using the WCF serializers. Ukadc.Diagnostics : Josh Twist pointed me at a new CodePlex project he is working on that extends the System.Diagnostics features in .NET to include richer logging features (SQL trace support, email support, etc). Visual Studio 11 More VS Short Cuts you Should Know : A great post that talks about a bunch of useful shortcuts to print out and remember when using Visual Studio. Did you know you can show extension methods in the object browser?: Sara Ford continues her excellent "Did you know" series. I confess I didn't know this one. Silverlight 50 New Silverlight 2 Beta 1 Screencasts: Mike Taulty and Mike Ormond have put together 50 nice tutorial screen-casts that cover Silverlight 2 - all in their "spare time". Wow. AutoComplete for Silverlight TextBoxes : Nikhil Kothari has a | Go |
| Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 Beta ... Earlier today we shipped a public beta of our upcoming .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 releases. These servicing updates provide a roll-up of bug fixes and performance improvements for issues reported since we released the products last November. They also contain a number of feature additions and enhancements that make building .NET applications better (see below for details on some of them).
We plan to ship the final release of both .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 this summer as free updates. You can download and install the beta here .
Important: SP1 Beta Installation Notes
The SP1 beta released today is still in beta form - so you should be careful about installing it on critical machines. There are a few important SP1 Beta installation notes to be aware of:
1) If you are running Windows Vista you should make sure you have Vista SP1 installed before trying to install .NET 3.5 SP1 Beta. There are some setup issues with .NET 3.5 SP1 when running on the Vista RTM release. These issues will be fixed for the final .NET 3.5 SP1 release - until then please make sure to have Vista SP1 installed before trying to install .NET 3.5 SP1 beta.
2) If you have installed the VS 2008 Tools for Silverlight 2 Beta1 package on your machine, you must uninstall it - as well as uninstall the KB949325 update for VS 2008 - before installing VS 2008 SP1 Beta (otherwise you will get a setup failure). You can find more details on the exact steps to follow here (note: you must uninstall two separate things). It is fine to have the Silverlight 2 runtime on your machine with .NET 3.5 SP1 - the component that needs to be uninstalled is the VS 2008 Tools for Silverlight 2 package. We will release an updated VS 2008 Tools for Silverlight package in a few weeks that works with the VS 2008 SP1 beta.
3) There is a change in behavior in the .NET 3.5 SP1 beta that causes a problem with the shipping versions of Expression Blend. This behavior change is being reverted for the final .NET 3.5 SP1 release, at which time all versions of Blend will have no problems running. Until then, you need to download this recently updated version of Blend 2.5 to work around this issue.
Important Update : If you previously installed a VS 2008 Hotfix, you must run the HotFix Cleanup Utility before installing the VS 2008 SP1 Beta. Click here to download and run this.
Improvements for Web Development
.NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 contain a bunch of feature improvements targeted at web application development.
The VS Web Dev Tools team has more details (including specific bug fix details) on some of the VS specific work here . Below are more details on some of the work in the web-space:
ASP.NET Data Scaffolding Support (ASP.NET Dynamic Data)
.NET 3.5 SP1 adds support for a rich ASP.NET data "scaffolding" framework that enables you to quickly build functional data-driven web application. With the ASP.NET Dynamic Data feature you can automatically build web UI (with full CRUD - create, read, update, delete - support) against a variety of data object models (including LINQ to SQL, LINQ to Entities, REST Services, and any other ORM or object model with a dynamic data provider).
SP1 adds this new functionality to the existing GridView, ListView, DetailsView and FormView controls in ASP.NET, and enables smart validation and flexible data templating options. It also delivers new smart filtering server controls, as well as adds support for automatically traversing primary-key/foreign-key relationships and displaying friendly foreign key names - all of which saves you from having to write a ton of code.
You can learn more more about this feature from Scott Hanselman's videos and tutorials here .
