| DotNetKicks.com Links |
| Enabling Trace in non-pages in ASP.Net ... Quick tip how to enable trace for non-aspx pages (handlers etc.) in your ASP.Net application. | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Storefront Part 23: WebForms and Dynamic Data ... A few months back I got to talking to J Sawyer who is a Developer Evangelist in the Texas area about the work I've been doing with the MVC Storefront. Before I worked at Microsoft, J was my "main man" with the Commerce Starter Kit - the very first Open Source project I ever worked on.
During the course of the conversation J asked me if I had any plans to do any "WebForm-y" stuff; and I said "no" since this was supposed to be an ASP.NET MVC project. But then I started thinking...
ASP.NET 3.0 doesn't have any Starter Kits out there (that I know of) and it's time we had one :). If I've done my job right - J should be able to take the back-end goodness (Services, Data Access, Unit Tests, etc) and put them behind an ASP.NET WebForms site. And he did!
And thus CSK 3.0 is born. | Go |
| GridView control with Custom Sorting and Paging with Image Indicator ... This article explains the concept custom sorting and paging of a GridView control with TemplateField columns and shows the sorting order of every columns with an Image Indicator in its Header row. | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Tip: Dependency Injection with Unity Application Block ... In this post, I demonstrate how you can use dependency injection pattern using Microsoft's Unity Application Block (Unity). If you want to develop an ASP.NET MVC application fully with Microsoft stack, you can use Unity Application Block to perform dependency injection. | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC Tip: Dependency Injection with Unity Application Block ... In this post, I demonstrate how you can use dependency injection pattern using Microsoft's Unity Application Block (Unity). If you want to develop an ASP.NET MVC application fully with Microsoft stack, you can use Unity Application Block to perform dependency injection. | Go |
| MVP Tips from trenches Working with HttpContext (Part 2) ... This is part 2 of blog post series presenting solutions to some common problems developers are facing implementing the MVP pattern in real world applications. | Go |
| URLRewriting for the masses ... Using URLRewriter to control inbound connections to your site, and to proxy external website content for client side dynamic content. | Go |
| Amazon launches Windows.. BUT ... Amazon is offering a great service with EC2. Now that we can run Windows on it we have a solid and scalable host for startups. However, it's not really what I expected.. | Go |
| Extending NetTiers - Adding a SeperatorTemplate ... A brief tutorial on how to add a SeperatorTemplate to the item repeaters in .Nettiers and how to implement it in the codesmith templates. | Go |
| A Simple Animal CAPTCHA ... A basic animal image CAPTCHA designed to keep spammers away without making it too difficult on your users. | Go |
| Blog Service Trackback Release 0.7 ... The seventh release of BlogSvc includes support for Trackbacks. Also, this release contains the following new or improved features: Updated to latest MVC Beta, A new theme: Hibiscus, Auto-ping links upon create/update entry, Trackback client and server support, Pingback client and server support, and more. | Go |
| Using RequiredFieldValidator control with DropDownList control ... We use RequiredFieldValidator control to make a field mandatory in ASP.Net. This little tip will help us to use a DropDownList control with RequiredFieldValidator control. | Go |
| Zip Compressing ASP.NET Session and Cache State ... Scott Hanselman discusses a recent podcast with the team from StackOverflow where it was mentioned that they compress the Cache or Session data in ASP.NET, enabling them to store about 5-10x more data. | Go |
| What's hot in ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 ... Want to find out what's really hot in ASP.NET 3.5 SP1? This blog post contains a short descriptive ennumeration of important new features in ASP.NET 3.5 SP1, like for instance: Dynamic Data, URL Routing, but most importantly the new ADO.NET Entity Framework! | Go |
| Delicious tagged ASP.NET Links |
| 7 of my favorite jQuery plugins for use with ASP.NET | Encosia | Go |
| A Guide to Learning ASP.NET MVC Beta 1 - Stephen Walther on ASP.NET MVC | Go |
| Brad Abrams : AjaxWorld Talk: Building a Great Ajax application from Scratch | Go |
| Essential Visual Studio Tips & Tricks that Every Developer Should Know - Stephen Walther on ASP.NET MVC | Go |
| Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - The Weekly Source Code 35 - Zip Compressing ASP.NET Session and Cache State | Go |
| ASP.NET Patterns every developer should know - developerFusion - the ... | Go |
| CodeProject: Architecting .NET Web Applications for Scale & Performance ... | Go |
| ASP.NET MVC : The Official Microsoft ASP.NET Site | Go |
| Maarten Balliauw {blog} - CarTrackr - Sample ASP.NET MVC application | Go |
| Our "Opinions" on the ASP.NET MVC (Introducing the Thunderdome Principle) | Go |
| The Official Microsoft ASP.NET Site | Go |
| Partial Requests in ASP.NET MVC " Steve Sanderson's blog | Go |
| Scott Gu Blog Links |
| October 22nd Links: ASP.NET, Visual Studio, WPF and Silverlight ... 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 Building a Great ASP.NET AJAX Application from Scratch : Brad Abrams has a nice end to end application tutorial that shows off building an ASP.NET AJAX application from scratch. It covers ASP.NET, LINQ, Server and Client-side AJAX, the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit, jQuery and more. A great end to end read. A Guide to Learning the ASP.NET MVC Beta : Stephen Walther has a great set of links with some good videos and tutorials you can follow to learn more about the recent ASP.NET MVC beta release. ASP.NET MVC and the new IIS7 URL Rewriting Module : Scott Hanselman has a great post that shows off using the new IIS7 Rewriitng Module (which is free and very, very cool) to deliver great SEO (search engine optimization) for sites built with ASP.NET and specifically ASP.NET MVC. 7 of my Favorite jQuery plugins for use with ASP.NET : Dave Ward has a nice blog post that talks about 7 of his favorite jQuery plugins and how he uses them with ASP.NET. Using jQuery to display a modal ASP.NET UpdatePanel confirmation : Dave Ward has another nice blog post that talks about how to use jQuery with the ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanel control. Using jQuery Load with the ASP.NET MVC Framework : Jason has a nice simple sample that demonstrates how to use jQuery to load an ASP.NET MVC view remotely and populate a page on the client. Visual Studio Essential Visual Studio Tips & Tricks that Every Developer Should Know : Stephen Walther has a fantastic article with 11 cool tips and tricks that you should make sure you know and use with Visual Studio. VS 2008 Snippet Designer : A cool utility that enables you to quickly create re-usable Visual Studio snippets. Very handy for automating common tasks. Silverlight and WPF XAML Power Toys Released for WPF and Silverlight : Karl Shifflett has released an awesome update to his XAML Power Toys download. This is a must-have download if you are doing WPF or Silverlight development, and provides a bunch of great wizards and tools that help automating application development. Very, very cool stuff. WPF Pixel Shader Effects Library on CodePlex : .NET 3.5 SP1 added Pixel Shader support to WPF - which enables you to add cool DirectX optimized visual effects to any WPF control or surface. This article from Jamie points to a nice new CodePlex project that is available that delivers a bunch of pre-built effects you can use. Silverlight 2 UI Templates : Tim Heuer writes about some cool new UI templates available for the recently released Silverlight 2. Viewing Design Time Data in VS 2008 WPF and Silverlight Designers : Karl Shifflett has another nice article that talks about some techniques you can use to see sample data in the VS 2008 WPF and Silverlight designers when building applications. Hope this helps, Scott | 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 |
| 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 |
| ASP.net.com Community Links |
| Using JavaScript and UpdatePanels in ASP.NET 3.5 ... We all know that AJAX utilizes JavaScript, but what if we want to use our own JavaScript calls in conjunction with AJAX? This tutorial will show you how we can call JavaScript ourselves whilst using AJAX. We will be making use of the Alert method in JavaScript when the user adds a new entry to an XML file. | Go |
| Developing a Shopping Cart in ASP.NET ... Explains how to develop simple shopping cart web application by using recommended three tier architecture. | Go |
| Animated Popup Master/Detail using GridView, DetailsView and JQuery with jqModal & UpdatePanel ... Demonstrate how to build master/details data presentation using GridView, DetailsView as animated pop-up using jQuery jqModal and ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanel.
