| DotNetKicks.com Links |
| Adding advanced validation to an existing ASP.NET application ... How to add validation to an existing ASP.NET application. The business entities used by the application are defined on a separate assembly, used by other desktop applications. This great post explains how you can use the Validation Application Block (VAP) | Go |
| .NET/SQL Server 2008 - Using Table-Valued Parameters with .NET ... With the release of SQL Server 2008, Microsoft introduced a new parameter type called 'Table-Valued Parameters', which provided the flexibility for the SQL developers to send multiple rows of data to a stored procedure/function or inline T-SQL code.
Table-Valued parameters can be used to transfer multiple rows of data without requiring the developer to construct custom string parsing routines, temporary table or multiple parameters which for a complex stored procedure can become difficult to maintain. | Go |
| WCF vs ASMX Web Services ... Curious as to how ASMX and WCF compare? This post uses a unique analogy to describe the two using planes. | Go |
| Fiddler for Firefox ... Steve Smith's description how to configure Firefox and Fiddler to work together. | Go |
| A Guide to Learning ASP.NET MVC Beta 1 ... ASP.NET MVC Beta1 learning guide by Stephen Walther | Go |
| Mocking ASP.NET MVC HtmlHelper using Moq ... HtmlHelper is used quite frequently in ASP.MVC. It has a number of dependencies, so testing the numerous extension methods on it (both default, and added) can make for some ugly code. This simple code sample shows how to mock out the dependencies (ViewContext for one) using Moq. | Go |
| "Web Application Installer" moves to Beta ... Remember last week when I mentioned the Microsoft Web Platform Installer? It's an bootstrapper that gets you setup for free web development, all in a single application. It'll setup IIS7, get you Visual Studio, SQL Server, .NET, etc. Cool. And there was much rejoicing (except XP folks, sorry.) | Go |
| Importing CSV file into Database with Schema.ini ... This article describes how to import a CSV file with different data type columns into database with the help of schema.ini file. | Go |
| Upload T-SQL and execute at your hosting provider using an ASP.NET pag ... With this approach, you can use the Database Publishing Wizard to generate a T-SQL file from your local database. Then, you can upload the script to your hosting provider, and use the sample ASP.NET page provided to execute the code below. | Go |
| ASP.NET Session State ... Session state is nothing more than memory in the shape of a dictionary or hash table, e.g. key-value pairs, which can be set and read for the duration of a user's session. | Go |
| 4 steps to use readymade DAL component (Data application blocks) ... One of the most important components in a project is the DAL component. Many developers end up creating their own DAL component which is pretty time consuming. A Microsoft enterprise application block has a very decent and time tested DAL component i.e. the Enterprise data application blocks. This tutorial will run through the necessary steps of how you can use Enterprise data application blocks in your DAL component. | Go |
| ASP.NET webdomain recycle on subfolder changes ... Faced a classic problem and still the desired solution is pending. But I am sure this will help all!
While working on a web application, one of my team presented some weird behaviour on ASP.NET
FIrst observation: Session times out randomly while working on the application.
So we started observing the application closely to see what might be causing this. We came out with some more observations:
Detailed observation: Session times out when any of the user participates in certain scenario. Also, not only the specific session expires, but all the use sessions are expired. Further study shown that actually the app domain itself recycles.
We studied the activities in these specific scenario. We found that a certain implementation use to create folder, put some temporrary files inside it and once done, the folder and the files were deleted. The application recycles whenever the folder is deleted.