ASP.NET Routing Engine (System.Web.Routing)
.NET 3.5 SP1 includes a flexible new URL routing engine that allows you to map incoming URLs to route handlers. It includes support for both parsing parameters from clean URLs (for example: /Products/Browse/Beverages), as well as supp | Go |
| Professional ASP.NET 3.5 Book (only $16 on Amazon for a short time) ... One of the things I like to track are book sales on Amazon.com, which provides a useful data point to monitor what developers are interested in on any given day. I use the www.TitleZ.com site (which is built using ASP.NET) to track specific titles I want to watch - it then generates a report showing real-time Amazon sales ranking data, as well as 7 day, 30 day and 90 day sales ranking averages. This morning I pulled up my report and saw the usual books near the top of my list, and was about to navigate away when I noticed the eye-popping amazon ranking of the top book -"Professional ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB " by Bill Evjen, Scott Hanselman and Devin Rader. Its Amazon sales rank was a stunning #95 (of all books on Amazon), which meant it was outselling even Harry Potter (which is pretty much unheard of for any technology book). It turns out that Amazon is holding a special price promotion for a short time on a few books - and this was one that was selected. Instead of the usual $54 price, you can buy it for a short time for a ridiculous $16.49. I'm not sure how long this promotion will last - but if you are looking for a great ASP.NET 3.5 book this might be something you might want to take advantage of: The book is a great ASP.NET 3.5 book and an excellent end to end resource. It has been on the best seller list for programming books since it came out in March (usually in the top 5 of all programming titles), and has received glowing reviews (I posted a review of it on Amazon a few weeks ago and gave it 5 stars). If you are in the market for a good ASP.NET book, you might want to consider taking Amazon up on this offer before it closes (and apologies in advance if the price changes before you read this). Hope this helps, Scott P.S. If you are looking for other good .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 books - I also recommend: C# 3.0 In a Nutshell , LINQ in Action , and Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008 (all of which average a 5 star rating on Amazon). | Go |
| ASP.net.com Community Links |
| Building on demand Master/Detail grouping Grid with GridView and ASP.NET AJAX toolkit CollapsiblePanelExtender ... Building on demand Master\Details data with GridView, CollapsiblePanelExtender and ASP.NET AJAX PageMethods | Go |
| Building Custom Paging with LINQ, ListView, DataPager and ObjectDataSource ... Custom paging applied using LINQ and Extension Methods. The used with ObjectDataSource, ListView and DataPager. | Go |
| Building DAC with Execution Time in ASP.NET 3.5 and C# ... This tutorial will show you how to build your own Data Access Component and how to retrieve the time taken to execute. C# version. | Go |
| DataTable - Adding, Modifying, Deleting, Filtering, Sorting rows & Reading/Writing from/to Xml ... In this article, I am going to explain how to Add, Modify, Delete, Sort, Filter rows of the DataTable also writing data to xml as well as loading data from xml. Apart from this, I will also talk about writing/reading Schema of the DataTable. | Go |
| ASP.NET Client Side State Management - Query Strings ... The article discuss the query strings state management technique and how to use it. | Go |
| Using UpdatePanel Triggers in C# ... In this example, we will look at how we can specify different controls to refresh the whole page, and parts of the page. We will create two UpdatePanels and see how we can refresh each of them as well as refresh the whole page with the triggers. C# version. | Go |
| Creating a Dynamic Data Web site using Scaffolding ... This post explains how to create a basic Web Site that uses ASP.NET Dynamic Data. ASP.NET Dynamic Data provides the Web application scaffolding that enables you to build rich data-driven Web applications.