Also who how to color animate updated row on GridView after confirming update on DetailsView using jQuery. Live Demo Provided. | Go |
| Unraveling the Mysterious of the ValidationGroup Control ... ASP.NET validation works in mysterious ways especially when you want to validate a group of controls on the page. In this article we are going to dig deep into the ValidationGroup property and see how to validate a group of controls. | Go |
| New AJAX Support For Data-Driven Web Apps ... This article shows three iterations of a page written with classic postback, then with UpdatePanel, and then with pure AJAX to illustrate how techniques employed on the server can sometimes perform better on the client. | Go |
| Creating a Custom Validation Control in ASP.NET ... The BaseValidator class defines the basic implementation needed for all Validation controls. There are 6 very useful Validation Controls included in the ASP.NET framework, however they come with a few shortcomings. In this article, we will explore how to create a custom validation control in ASP.NET and provide both Server and Client Side Validation for the same. | Go |
| Building Sharepoint List Style GridView with Ajax Control Toolkit ... In this article, we will implement a sharepoint list style GridView with the help of DropDownExtender control in Ajax Control Toolkit. | Go |
| Data Access Component - Deleting Data in C# and AJAX ... This tutorial will show you how to use C# and AJAX to create a Data Access Component that will display data from a SQL database and also allow you to delete records from the database. | Go |
| Using JavaScript and UpdatePanels in VB.NET ... We all know that AJAX utilizes JavaScript, but what if we want to use our own JavaScript calls in conjunction with AJAX? This tutorial will show you how we can call JavaScript ourselves whilst using AJAX. We will be making use of the Alert method in JavaScript when the user clicks a button. | Go |
| 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 |
| CodeProject.com ASP Links |
| Design pattern – Inversion of control and Dependency injection ... Design pattern – Inversion of control and Dependency injection | Go |
| Generation of web feeds and podcasts ... This article describes the generation of web feeds (RSS, Atom, podcasts) using wrapper classes. | Go |
| Web-Application Framework - Catharsis - Part I - New Solution ... Catharsis web-app framework | Go |
| Datagrid Operations ... this is to illustrate grid update operation | Go |
| ReSharper 4: High Gear .NET Development ... ReSharper is undoubtedly the most intelligent add-in to Microsoft Visual Studio. It comes equipped with a rich set of features that greatly increase the productivity of C# and Visual Basic.NET developers. With ReSharper, you get in-depth code analysis, intelligent coding assistance, on-the-fly error | Go |
| Pop-up Window Calling Parent Window's Server-side Code ... Pop-up window calling parent window's server-side code in ASP.NET. | Go |
| Generic sorting of customer objects for ObjectDataSource (ASP.NET) ... Generic sorting of customer objects for ObjectDataSource in ASP.NET. | Go |
| Client side validation using Validation Application blocks ... Client side validation using Validation Application blocks | Go |
| Architecting .NET Web Applications for Scale & Performance (A Practical Guide) ... A practical guide for NET architects, managers and developers for Scaling, Architecting, Managing and Performance optimising .NET Web applications. | Go |
| Online Code Editor ... With Online Code Editor, you can edit your code online. | Go |
| A Simple Smart Solution for Silverlight Versioning Conflicts ... A solution for Silverlight versioning conflicts | Go |
| MSAgent Style Critters for your Web Pages ... MSAgent Style Critters for your Web Pages | Go |
| Project Management FAQ ... Project Management FAQ | Go |
| Synchronous Javascript call using Scriptable XML webservice (SJAX) ... Call ASP.net AJAX Webservice Synchronously from client to use in custom validator | Go |
| DotNetSlackers.com Links |
| ASP.NET Loading Panel Introduction: New DevExpress Control ... Check out this 6 minute video on the ASPxLoadingPanel Introduction: There is a new ASP.NET UI control coming out in the next major release of DXperience and ASPxGridView & Editors Library. The ASPxLoadingPanel can be used during callbacks to display a custom Loading text and image. Callbacks can be quick, or take a long time to complete, depending on your scenario. Regardless of the length of time, its good practice to notify the end users of partial page updates. And whether you show the notification... 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 |
