Ever wanted to have a simple jQuery menu bound with ASP.NET web site map file?

Ever wanted to have cool css design stuffs implemented on your ASP.NET data bound controls?

Ever wanted to let Visual Studio generate logical layers for you, which can be easily tested, customized and bound with ASP.NET data controls?

If your answers with respect to above questions are ‘yes’, then you will probably happy to try out latest release (v5.0) of Employee Starter Kit, which is intended to address different types of real world challenges faced by web application developers when performing common CRUD operations. Using a single database table ‘Employee’, the current release illustrates how to utilize Microsoft ASP.NET 4.0 Web Form Data Controls, Entity Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 effectively in that context.

Employee Info Starter Kit is an open source ASP.NET project template that is highly influenced by the concept ‘Pareto Principle’ or 80-20 rule, where it is targeted to enable a web developer to gain 80% productivity with 20% of effort with respect to learning curve and production.

This project template is titled as “Employee Info Starter Kit”, which was initially hosted on Microsoft Code Gallery and been downloaded 1, 50,000+ of copies afterword.  The latest version of this starter kit is hosted in Codeplex.

Release Highlights

User End Functional Specification

The user end functionalities of this starter kit are pretty simple and straight forward that are focused in to perform CRUD operation on employee records as described below.

• Creating a new employee record
• Read existing employee records
• Update an existing employee record
• Delete existing employee records

Architectural Overview

• Simple 3 layer architecture (presentation, business logic and data access layer)
• ASP.NET web form based user interface
• Built-in code generators for logical layers, implemented in Visual Studio default template engine (T4)
• Built-in Entity Framework entities as business entities (aka: data containers)
• Data Mapper design pattern based Data Access Layer, implemented in C# and Entity Framework
• Domain Model design pattern based Business Logic Layer, implemented in C#
• Object Model for Cross Cutting Concerns (such as validation, logging, exception management)

Minimum System Requirements

• Visual Studio 2010 (Web Developer Express Edition) or higher
• Sql Server 2005 (Express Edition) or higher

Technology Utilized

Programming Languages/Scripts

• Browser side: JavaScript
• Web server side: C#
• Code Generation Template: T-4 Template

Frameworks

• .NET Framework 4.0
• JavaScript Framework: jQuery 1.5.1
• CSS Framework: 960 grid system

.NET Framework Components

• .NET Entity Framework
• .NET Optional/Named Parameters (new in .net 4.0)
• .NET Tuple (new in .net 4.0)
• .NET Extension Method
• .NET Lambda Expressions
• .NET Anonymous Type
• .NET Query Expressions
• .NET Automatically Implemented Properties
• .NET LINQ
• .NET Partial Classes and Methods
• .NET Generic Type
• .NET Nullable Type
• ASP.NET Meta Description and Keyword Support (new in .net 4.0)
• ASP.NET Routing (new in .net 4.0)
• ASP.NET Grid View (CSS support for sorting - (new in .net 4.0))
• ASP.NET Repeater
• ASP.NET Form View
• ASP.NET Login View
• ASP.NET Site Map Path
• ASP.NET Skin
• ASP.NET Theme
• ASP.NET Master Page
• ASP.NET Object Data Source
• ASP.NET Role Based Security

Getting Started Guide

To see Employee Info Starter Kit in action is pretty easy!

• Download the latest version.
• Extract the file. From the extracted folder click the C# project file (Eisk.Web.csproj) to open it in Visual Studio 2010
• Hit Ctrl+F5!

The current release (v5.0) of Employee Info Starter Kit is properly packaged, fully documented and well tested. If you want to learn more about it in details, just check the following links:

• Release Home Page
• Installation Walkthrough
• Hand on Coding Walkthrough
• Technical Reference

Enjoy!