scaffolding is mechanism that enhance the functionality of the existing ASP.NET Framework by adding the ability to dynamically display pages based on the data model of the database. | Go |
| ListView Control with DropDownExtender and Menu ... This article describes how to display the Context Menu on each row of the ListView Control using DropDownExtender and Menu control. | Go |
| Using jQuery with ASP.NET MVC ... The Microsoft ASP.NET MVC Framework has been getting talked about more and more lately. The power and flexibility of ASP.NET MVC allows for developers to use libraries other than those include in the box. The popular JavaScript framework, jQuery, is no exception. | Go |
| URL Rewriting in ASP.NET using URLRewriter.Net ... Learn to use search engine friendly URLs for your ASP.NET pages | Go |
| CodeProject.com ASP Links |
| Client side validation using Validation Application blocks ... Client side validation using Validation Application blocks | Go |
| A Library for Writing/Building Scripts in C# ... Designed to make it easier to write scripts such as JavaScript in C# | Go |
| Send emails in ASP.NET using Gmail credentials ... This article contains code to send email using Gmail accounts. | Go |
| Design pattern – Inversion of control and Dependency injection ... Design pattern – Inversion of control and Dependency injection | Go |
| Software Architecture Interview Questions Part 3 State Pattern, Stratergy pattern,Visitor pattern, Adapter and fly weight ... Software Architecture Interview Questions Part 3 - Design patterns State Pattern, Stratergy pattern,Visitor pattern, Adapter and fly weight | Go |
| Project Management Costing FAQ ... Project Management Costing FAQ | Go |
| Crystal and Reporting Services FAQ Part 2 ... Crystal and Reporting Services FAQ Part 2 | Go |
| Crystal and Reporting Services FAQ Part 1 ... Crystal and Reporting Services FAQ Part 1 | Go |
| Project Management FAQ ... Project Management FAQ | Go |
| Selectable GridView with WaitBox ... This article describes how to implement a selectable GridView control in ASP.NET. | Go |
| Use XpathNavigator to navigate and edit XML data ... Use the XPathNavigator to edit and read XML. This article demonstrates how you can do, using conditions. | Go |
| Javascript Progress Bar ... how to create a manual and automatic progress bar using JavaScript | Go |
| Vacation Request 2.0 - Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and DotNetNuke™ ... A DotNetNuke module communicating with a WF workflow hosted in the Open Source project IWebWF | Go |
| ASP.NET GridView Image Command Button Problem (Multiple PostBacks) ... This article describes workarounds to solve the problem of multiple postbacks when using a command button of type image in an ASP.NET GridView (Internet Explorer). | Go |
| DotNetSlackers.com Links |
| Building Web Sites with ASP.NET - Part 1 ... In this first part of the series, Brian delves into setting up an ASP.NET web application that makes use of object-oriented design patterns while making use of the latest and greatest technologies as they make sense. He begins with an overview of the project creation using Visual Studio 2008 including the coverage of the modal popups feature. Brian also examines the usage of themes and the implementation of searching with the help of screenshots and related source code. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| Using GeoTwitter to track the fires in LA ... Every year before Halloween, the fires begin here in Southern California. Tonight I was using GeoTwitter GeoRSS Editor to track the fire to share it with my family and friends. The steps to create your georss feed is pretty simple, add as many lines, points and polygons into the map and press Save, after giving your feed a name, the system will provide you with a feed to share with your favorite viewer. You can see other users georss feeds bellowed saved by the system. What's... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| Web Platform Installer ... Ive used the term drinking from the fire hose when describing my first days at Microsoft. However, I believe that a lot of our customers feel this way when approaching the plethora of options for web application development on the Microsoft stack. This is feedback weve received from many sources and as Scott Hanselman pointed out, theres a concerted effort to make things easier to find and understand here. Much of these efforts will take time to see fruition, but some of them are happening now.... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| MVC: From Start to Blog ... I gave a talk this past weekend at the Philly.NET Code Camp 2008.3 . Ive uploaded my slide deck , project , and a few additional files (used in the demo) in case anyone would like to review again. I was also able to find another way to fake HttpContext. Check out Stephen Walthers blog post about faking the controller context . He also has a blog post about unit testing the views without a web server . I hope all that attended enjoyed my talk and I look forward to seeing you all again! Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| Major input control Gotcha ... Short Story:
This will not work:
<ComponentArt:NumberInput runat="server" ID="NumberInput1" /><input type="button" value="+" onclick="NumberInput1.incrementValue();" /><input type="button" value="-" onclick="NumberInput1.decrementValue();" />
This is how to correct it:
<ComponentArt:NumberInput runat="server" ID="NumberInput1" /><input type="button" value="+"... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| Sitefinity Case Study on Telerik TV ... Carl Franklin and Telerik's own Gabe Sumner host another case study on Telerik TV . This month, they'll interview Mark Davidson from Netfinity as he shows off Fusion Car Audio , the official site for New Zealand's leading exporter of consumer electronics. If you use Sitefinity yourself or are just curious about Telerik's award-winning CMS, you won't want to miss this show. Fusion Car Audio was built with Sitefinity, making use of built-in multi-language and regional capabilities and then extended with some custom modules. The site is SEO friendly and uses extensive URL re-writing techniques to maximize content across multiple regions and languages. So be sure to drop by Telerik TV and watch as Mark shows how easy it was to built a feature-rich site with Sitefinity CMS.
Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| Flickr Xplorer - A Cool ASP.NET MVC Example ! ... Mehfuz Hossain has created a cool open source application based on ASP.NET MVC
The
CodePlex project can be found HERE !You can use the application LIVE
- HERE !... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| Data Binding Data Conversion ... One of the more interesting topics that arise in Data-binding is that of Data Conversion. So much can be accomplished without explicit conversion that it is easy to overlook until you hit the real world. To see this, I'll make a small modification to the code I wrote for the Silverlight Tutorial on Data Binding. The premise of this simplified example is that you are interacting with a bookstore or a library, displaying information about one book at a time. We assume that you get the book... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| Sitefinity reviewed for 2009 Web CMS Report ... Sitefinity was selected as 1 of only 42 Web Content Management Products to be reviewed for the 2009 Web CMS Report . This annual report provides a comprehensive overview of CMS products & best practices across 7 vendor categories and multiple platforms.
The CMS landscape contains hundreds of products; it is very exciting for Sitefinity to be selected as one of only a few to be reviewed
Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| Selectable GridView with WaitBox ... This article describes how to implement a selectable GridViewControl in ASP.NET.... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| VB Video Tutorials on ASP.Net Dynamic Data (Lisa Feigenbaum) ... Bill Burrows, VB MVP, has released some great videos on the ASP.Net Dynamic Data features that were added in VS2008 SP1. What is Dynamic Data?
"ASP.Net Dynamic Data provides a framework that enables you to quickly build a functional data-driven application, based on a LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework data model. It also adds great flexibility and functionality to the DetailsView, FormView, GridView, and ListView controls in the form of smart validaton and the ability to easily change the display of... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| ASP.NET GridView Image Command Button Problem (multiple PostBacks) ... This article describes work arounds to solve the problem of multiple postbacks when using a command button of type image in an ASP.NET GridView (Internet Explorer).... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| An Introduction to the Microsoft Web Platform Installer ... Getting a new ASP.NET Web development machine up and running isn't hard, but there are a lot of steps involved and it takes a fair amount of time. That's why Microsoft is working on a new tool called the Microsoft Web Platform Installer. It provides a single interface for installation of the tools needed to start developing Web applications on the Microsoft platform.... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| New Visualizations at Work: Moving to Silverlight Clients ... Microsoft's tools for building rich Internet applications (RIAs)-ASP.NET AJAX and Silverlight 2-promise to help take the "developer ugly" out of line-of-business software.... Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here . | Go |
| ASP.NET.com Links |
| VWG integration allows to create one application for the Desktop & Web ... The integration of Visual WebGUI by Gizmox into Habanero v2 allows the application to be released either on the desktop or the web, and successfully simulates the rich controls of Windows Forms and hugely enhances bandwidth use for data-rich web applications. This is Chillisoft's official announcement: Having established itself as a reputable ORM framework, Habanero's version 2 beta release by Chillisoft Solutions sees it launch as a full Enterprise Application Framework that provides free open source...(read more ) | Go |
| Functional C# - Implementing Async Computations in C# ... As I covered earlier in my post Functional .NET - LINQ or Language Integrated Monads , I talked about using asynchronous computation expressions (monads) from C# 3.0. Brian McNamara , of the F# team, posted back in May about using them from C #. But since then, things have changed slightly. Before, I showed a basic example of how to utilize the F# libraries from C#, but let's go deep under the covers to see how this actually works.