| Whats New in v8.3: SharePoint, Gauges, Section 508/WAI, & New ASP.NET Controls ... [Post Updated: Sunday, October 26th, 2008] The next major release of DXperience and the ASPxGridView & Editors Library includes new controls, features and support for SharePoint! Here's the full list of juicy newness for ASP.NET: SharePoint Support New controls, WebParts, and sample solutions to help SharePoint developers integrate the ASPxGridView and ASPxHtmlEditor into SharePoint projects. Section 508 / WAI support The ASPxperience Controls include support for Section 508... 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 |
| Escaping ASP.NET Tags in Code Smith Templates ... I love to generate code, I have code templates for Code Smith that are the equivalent of a mold for a machine shop. I use them to create thousands upon thousands of lines of code each week, so I guard them with my life and update them almost as often...(read 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 |
| FIX: The return type or the out argument of an ASMX service method that includes a property that has an internal setter may not be serialized on a computer that has the .NET Framework installed ... 952883 ... FIX: The return type or the out argument of an ASMX service method that includes a property that has an internal setter may not be serialized on a computer that has the .NET Framework installedThis RSS feed provided by kbAlerz.com.Visit kbAlertz.com to
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from the Microsoft Knowledge Base.... 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 |
| Generic sorting of customer objects for ObjectDataSource (ASP.NET) ... Generic sorting of customer objects for ObjectDataSource (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 |
| Model Binding To A List ... Using the DefaultModelBinder in ASP.NET MVC Beta, you can bind submitted form values to arguments of an action method. But what if that argument is a list? Can you bind a posted form to an IList<T>? Sure thing! Its really easy if youre posting a bunch of simple types. For example, suppose you have the following action method. public ActionResult UpdateInts(IList<int> ints) {
return View(ints);
}
You can bind to that by simply submitting a bunch of form fields which each... 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 |
| jQuery Animation ASP.NET Control ... If you like jQuery and are interested in adding rich interaction to your asp.net apps then you should check out RIAnimation. It is a completely free animation framework for ASP.NET that has everything from robust JavaScript builder utilities to a simple extender control for animating any control without writing a single line of code. It really saves a ton of time and gives you the power of managing your User Experience on the server side. Check it out: RIAnimation - jQuery ASP.NET Animatio... 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 Regular Expression TextBox ... I've already blogged about the new RadInputManager control in the Beta of Q3 2008 for RadControls ASP.NET AJAX .
One of the other very useful features that you can now take advantage of in the RadInputManager is its RegExpTextBox setting. Regular expressions are a good way to validate text fields such as names, addresses, phone numbers, and other user information. You can use it to constrain input, apply formatting rules, and check lengths.
If you capture input by using TextBox controls, you can use the RegExpTextBoxSetting settings to validate that input - for example to restrict the range of valid characters, to strip unwanted characters, and to perform length and format checks. You can constrain the input format by defining patterns that the input must match.
To validate a TextBox control's input using a RegExpTextBoxSetting
1. Add a RadInputManager control to your page.
If you click the "Configure Input Manager " link it will bring up the following dialog:
2 . Select what type of setting you will be adding
3. Select "Telerik.Web.UI.RegExpTextBoxSetting " and indicate which TextBox controls will be extended.
4. Select the ValidationExpression property and choose an appropriate regular expression. Set the ErrorMessage property to define the message to display if the validation fails.