Do know more about it. | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Beta released - Coolness ... ASP.NET MVC is now officially in Beta. Go get it! ScottGu has all the juicy details in his usually Epic style. In a nutshell, this is called Beta (and not Preview 1138) because the quality and the amount of testing gone into it was higher than the Previews and source drops you may have gotten off of CodePlex. It's API surface is pretty stable now. | Go |
| ScottGu: ASP.NET MVC Beta ... One of ScottGu´s monster blogposts | Go |
| Delicious tagged ASP.NET Links |
| Best practices for creating websites in IIS 6.0 | Go |
| An Introduction to jQuery - Part 1: The Client Side | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Beta Released - ScottGu's Blog | Go |
| CodeProject: Exploring Caching in ASP.NET. Free source code and programming help | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC and the new IIS7 Rewrite Module | 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 |
| ASP.NET MVC : The Official Microsoft ASP.NET Site | Go |
| New ASP.NET MVC Tutorials - Stephen Walther | Go |
| AJAX Control Toolkit Tutorials : The Official Microsoft ASP.NET Site | Go |
| Tip/Trick: Implement "Donut Caching" with the ASP.NET 2.0 Output Cache Substitution Feature - ScottGu's Blog | Go |
| Scott Gu Blog Links |
| ASP.NET MVC Beta Released ... Today we released a beta of the new ASP.NET MVC framework. Click here to download it. You can also visit www.asp.net/mvc to explore tutorials , quickstarts , and videos to learn more. The ASP.NET MVC Beta works with both .NET 3.5 and .NET 3.5 SP1, and supports both VS 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express SP1 (which is free - and now supports class libraries and web application project types). Today's ASP.NET MVC Beta release comes with an explicit "go-live" license that allows you to deploy it in production environments. The previous preview releases also allowed go-live deployments, but did so by not denying permission to deploy as opposed to explicitly granting it (which was a common source of confusion). Today's release is clearer about this in the license. The beta release is getting close to V1 feature complete, although there are still a few more features that will be added before the final "V1" release (including several VS tooling enhancements). The team decided to call this release a "beta", though, because the quality and testing of it is higher than the previous previews (a lot of bug fixes and performance tuning work went into it), and they feel that the core features that are in it are now "baked enough" that there won't be major changes from this release to the final product. This post contains a quick summary of some of the new features and changes in this build compared to the previous "Preview 5" release: New "Add View" Menu in Visual Studio New \Scripts directory and jQuery Support Built-in Model Binder Support for Complex Types Refactored Model Binder Infrastructure Strongly Typed UpdateModel and TryUpdateModel WhiteList Filtering Improved Unit Testing of UpdateModel and TryUpdateModel Scenarios Strongly Typed [AcceptVerbs] attribute Better Validation Error Messages HTML Helper Cleanup and Refactoring Silverlight / ASP.NET MVC Project Integration ASP.NET MVC Futures Assembly \Bin and GAC Assembly Deployment I am also planning to publish a few end to end tutorials in the weeks ahead that explain ASP.NET MVC concepts in more depth for folks who have not looked at it before, and who want a "from the beginning" set of tutorials on how to get started. New "Add View" Menu in Visual Studio With previous ASP.NET MVC preview releases you had to manually add views through the Project->Add New Item dialog in VS, and creating and wiring up everything required several manual steps (making sure the directory/file structure is right, going into the code-behind file to specify the strongly typed ViewData model type, etc). Today's beta makes the steps much easier. You can now just move your source editor cursor to be within a Controller action method in the source editor, and then right-click and select a new "Add View" context menu item (alternatively you can type the Ctrl-M Ctrl-V keyboard shortcut to invoke this without having to take your hands off the keyboard): This will bring up a new "Add View" dialog that allows you to specify the name of the view you want to create, its master page, and optionally its strongly typed ViewData "Model" type: Visual Studio will automatically pre-populate the view name based on the action method your cursor is within (you can then override this if you want). For example, if our cursor had been within an "Edit" action method when we selected "add view" it would have pre-populated the view name textbox with "Edit" instead of "Browse". The strongly typed ViewData "model" for a view can be selected from an editable ComboBox that lists all classes in (or referenced) from the MVC project: You can either select a type from the list, or manually type one in the ComboBox. You can also optionally pick an initial type from the list and then tweak it. For example, we could select the "Product" class from the list and then use the ComboBox editing support to wrap it as an IEnumerable<Product> - meaning a sequence of pr | Go |
| 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 |
| ASP.net.com Community Links |
| Web Voting System using AJAX, XML and LINQ in VB.NET ... This tutorial will teach you how to develop a poll system that will allow any user to cast their vote for the poll, and also view the results. | Go |
| ASP.NET Client Side State Management - Control State ... The article explains what is the control state and how to use it as a part of the ASP.NET client side state management. | Go |
| 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 |