Getting Started
In order to make use of the F# libraries in our C# library, we need to add references to them. We need the following items:
FSharp.Core.dll
FSharp.PowerPack.dll
FSharp.PowerPack.Linq.dll
And then I need to open the namespaces in order to take advantage of F#:
using Microsoft.FSharp;
using Microsoft.FSharp.Control;
using Microsoft.FSharp.Core;
Referencing F# Classes
As part of process of creating the asynchronous monad builders in C#, we need to create an instance of the F# class AsyncBuilder in the Microsoft.FSharp.Control namespace. Unfortunately, the AsyncBuilder has an internal constructor, thus preventing us from creating it directly. The other option is getting the async instance in the AsyncImpl internal class. I think the first option is a bit more preferable. In order to create an instance, all we need to do is invoke the constructor via reflection as a static instance.
static class AsyncExtensions
{
public static AsyncBuilder async = CreateAsyncBuilder();
private static AsyncBuilder CreateAsyncBuilder()
{
var asyncType = typeof (AsyncBuilder);
var ci = asyncType.GetConstructor(
BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic, null , new Type[0 ], null );
var result = ci.Invoke(null );
return result as AsyncBuilder;
}
...
Now that we have this, we have to realize that F# doesn't use the standard .NET delegates for functions. Let's walk through some ways of converting back and forth.
Converting Functions
As we've noted before, F# does not use the standard Func and Action delegates that are commonly used in C# and VB.NET. Instead, the functions in F# use the FastFunc class. This allows for the F# compiler to better optimize the closures, especially due to the fact that these closures are quite commonly used. Another point of difference is that there is no distinction between Func and Action delegates, and instead, for functions that return no value have the return type of Unit. This is the optimal way of handling this, due to the fact that Void is not treated as a real type, which you've heard me complain about in the past.
In order to convert from the Func delegate to the FastFunc, we use the FuncConvertExtensions class in the FSharp.PowerPack.Linq.dll assembly. Then we can create extension methods on our Func delegates to expose the conversion methods. The conversion methods should look like this.
static class AsyncExtensions
{
public static FastFunc<Tuple<A, B>, C> ToTupledFastFunc<A, B, C>
(this Func<A, B, C> f)
{
return FuncConvertExtensions.ToTupledFastFunc(f);
}
public static FastFunc<Tuple<A, B, C>, D> ToTupledFastFunc<A, B, C, D>
(this Func<A, B, C, D> f)
{
return FuncConvertExtensions.ToTupledFastFunc(f);
}
public static FastFunc<A, B> ToFastFunc<A, B>
(this Func<A, B> f)
{
return FuncConvertExtensions.ToFastFunc(f);
}
...
Now that the conversions have been put in place, we can turn our attention to creating the extension methods required for LINQ expressions.