5. Press "OK" and start the application.
DemoRadInputManager4ASPNETAJAX
Summary
Input validation can become a security issue if an attacker discovers that you have made unfounded assumptions. The attacker can then supply carefully crafted input that compromises your application by attempting SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and other injection attacks. To avoid such vulnerability, you should validate text fields (such as names, addresses, tax identification numbers, and so on) and use a RadInputManager to do that. The RadInputManager architecture makes it really easy to encapsulate UI functionality and behavior.
For more information, see the regular expression tutorial at http://www.regular-expressions.info/tutorial.html .
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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 |
| Graffiti History Widget ... Graffiti CMS doesn't ship with an archive/history widget to display the number of posts published by month, as is common in many other blog engines. I've been looking for such a widget for several months and Keyvan pointed me to one a few days ago that I got up and running in just a few moments today. You'll find it linked from this forum thread , which I'm quoting the relevant post below to make things easier for you: Okay, here is the binary . Here is a VS2008 Solution . And here are the view and layout files that I used. Again, I based this on Jon Sagara's original Archive Widget. Jon included several Plug-ins for cache invalidation. Honestly I did not look into these at all, everything seems to be functioning the way I wanted for now. As this was my first Widget, and I based it on "borrowed" code, converted to VB, I'm sure there are some things that may not be best practice. Feel free to critique, you won't hurt my feelings. Basic setup is to drop the dll in your bin folder, go into Widget section of the control panel and add it to a sidebar, choose the number of months you want displayed and your "Older Items" link text. Then create two uncategorized posts, one called "archive", one called "olderitems". Tweak the layout and view files I included above and you should be in business. Thanks- Greg Got it up and running in really about 5 minutes - very nice, and a great example of how easy it is to extend Graffiti. Thanks Greg! 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 |
| A quick, but not so dirty Image Editor using the public RadEditor ImageEditing API ... The ImageEditor dialog in RadEditor has been around for about half a year, providing much wanted common image editing capabilities to the editor's end users.
This dialog in fact is the front-end of a basic image editing engine that has been built into the Telerik.Web.UI.dll. Some time ago our colleague Todd Anglin suggested that we make the API public so it can be used independent of the editor. Sounded like a good idea - and the coming Q3 2008 will allow you to take advantage of it :)
And since the functionality is already available in the already released RadControls Futures (which acts as a public beta for the Q3), we have assembled a small, but elegant looking example (thanks to the styling capabilities of RadFormDecorator ) that features a basic image editor, being used independently of RadEditor itself.
Here is a how the editor looks like:
The attached project will show you how to:
Create thumbnails
Use the following image editing options:
Opacity
Resize
Flip
Rotate
Crop
Preview the changes
Overwrite the original image
The sample project, featuring Telerik RadControls Futures Q3 2008 Trial can be downloaded 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 |
| Talking about ASP.NET MVC in Apulia ... Another weekend, another community event: last Friday/Saturday I was at the Italian MVP OpenDays in Milano and next Friday (October 24th) Ill be talking in front of more than 70 person (the event is sold out) at the ASP.NET 3.5 and beyond Web Development workshop organized by DotNetSide, the .NET usergroup of South Italy. Ill speak for 3 hours (and probably more) about ASP.NET MVC and the new features that the .NET 3.5 SP1 brings to the table. There will be 2 sessions: Life after SP1: Ill talk... 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 |
| Synchronous Javascript call using Scriptable XML webservice (SJAX) ... Call ASP.net AJAX Webservice Synchronously from client to use in custom validator... 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 |
| Barcodes in asp.net application ... How to implement an easy and cheap barcodes into 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 |
| Examining ASP.NET 2.0`s Membership, Roles, and Profile - Part 13 ... ASP.NET's forms-based authentication system in tandem with the Membership API and Login Web controls make it a cinch to create a user store, create
user accounts, and allow visitors to log into the site. What's more, with little effort it's possible to define roles, associate user accounts with
roles, and determine what functionality is available based on the currently logged in user's role (see Part
2 ). Many ASP.NET sites that use Membership have an Admin role, and users in that role are granted certain functionality not available to non-Admin users.