| CodeProject.com ASP Links |
| Customise VisualSVN Server browser view ... How to... Customise VisualSVN Server browser view | Go |
| Yahoo Market data - another take. ... A User Control that encaspulates the ability to view (delayed) market data from Yahoo. | Go |
| Agile Development Part 2 ... Agile Development Part 2 | Go |
| Ajax quick start FAQ ... Ajax quick start FAQ | Go |
| Software Architecture Interview Question Part 1 ( Design Pattern ) ... Design Pattern Interview Questions ( Quick Reference) | Go |
| 16 steps to write flexible business validation in C# using validation blocks ... 16 steps to write flexible business validation in C# using validation blocks | Go |
| Switching Between HTTP and HTTPS Automatically: Version 2 ... An article on automatically switching between HTTP and HTTPS protocols without hard-coding absolute URLs | Go |
| AxiomaticTokenizer ... Financial security with one-time tokens | Go |
| NHibernate and MySql - a simple example on how to use it ... A short article with an example on how you can use NHibernate and Mysql together | Go |
| Silverlight 2.0 - Rotating 3D Image Cube / Box ... An implementation of a 3D image cube as a custom user control in Silverlight 2.0 | Go |
| Fully JavaScript Enabled Editor ... Fully JavaScript enabled editor which also contains some server coding | Go |
| Writing Your Own RTF Converter ... An article on how to write a custom RTF parser and converter | Go |
| Selectable GridView with WaitBox ... This article describes how to implement a selectable GridView control in ASP.NET. | Go |
| Windows Communication Foundation FAQ quick starter Part 1 ... Windows Communication Foundation FAQ quick starter Part 1 | Go |
| DotNetSlackers.com Links |
| Microsoft Releases ASP.NET MVC 1 Beta ... Last evening, Scott Guthrie announced that ASP.NET MVC beta has been pushed out. Theres a ton of really cool, new features that have been added. Be sure to check out Scotts book, err I mean post to read up on what new has been added. As Scott has mentioned in his post, click here to download it. You can also visit asp.net/mvc to explore tutorials , quick starts , and videos to learn more. 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 |
| Telerik.Charting in RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX Q3 2008 ... There is no Telerik.Charting.dll anymore. It is now merged into Telerik.Web.UI. You will no more have to worry about its version and its registration in Web.config or replacing it in GAC when new version is out. Here are the steps you need to take when upgrading your applications from RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX version prior to Q3 2008 to RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX Q3 2008 and later:
If you have Telerik.Charting installed in GAC (this used to be the default RadControls installer action) replace the following Register directive
< % Register Assembly ="Telerik.Charting, Version=2.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=d14f3dcc8e3e8763" Namespace ="Telerik.Charting" TagPrefix ="telerik" % >
with this one:
< %@ Register Assembly ="Telerik.Web.UI" Namespace ="Telerik.Charting" TagPrefix ="telerik" % >
You will also need to remove the Telerik.Charting registration from your web.config file. In the <system.web> <compilation> <assemblies> section you will find this line:
< add assembly ="Telerik.Charting, Version=2.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=D14F3DCC8E3E8763"/>
Simply remove it.
If you do not have Telerik.Charting installed in GAC (you use it from the local Bin folder) replace this Register directive
< %@ Register Assembly ="Telerik.Charting" Namespace ="Telerik.Charting" TagPrefix ="telerik" % >
with this one:
< %@ Register Assembly ="Telerik.Web.UI" Namespace ="Telerik.Charting" TagPrefix ="telerik" % >
That is, simply change the Assembly from Telerik.Charting to Telerik.Web.UI . You will also need to remove Telerik.Charting.dll from Bin folder.
In case you have a web application, you will need to remove the reference to Telerik.Charting.
This one-time effort will allow you to upgrade to future versions of Telerik.Web.UI by simply replacing the Telerik.Web.UI.dll without worrying about the fully qualified name of Telerik.Charting and whether the correct version is available in GAC or in the local Bin folder.
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 MVC Beta Released! ... Today we finally officially released the beta of ASP.NET MVC (go download it already!). True, the release has actually been available online since yesterday as it was announced in a Keynote at VSLive by Scott Hanselman, but that was intended to be a special treat for attendees in what ended up being the worst kept secret in .NET-dom. As usual, to get all the details, check out the latest epic installment on ScottGus blog. Scott Hanselman also has a great blog post with good coverage as well. As... 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 |
| Microsoft Unleashes Tool For Web Developers ... Web App Installer centralized management of ASP.NET and PHP-based open source Web apps.... 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 MVC Beta ... Nothing is better than hearing the news of Beta release of ASP.NET MVC immediately after arriving at home. Yes, while there is no official announcement about the release by MSFT and there isn’t any new build or download package available on ASP.NET workspace, ASP.NET MVC Beta download package is available to bring the noise to the community.
While there are several big announcements about Microsoft products on a regular basis (such as the recent Silverlight 2.0 release) but I’ve been... 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 Web Application and Platform Installers from Microsoft.com/web. ... Do you know about Microsoft.com/web ?