Adding LINQ Extension Methods
In order for LINQ to bind and return data, the SelectMany and Select methods must be implemented. We need to implement these methods to return an Async<T> class for binding and returning purposes. As part of the implementation, we need to ensure our Func delegates are converted to the proper FastFunc type | Go |
| Using GeoTwitter to track the fires in LA ... Every year before Halloween, the fires begin here in Southern California. Tonight I was using GeoTwitter GeoRSS Editor to track the fire to share it with my family and friends. The steps to create your georss feed is pretty simple, add as many lines, points and polygons into the map and press Save, after giving your feed a name, the system will provide you with a feed to share with your favorite viewer. You can see other users georss feeds bellowed saved by the system. What's next on the GeoTwitter Editor? I've put off the development of the Editor long enough, I have been extremely busy with other side projects, yet the time has come to get to work in this tool. After all the feedback, I believe I am going to follow the recommendation to allow to save your feeds forever, or until I delete it, for user collaboration. Also when entering points, lines and polygons I'll ask for a title and description to build the body of the feed. I'll keep a date and time of the last update. Hopefully the changes will be complete by the end of the month, I'll update the source code to codeplex as previously done. Any other ideas or suggestions are welcome. Cheers Al | Go |
| Interesting Finds: 2008.10.13~2008.10.15 ... Other Is it important to write good code? Must Have Software 2008 Edition Database OUTPUTing Data from the Just-Inserted, Updated, or Deleted Row(s) SQL Server 2008 Database Performance and Scalability - the Microsoft approach Memory from Every Angle Web PunyMCE - a lightweight rich text editor Dojo 1.2: Squeezing it into 5.5kb - Dojo 1.2 Loader and Build System Meta标签全解释 .NET FlickrXplorer - A fast MVC flickr photo explorer SequenceViz - a tool to generate sequence diagrams by reverse engineering .NET Assemblies Silverlight 2 Released - Microsoft Silverlight 2 SDK - Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 - GetStarted ThumbCached程序的内部结构及当时的设计思路 | Go |
| DNN Toolkit has been released! ... Nova Software has formally released a open source project based on DNN, named by DNN Toolkit .
For now, the project is consisted of three DNN modules:
FAQ Module
Supports searching by keywords in questions or answers with category .
Supports browsing glossaries by first letter .
Glossary Module
Supports searching by keyword.
Supports browsing by category .
City Tax Locater Module
Supports importing data by text file or xml file .
Supports Exporting data to xml file .
Supports DNN Print with modalbox . | Go |
| Free Cleveland Silverlight Event!!! ... Calling all Cleveland Dotnetters! Learn Silverlight at the Cleveland Silverlight Firestarter, a free event at the MIcrosoft Independence office on Saturday November 1st.
Register now!!!
Cleveland Silverlight Firestarter | Go |
| Creating Custom Parameters for Data source Controls ... Asp.net provide various types of parameters , like session parameter which get its value from session ,control parameter which get its value from form control , and there is also many other parameters each one used to read the parameter value from different location .
But sometimes , those parameters doesn't fit your needs , for example , if you want a parameter that get its value from the UserName of the current logged in user ( User.Identity.Name ) , in this case you may end up by using the default <asp:Parameter > which requires to set its value manually in the data Source Selecting , Updating , Inserting , or deleting event.
However , you could create a custom parameter that can be used in all places that you want to use the Current logged in UserName in the data source parameters , this can be accomplished by inheriting from System.Web.UI.WebControls.Parameter class , and by overriding it's Evaluate method.
Note: the evaluate method will be called automatically by the framework .
The custom parameter can be placed in App_Code folder or in a separate class library if you want to use it in other projects.
This is the custom UserParameter class:
11 namespace CustomControls
12 {
13 /// <summary>
14 /// Summary description for UserParameter
15 /// </summary>
16 public class UserParameter : System.Web.UI.WebControls.Parameter
17 {
18 protected override object Evaluate(HttpContext context, System.Web.UI.Control control)
19 {
20 if (context.User != null && !string .IsNullOrEmpty(context.User.Identity.Name))
21 {
22 return context.User.Identity.Name;
23 }
24
25 return null ;
26 }
27 }
28 }
Now to use the UserName parameter, First thing , you should register the custom control , <%@ Register Namespace="CustomControls" TagPrefix="cc1" %> Then you can use it as a parameter for your data source :
<asp:SqlDataSource ID="SqlDataSource1" runat="server" ConnectionString="<$ConnectionStrings:DatabaseConnectionString %>"
SelectCommand="SELECT [ProjectId], [Name], [UserName] FROM [Projects] where [UserName]=@UserName" >
<SelectParameters>
<cc1:UserParameter Name="UserName" />
</SelectParameters>
</asp:SqlDataSource >
Hope it helps
Anas Ghanem | Go |
| Hack: using live bindings outside templates ... A comment on this post is asking whether it is possible to create bindings outside of a template. The point of doing that is that you don’t necessarily want to render a template just to set-up a few bindings.