Consider an online store - Admin users might be able to manage inventory, whereas the only way normal members could interact with the inventory was
by adding items to their shopping cart.
I was recently working with a client who had an interesting request: he needed the ability for Admin users to be able to log into the site
as another user, and perform actions as if that other person had logged in herself. Returning to the online store example, imagine that some customers
periodically phone in their order, or mail or fax in an order form. An Admin, receiving this order, could then log into the site as that customer
and place the order on the customer's behalf.
This article shows how to allow an Admin user to log into a Membership-based website as another user, and includes a complete working demo available
for download at the end of the article. Read on to learn more!
Read 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 |
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| PDC 2008 Experience: Day -1 ... Time for the Day -1 recap. Today was pre conference day, I did not attend any pre conference sessions, primarily because it was my 12 year wedding anniversary. On to the recap. Started off the day at The Pantry , a famous restaurant that has been open for 80 some odd years. After that I talk a brisk walk to the Los Angeles convention center to register. Registration was simple, I think the whole process took about 10 minutes, that includes the first goodie bag. I do not know who designed the bags but it is quite hideous. It is going directly to my daughter when I get home. On the way back to the hotel, I meet Scott Cate, user group leader of the AZ Groups site and owner of MyKB.com . We chatted about a future event in the Phoenix metro area. Then it was off to Santa Barbara. The trip to Santa Barbara was about 90 some odd minutes along route 101 in California. Once we arrived in Santa Barbara we hung out at Stearns Wharf . Then we took a walk up State street which has a lot of cool foliage and shops. After the long walk we decided to hang out at the beach. I think I took a half hour nap. I almost forget Fred's cousin, Ralph was there. We then headed back to LA with a drive down Hollywood Blvd, then Sunset Blvd and then the Grove a cool outdoor mall. Then back to hotel to eat. Some PDC beach artwork. Stay tuned tomorrow for PDC day 1: Keynotes, Sessions and Expo Hall | Go |
| How to use Security Configuration Wizard in Windows Server 2008 to lockdown a server with IIS ... This article contains tips, tricks and steps to use Security Configuration wizard (SCW) included in Windows Server 2008. I was recently working on locking down Windows Server 2008 with IIS. By default, Windows Server 2008 is more locked down than any Read More......( read more ) Read More......(read more ) | Go |
| How to use Security Configuration Wizard in Windows Server 2008 to lockdown a server with IIS ... This article contains tips, tricks and steps to use Security Configuration wizard (SCW) included in Windows Server 2008. I was recently working on locking down Windows Server 2008 with IIS. By default, Windows Server 2008 is more locked down than any previous Microsoft server OS. (PS: So is IIS). I wasn't sure where to begin. I have used SCW in previous operating systems; I figured that would be a good place to start. I quickly discovered Microsoft has done an excellent job with SCW, it's easy to...(read more ) | Go |
| DotNetNuke OpenForce Connections ... If you are close, don't forget to go to the OpenForce US Connections event that will be co-located with the DevConnections conferences. Aside from enjoying a Las Vegas trip, you will have access to some interesting sessions related to module development, skinning and the administration side for DotNetNuke .