Wanna get up and running quickly ?
Wanna auto install free ASP.NET or PHP Applications on your Windows Stack.
Then this is some real coolness for YOU !
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Microsoft Web Platform Installer
The Web Platform Installer Beta (Web PI) provides a single, free package for installing
and configuring Microsoft's entire Web 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 |
| Microsoft Posts ASP.NET MVC Beta for Download ... Today Microsoft released the official beta for ASP.NET MVC, its model view controller architecture for Web applications based on the .NET 3.5 Framework.... 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 |
| DynamicData many to many FieldTemplate ... Edit control for 'n to n' or 'many to many' table relations for DynamicData... 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 |
| 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 |
| ASP.NET.com Links |
| Using the power of binding to animate changes ... In a recent post , I showed how the binding component can be instantiated independently of the {binding} markup extension. But there’s a whole lot more it can do. For instance, it has two very interesting callback properties, convert and convertBack that get called any time the binding sees a change respectively on the source or on the target of the binding. The original purpose of those functions is to handle the back and forth conversion of data. For example, if you’re binding an input tag’s value property to a column of type Date, you’ll want to set convert to a function that formats the date according to the current culture, and convertBack to a function that parses it back from string form to date form. But this couple of functions can also be used as change event handlers of sorts and even if we have no conversion to do, we can still use them to trigger some side effects, such as an animation. The functions get the value to convert and the binding as the parameters, and return the converted value. Here is a function that triggers an animation on the target of the binding and then returns the unchanged value that got passed in: function flashTarget(value, binding) {
var target = binding.get_target();
if (target.nodeType == 3) {
target = target.parentNode;
}
$(target)
.jFade({
property: 'background' ,
start: 'FFFF00' ,
end: 'FFFFFF' ,
steps: 25,
duration: 30
});
return value;
}
The function first gets the target element from the binding component. Then it looks at the type of the target element because in the case of a text node you really want to animate its parent, not the text node itself. Then, we’re using jQuery and the jFade plug-in to animate the element. And finally, of course, we return value unchanged.
Adding the binding animation is as simple as specifying a convert or convertBack function on each binding, for example:
< span > {binding answer, convert=flashTarget}</ span >
Here’s the complete code for the sample page:
<% @ 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 = { question: "Life, the universe and everything" , answer: 42 };
function flashTarget(value, binding) {
var target = binding.get_target();
if (target.nodeType == 3) {
target = target.parentNode;
}
$(target)
.jFade({
property: 'background' ,
start: 'FFFF00' ,
end: 'FFFFFF' ,
steps: 25,
duration: 30
});
return value;
}
</ 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" />
< asp : ScriptReference Path ="~/Script/jquery-1.2.6.js" />
< asp : ScriptReference Path ="~/Script/jquery.jfade.1.0.js" />
</ Scripts >
</ asp : ScriptManager >
< div sys : attach ="dataview" dataview : data ="{{ data }}">
< span id ="questionDisplay"> {binding question, convert=flashTarget}</ span >< br />
< input type ="text" id ="question"
value ="{binding question, convertBack=flashTarget}"/>< br />
< span id ="answerDisplay"> {binding answer, convert=flashTarget}</ span >< br />
< input type ="text" id ="answer"
value ="{binding answer, convertBack=flashTarget}"/>
</ div >
</ form >
</ body >
</ html >
The page contains two input boxes and two labels that reflect the same values that are in the input boxes. Any time the text in one of the boxes is | Go |
| Use true Ajax from scratch ... Make Script based web service which could be called by JavaScript I remember the days when I need to call web service from JavaScript using some HTML component called webservice.htc. It was a pain to consume web service using that component as compare to current solution provided by Asp.net Ajax team of Microsoft. I must say, Hats off to Microsoft for making life easier of the developers of their technologies. Following are few factors for using “calling web service from JavaScript”. When you need...(read more ) | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Beta 1 ... Idag släpptes ASP.NET MVC Beta 1. Det finns inte så mycket mer att säga än ScottGu(ru), så kika här för mer info: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/10/16/asp-net-mvc-beta-released.aspx | Go |
| Web Services Federation Patterns: The Attribute Service ... A few days ago I participated in an interesting design session about an web Services identity federation solution. A lot of the debate was centered on the use of attribute and pseudonyms services for loosely coupled the security policies or client and services. As my article about Web Services Federated Identity Patterns was published recently on MSDN, I thought I could extract the sections on which I explain those patterns and blog about it so that you don't have to read the entire paper ;) The...(read more ) | Go |