Well, bindings are really implemented by a component, Sys.Binding, and a markup extension, which instantiates that component through the convenient {binding foo} syntax.
While the markup extension is only understood by the template engine, the component can be instantiated like any other component, through $create or declaratively (thanks to Dave for pointing me to how this can be done).
Here is a sample page where two bindings are created (imperatively and declaratively) to bind a span’s text (imperatively) and an input’s value (declaratively) to the same plain JavaScript data object. Modifying the value in the input changes the data object, which in turn changes the span that is also listening to it. <% @ Page Language ="C#" %>
<! DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
< html xmlns ="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
< head runat ="server">
< title > Binding</ title >
< script type ="text/javascript">
var data = { answer: 42 };
function pageLoad() {
$create(Sys.Binding, {
target: $get('answerDisplay' ),
targetProperty: 'innerText' ,
source: data,
path: 'answer' ,
mode: Sys.BindingMode.oneWay
});
}
</ script >
</ head >
< body xmlns : sys ="javascript:Sys"
xmlns : binding ="javascript:Sys.Binding"
sys : activate ="*">
< form id ="form1" runat ="server">
< asp : ScriptManager runat ="server" ID ="SM1">
< Scripts >
< asp : ScriptReference
Path ="~/Script/MicrosoftAjaxTemplates.js" />
</ Scripts >
</ asp : ScriptManager >
< div >
< span id ="answerDisplay"></ span >< br />
< input type ="text" id ="answer"
sys : attach ="binding"
binding : target ="{{ $get('answer') }}"
binding : targetproperty ="value"
binding : source ="{{ data }}"
binding : path ="answer"
binding : mode ="{{ Sys.BindingMode.twoWay }}" />
</ div >
</ form >
</ body >
</ html >
Not quite as convenient as being able to directly use the markup extension but it gets the job done. Please also be aware that the overhead in rendering a template is very small and the convenience of the markup extension may be preferred over this. Here is the same page using a DataView: <% @ Page Language ="C#" %>
<! DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
< html xmlns ="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
< head runat ="server">
< title > Binding</ title >
< script type ="text/javascript">
var data = { answer: 42 };
</ script >
</ head >
< body xmlns : sys ="javascript:Sys"
xmlns : dataview ="javascript:Sys.UI.DataView"
sys : activate ="*">
< form id ="form1" runat ="server">
< asp : ScriptManager runat ="server" ID ="SM1">
< Scripts >
< asp : ScriptReference
Path ="~/Script/MicrosoftAjaxTemplates.js" />
</ Scripts >
</ asp : ScriptManager >
< div sys : attach ="dataview" dataview : data ="{{ data }}">
< span id ="answerDisplay"> {binding answer }</ span >< br />
< input type ="text" id ="answer" value ="{binding answer}"/>
</ div >
</ form >
</ body >
</ html > | Go |
| Expand Silverlight Concept for Cloud Computing? ... Given that Silverlight runs on PCs, Macs, and Linux, it isn't a stretch to expand the concept into Cloud computing. Rather than running a stripped-down .NET plug-in within a browser, what about installing a full-blown, cross-platform runtime? You'd execute Silverlight Cloud (my term) on your computer (Mac, PC, Linux) and download the cloud-based .xap file from a URI much as you do now with Silverlight 2. Just as the embedded DLLs call into Web services in the browser-based Silverlight, the...(read more ) | Go |
| Silverlight 2 Released Today ... Silverlight 2 was released today! Read more about the big announcement at Scott Guthrie’s blog . If you’ve been waiting to get into Silverlight 2 until it was officially released check out the following articles . Spike Xavier and I also put together a little song about Silverlight 2 awhile back which can be heard here. | Go |