If you are not familiar with DotNeNuke, make sure you stop by one of the available booths where you will be able to ask questions and see why it is the number one open source web application platform for asp.net. | Go |
| Summary Data Access from A to Z ... Emitting live from a big ass room filled with data access geeks while doing a factory restore without Lenovo's crapware. Approximately two hours away from a cold beer and typical US food. DataSet Queryable, remotable, in-memory relation collection DBMS-Specific ADO.net data provider Direct access to native storage syntax, types EntityClient Canonical Ad Hoc queries with Flexible Mapping Linq to Sql Strongly typed Microsoft SQL Server schema LinqDatasouce for use in ASP.NET Object Services Strongly typed entity model with flexible mapping Ling to Entities strongly typed queries EntitySql complex queries, ad hoc queries, provider specific features Entity DataSource Simple asp.net integration ASP.NET Data Services Standard, robust, rest based service Easy to use highly extensible .NET client for simple programming *V2 of the Entity Framework will be released in the next cycle of Visual Studio.NET. 10 years ago we said stored procedures where the way to go because: Performance because dynamic sql was slow, that's not the case anymore. Security. Stored procedures and table valued functions are still the way to go. Level of indirection. Which is now offered through the EDM models. Control the queries the user was able to send to the database. The world has changed. Stuff that came up during the questions: When we talked about more flexible features in LINQ to SQL (flexible mapping and more providers). Microsoft want to have a clear story. LINQ to SQL will be likely continue to focus on offering a typed view on a store. The Entity Framework will continue to focus on a flexible mapping solution while staying provider independent. POCO is a major target for the next version of the EF. The team is working with the Visual Studio.NET for databases team to understand the lifecycle of the database and the model over the database and the answer for source control over the metadata. Use no-tracking option for read-only entities. | Go |
| V1 Entity Framework Core Mapping Limitations ... Must use a common EntityKey throughout type hierarchy (database design consideration) Relationships must be based on EntityKey Functions results must be mapped to EntityTypes Can't map multiple entities to different columns of a single row If used, modification functions must include all CUD operations on EntitySet and references Can't map multiple results from a stored procedure No support for composeable TVFs in V1 It is good, as an employee of a system integrator, to hear that we may expect pretty fast iterations of the EF. Although, this also worries me a bit. More on that later. | Go |
| Strategies for Customizing Entity Framework Data Classes ... A topic that hasn't been addressed much really in documentation or talks is the customization of the generated data classes. According to Mike Pizzo we basically have the following four options each varying in terms of difficulty to use and/or implement in your own application scenarios. Generated Partial Classes Add business logic, methods, non persisted properties to partial classes DTO Pattern Materialize your own classes from entities Codegen customization Add custom logic to property, type generation - Attributes, Interfaces, Members, BaseClass,... - Getters, Setters, BackingField, Return Type,... Be sure to check out the custom EDM code generator on CodePlex which exposes generation events in which you can wire your own custom logic. Or check out the EDMX Code Generator sample to get the idea. Custom classes Write your own classes that - Derive from EntityObject, or, - Implement interfaces: IEntityWithKey, IEntityWithChangeTracker, IEntityWithRelationships In the next version of the EF there will be a template based code generator to simplify implementing the above mentioned strategies. Wouldn't it be cool if the EF would ship with a set of templates based on the Domain Driven Design paradigm. | Go |
| Unacceptable PDC08 Thoughts ... Mike Pizzo and Jose Blakely summed it up quit nicely in their Microsoft .NET framework data access from a to z preconf talk. LINQ to SQL strongly typed SQL Server database. LINQ to Entities for flexible mapping to relational data. Sitting through most of this session (and I plan on staying a little longer) I must admit it really captures the a to z in regards to Microsoft's data access technologies. I haven't heard many new things and to be honest I'm mostly concentrating on the format they use to bring this story and to improve my own Data Access/Entity Framework talks. This also allowed me to do a factory restore of my Lenovo Thinkpad which decided to quit on me after I installed the most recent updates through their update manager. The wireless drivers where un-repairable fubarred by this. Thanks to Micorsoft's fast wireless network I was (am, still downloading) able to download most of the stuff I need to get some work done. It crossed my mind today how my life would be on an Apple. Unacceptable thoughts ;) | Go |
| Strukturera upp projekten i Visual Studio ... När man skapar ett nytt projekt i Visual Studio så kan man se att vissa filer hör ihop genom att de får ett + vid sidan som kan fällas ut. Ett exempel är default.aspx som kan ha default.aspx.cs och default.aspx.designer.cs. Filerna som läggs till där binds direkt när man lägger till en web form. Säg att vi vill lägga till en js-fil som bara kommer att användas av just den sidan. Varför skall vi då behöva lägga den bland alla andra, om den nu bara kommer att användas av just den sidan? Det vi kan göra är att först skapa upp en js-fil (vi kan kalla den för Default.aspx.js för att följa namnstandarden). Nästa steg är att gå in i csproj-filen och leta efter den ItemGroup som har Default.aspx. Det bör se ut i stil med det här: 1: < ItemGroup >
2: < Content Include ="Default.aspx" />
3: < Content Include ="Default.aspx.js" />
4: < Content Include ="Web.config" />
5: </ ItemGroup >
.csharpcode, .csharpcode pre
{
font-size: small;
color: black;
font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace;
background-color: #ffffff;
/*white-space: pre;*/
}
.csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; }
.csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; }
.csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; }
.csharpcode .str { color: #006080; }
.csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; }
.csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; }
.csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; }
.csharpcode .html { color: #800000; }
.csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; }
.csharpcode .alt
{
background-color: #f4f4f4;
width: 100%;
margin: 0em;
}
.csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }
Det vi ska göra här är att få Default.aspx.js innanför Default.aspx. Det kan vi göra genom att sätta DependentUpon i Default.aspx.js till Default.aspx.