| Microsoft Releases ASP.NET MVC 1 Beta ... Last evening, Scott Guthrie announced that ASP.NET MVC beta has been pushed out. There’s a ton of really cool, new features that have been added. Be sure to check out Scott’s book, err I mean post to read up on what new has been added. As Scott has mentioned in his post, click here to download it. You can also visit asp.net/mvc to explore tutorials , quick starts , and videos to learn more. | Go |
| A Guide to Learning ASP.NET MVC Beta 1 ... Now that ASP.NET MVC Beta 1 is out, how do you learn how to use it? How do you learn how to build ASP.NET MVC applications? Here are my recommendations. The main website for all information related to ASP.NET MVC is located at: http://www.ASP.net/mvc This website contains a large number of videos, tutorials, and links to blogs and documentation. Here is how I would suggest navigating all of this material. First, I would recommend watching the video Creating a Tasklist Application with ASP.NET MVC located at: http://www.asp.net/learn/mvc-videos/video-395.aspx In this 38 minute video, I walk through creating a very basic MVC application from start to finish. The sample application is nothing fancy. The goal of the video is to give you an overall sense of the different parts of an ASP.NET MVC application. If you want to learn how to build a more complex application then I would recommend that you watch the series of Pair Programming videos that I created with Paul Litwin. In these videos, we build a Workout Log application. This is a simple database driven application that includes form validation. You can view this series of videos here: http://www.asp.net/learn/mvc-videos/#MVCPairProgramming If you are interested in watching a series of videos that really dive into the advanced features of building an ASP.NET MVC application, then I would suggest that you watch Rob Conery’s series of videos on building an e-commerce application: http://www.asp.net/learn/mvc-videos/#MVCStorefrontStarterKit Next, to get a better understanding of each of the different features of ASP.NET MVC, I would recommend that you take a look at the preview of the ASP.NET MVC Quickstarts. The Quickstarts provide you with basic documentation on each of the different features of the ASP.NET MVC framework: http://quickstarts.asp.net/previews/mvc/ Next, take advantage of the ASP.NET MVC tutorials and videos located at: http://www.ASP.net/mvc The tutorials and videos are cross-linked. You can choose to either watch the video or read the corresponding tutorial. The written tutorials are available in both VB.NET and C#. Here’s a list of the current tutorials available at the www.ASP.net/mvc website: Creating a Tasklist Application with ASP.NET MVC Stephen Walther builds an entire ASP.NET MVC application from start to finish. This tutorial is a great introduction for people who are new to the ASP.NET MVC Framework and who want to get a sense of the process of building an ASP.NET MVC application. Understanding Models, Views, and Controllers Confused about Models, Views, and Controllers? In this tutorial, Stephen Walther introduces you to the different parts of an ASP.NET MVC application. Understanding Controllers, Controller Actions, and Action Results In this tutorial, Stephen Walther introduces you to ASP.NET MVC controllers. You learn how to create new controllers and return different types of action results. Understanding Views, View Data, and HTML Helpers What is an ASP.NET MVC View and how does it differ from a HTML page? In this tutorial, Stephen Walther introduces you to Views and demonstrates how you can take advantage of View Data and HTML Helpers within a View. An Introduction to URL Routing In this tutorial, Stephen Walther demonstrates how browser requests get mapped to controller actions through URL Routing. You also learn how to create a custom route that displays different blog entries depending on the date passed in a URL. Preventing JavaScript Injection Attacks Prevent JavaScript Injection Attacks and Cross-Site Scripting Attacks from happening to you. In this tutorial, Stephen Walther explains how you can easily defeat these types of attacks by HTML encoding your content. Creating Unit Tests for ASP.NET MVC Applications Learn how to create unit tests for controller actions. In this tutorial, Stephen Walther demonstrates how to test whether a controller action returns a particular view, returns a particular set of data, or returns a diffe | Go |
| HDC Omaha 2008 - Code and Slides ... This is the application I demonstrated during my WPF Line of Business presentation, as well as my slide deck.
Demonstrated:
WPF Commanding
Provider based Data Source Handling
Validation
Collections and Binding (ObservableCollection<T>)
LINQ to XML | Go |
| Creating The DataSet - Creating a Custom Membership Provider and Membership User utilizing a Data Set Table Adapter - Step 3 ... In this series, we are now ready to add a new Data Set. In the Solution Explorer, right click the DataSets folder you setup in the App_Folder and select the "DataSet" template item. Give your new dataset a name. In my example, I name it "SSNetDataSet.xsd." Now select "Add."