1: < ItemGroup >
2: < Content Include ="Default.aspx" />
3: < Content Include ="Default.aspx.js" >
4: < DependentUpon > Default.aspx</ DependentUpon >
5: </ Content >
6: < Content Include ="Web.config" />
7: </ ItemGroup >
.csharpcode, .csharpcode pre
{
font-size: small;
color: black;
font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace;
background-color: #ffffff;
/*white-space: pre;*/
}
.csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; }
.csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; }
.csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; }
.csharpcode .str { color: #006080; }
.csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; }
.csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; }
.csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; }
.csharpcode .html { color: #800000; }
.csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; }
.csharpcode .alt
{
background-color: #f4f4f4;
width: 100%;
margin: 0em;
}
.csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }
Genom att sätta DependentUpon så flyttas den in ett steg så den ligger direkt under Default.aspx.
Genom att göra så här så kan vi få en bättre struktur bland alla filer och på ett enkelt sätt koppla ihop dem.
Det finns inget inbyggt stöd direkt i Visual Studio för att göra det här. Om någon känner till ett plugin så skriv gärna en kommentar. :-) | Go |
| PDC 2008 Experience Day -2 ... PDC 2008 Experience What is that you ask. Well I plan to document the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference, better known as PDC, experience that I had this year. Day -2? Yes, PDC technically starts on Monday, but I got here two days earlier to catch in some of the sites and sounds (and smells) of LA... Well let's get started. I arrived at LAX at around 10:30am, after picking up luggage and rental car, my wife and I started our typical "What do you want to do now? " conversation, well we decided to drive up Pacific Coast Highway towards Malibu. After, the lovely drive up PCH we headed to the Hilton Checkers to check in. Once we checked in we walk around the Downtown LA area looking for lunch. After walking around for a while, we decided to go the the food court in the Macy's plaza . We ended up eating at a Carl's Jr. The food was ok but the dining room had a lot to be desired. There were homeless people in it, it smelt of urine. On a positive note, it was the first fast food restaurant that served beer by the pitcher. After that it was back to the hotel room. The next part of our day we wanted to go to Santa Monica to watch the sunset. Nothing bets a west coast sunset. We went to the third street promenade in Santa Monica where we say some street performers names One Love, which were pretty entertaining with the exception of the racist comments every couple of sentences. At one point when they wanted to get the audience involved they would scream Clap your hand if you are ... ...white, ...black, ..Jewish. At one point they said if you were voting for McCain (there was a McCain rally desk next to them) and not a person clapped, they then said Clap your hands if you are voting for Obama and everyone clapped, it was interesting. We then stopped at the Cabo Grille for 2 for 1 drinks for about an hour. Then off to catch the sunset and the Santa Monica Pier. Oh, I almost forgot about Fred. He too was attending PDC but was unavailable for comment. Stay tuned for PDC Experience Day -1 (Santa Barbara) and Check in | Go |