A new, empty DataSet will open. Then a dialog box will open asking you to "Choose your data connection." It will default to the connection as setup in your web.config file as shown below. Select the web.config data connection and then select the "Next" button.
Read more here... | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Framework Status: BETA ... Although I haven`t noticed any announced from the big names yet (see update 2 below), ASP.NET MVC BETA release is already online and available for download . ASP.NET official MVC page and CodePlex site are not yet updated. Will keep you updated when the announcements come. Udpate 1: You can find screenshots for the new release with some info in this blog post . Update 2: Announcements have arrived :) [MUST READ] Scott Guthrie has posted his announcement , with so many interesting details and how-to guides as you would expect him to. From the ASP.NET MVC Framework team: Phil Haack has written his own announcement , with many references to very useful ASP.NET resources . Scott Hanselman wrote an announcement with references to the new features in the BETA release as described in Scott Guthrie’s post. Technorati Tags: asp.net ,asp.net mvc ,aspnetmvc ,asp.net mvc framework ,mvc ,microsoft news | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Beta Released ... Today we released a beta of the new ASP.NET MVC framework. Click here to download it. You can also visit www.asp.net/mvc to explore tutorials , quickstarts , and videos to learn more. The ASP.NET MVC Beta works with both .NET 3.5 and .NET 3.5 SP1, and supports both VS 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express SP1 (which is free - and now supports class libraries and web application project types). Today's ASP.NET MVC Beta release comes with an explicit "go-live" license that allows you to deploy it in production environments. The previous preview releases also allowed go-live deployments, but did so by not denying permission to deploy as opposed to explicitly granting it (which was a common source of confusion). Today's release is clearer about this in the license. The beta release is getting close to V1 feature complete, although there are still a few more features that will be added before the final "V1" release (including several VS tooling enhancements). The team decided to call this release a "beta", though, because the quality and testing of it is higher than the previous previews (a lot of bug fixes and performance tuning work went into it), and they feel that the core features that are in it are now "baked enough" that there won't be major changes from this release to the final product. This post contains a quick summary of some of the new features and changes in this build compared to the previous "Preview 5" release: New "Add View" Menu in Visual Studio New \Scripts directory and jQuery Support Built-in Model Binder Support for Complex Types Refactored Model Binder Infrastructure Strongly Typed UpdateModel and TryUpdateModel WhiteList Filtering Improved Unit Testing of UpdateModel and TryUpdateModel Scenarios Strongly Typed [AcceptVerbs] attribute Better Validation Error Messages HTML Helper Cleanup and Refactoring Silverlight / ASP.NET MVC Project Integration ASP.NET MVC Futures Assembly \Bin and GAC Assembly Deployment I am also planning to publish a few end to end tutorials in the weeks ahead that explain ASP.NET MVC concepts in more depth for folks who have not looked at it before, and who want a "from the beginning" set of tutorials on how to get started. New "Add View" Menu in Visual Studio With previous ASP.NET MVC preview releases you had to manually add views through the Project->Add New Item dialog in VS, and creating and wiring up everything required several manual steps (making sure the directory/file structure is right, going into the code-behind file to specify the strongly typed ViewData model type, etc). Today's beta makes the steps much easier. You can now just move your source editor cursor to be within a Controller action method in the source editor, and then right-click and select a new "Add View" context menu item (alternatively you can type the Ctrl-M Ctrl-V keyboard shortcut to invoke this without having to take your hands off the keyboard): This will bring up a new "Add View" dialog that allows you to specify the name of the view you want to create, its master page, and optionally its strongly typed ViewData "Model" type: Visual Studio will automatically pre-populate the view name based on the action method your cursor is within (you can then override this if you want). For example, if our cursor had been within an "Edit" action method when we selected "add view" it would have pre-populated the view name textbox with "Edit" instead of "Browse". The strongly typed ViewData "model" for a view can be selected from an editable ComboBox that lists all classes in (or referenced) from the MVC project: You can either select a type from the list, or manually type one in the ComboBox. You can also optionally pick an initial type from the list and then tweak it. For example, we could select the "Product" class from the list and then use the ComboBox editing support to wrap it as an IEnumerable<Product> - meaning a sequence of pr | Go |
