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  • Server Controls in ASP.NET MVC without ViewState

    - by imran_ku07
      Introduction :           ASP.NET Web Forms provides a development environment just like GUI or windows application and try to hide statelessness nature of HTTP protocol. For accomplishing this target, Web Forms uses ViewState (a hidden field) to remove the gap between HTTP statelessness and GUI applications. But the problem with this technique is that ViewState size which grows quickly and also go back and forth with every request, as a result it will degrade application performance. In this article i will try to use existing ASP.NET server controls without ViewState.   Description :           When you add a server control which needs viewstate, in the presentation view in ASP.NET MVC application without a form tag, for example,            <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>            It will shows the following exception,            Control 'TextBox1' of type 'TextBox' must be placed inside a form tag with runat=server             When you place this textbox inside a form tag with runat=server, this will add the following ViewState even when you disable ViewState by using EnableViewState="false"            <input type="hidden" value="/wEPDwUJMjgzMDgzOTgzZGQ6u9CwikhHEW39ObrHyLTPFSboPA==" id="__VIEWSTATE" name="__VIEWSTATE"/>             The solution to this problem is to use the RenderControl method of server control which is simply renders HTML without any ViewState hidden field.         <% TextBox txt = new TextBox();          txt.Text = "abc";          StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();          System.IO.StringWriter textwriter = new System.IO.StringWriter(sb);          HtmlTextWriter htmlwriter = new HtmlTextWriter(textwriter);          txt.RenderControl(htmlwriter);  %>        <%= sb.ToString() %>             This will render <input type="text" > without any View State. This technique become very useful when you are using rich server controls like GridView. For example, let's say you have List of Recalls in Model.Recalls, then you will show your tabular data as,     <%  GridView gv = new GridView();          gv.AutoGenerateColumns = true;          gv.DataSource = Model.Recalls;          gv.DataBind();         StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();         System.IO.StringWriter textwriter = new System.IO.StringWriter(sb);         HtmlTextWriter htmlwriter = new HtmlTextWriter(textwriter);         gv.RenderControl(htmlwriter);%>            <%= sb.ToString() %>             This code might looks odd in your presentation view. A more better approach is to create a HTML Helper method which contains the above code. Summary :        In some cases you might needs to use existing ASP.NET Web Forms server controls but also dislikes ViewState. In this article i try to solve this gap by using the RenderControl method of Control class. Hopefully you enjoyed and become ready to create HTML helpers for many of the existing server controls.

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  • ASP.NET MVC Postbacks and HtmlHelper Controls ignoring Model Changes

    - by Rick Strahl
    So here's a binding behavior in ASP.NET MVC that I didn't really get until today: HtmlHelpers controls (like .TextBoxFor() etc.) don't bind to model values on Postback, but rather get their value directly out of the POST buffer from ModelState. Effectively it looks like you can't change the display value of a control via model value updates on a Postback operation. To demonstrate here's an example. I have a small section in a document where I display an editable email address: This is what the form displays on a GET operation and as expected I get the email value displayed in both the textbox and plain value display below, which reflects the value in the mode. I added a plain text value to demonstrate the model value compared to what's rendered in the textbox. The relevant markup is the email address which needs to be manipulated via the model in the Controller code. Here's the Razor markup: <div class="fieldcontainer"> <label> Email: &nbsp; <small>(username and <a href="http://gravatar.com">Gravatar</a> image)</small> </label> <div> @Html.TextBoxFor( mod=> mod.User.Email, new {type="email",@class="inputfield"}) @Model.User.Email </div> </div>   So, I have this form and the user can change their email address. On postback the Post controller code then asks the business layer whether the change is allowed. If it's not I want to reset the email address back to the old value which exists in the database and was previously store. The obvious thing to do would be to modify the model. Here's the Controller logic block that deals with that:// did user change email? if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(oldEmail) && user.Email != oldEmail) { if (userBus.DoesEmailExist(user.Email)) { userBus.ValidationErrors.Add("New email address exists already. Please…"); user.Email = oldEmail; } else // allow email change but require verification by forcing a login user.IsVerified = false; }… model.user = user; return View(model); The logic is straight forward - if the new email address is not valid because it already exists I don't want to display the new email address the user entered, but rather the old one. To do this I change the value on the model which effectively does this:model.user.Email = oldEmail; return View(model); So when I press the Save button after entering in my new email address ([email protected]) here's what comes back in the rendered view: Notice that the textbox value and the raw displayed model value are different. The TextBox displays the POST value, the raw value displays the actual model value which are different. This means that MVC renders the textbox value from the POST data rather than from the view data when an Http POST is active. Now I don't know about you but this is not the behavior I expected - initially. This behavior effectively means that I cannot modify the contents of the textbox from the Controller code if using HtmlHelpers for binding. Updating the model for display purposes in a POST has in effect - no effect. (Apr. 25, 2012 - edited the post heavily based on comments and more experimentation) What should the behavior be? After getting quite a few comments on this post I quickly realized that the behavior I described above is actually the behavior you'd want in 99% of the binding scenarios. You do want to get the POST values back into your input controls at all times, so that the data displayed on a form for the user matches what they typed. So if an error occurs, the error doesn't mysteriously disappear getting replaced either with a default value or some value that you changed on the model on your own. Makes sense. Still it is a little non-obvious because the way you create the UI elements with MVC, it certainly looks like your are binding to the model value:@Html.TextBoxFor( mod=> mod.User.Email, new {type="email",@class="inputfield",required="required" }) and so unless one understands a little bit about how the model binder works this is easy to trip up. At least it was for me. Even though I'm telling the control which model value to bind to, that model value is only used initially on GET operations. After that ModelState/POST values provide the display value. Workarounds The default behavior should be fine for 99% of binding scenarios. But if you do need fix up values based on your model rather than the default POST values, there are a number of ways that you can work around this. Initially when I ran into this, I couldn't figure out how to set the value using code and so the simplest solution to me was simply to not use the MVC Html Helper for the specific control and explicitly bind the model via HTML markup and @Razor expression: <input type="text" name="User.Email" id="User_Email" value="@Model.User.Email" /> And this produces the right result. This is easy enough to create, but feels a little out of place when using the @Html helpers for everything else. As you can see by the difference in the name and id values, you also are forced to remember the naming conventions that MVC imposes in order for ModelBinding to work properly which is a pain to remember and set manually (name is the same as the property with . syntax, id replaces dots with underlines). Use the ModelState Some of my original confusion came because I didn't understand how the model binder works. The model binder basically maintains ModelState on a postback, which holds a value and binding errors for each of the Post back value submitted on the page that can be mapped to the model. In other words there's one ModelState entry for each bound property of the model. Each ModelState entry contains a value property that holds AttemptedValue and RawValue properties. The AttemptedValue is essentially the POST value retrieved from the form. The RawValue is the value that the model holds. When MVC binds controls like @Html.TextBoxFor() or @Html.TextBox(), it always binds values on a GET operation. On a POST operation however, it'll always used the AttemptedValue to display the control. MVC binds using the ModelState on a POST operation, not the model's value. So, if you want the behavior that I was expecting originally you can actually get it by clearing the ModelState in the controller code:ModelState.Clear(); This clears out all the captured ModelState values, and effectively binds to the model. Note this will produce very similar results - in fact if there are no binding errors you see exactly the same behavior as if binding from ModelState, because the model has been updated from the ModelState already and binding to the updated values most likely produces the same values you would get with POST back values. The big difference though is that any values that couldn't bind - like say putting a string into a numeric field - will now not display back the value the user typed, but the default field value or whatever you changed the model value to. This is the behavior I was actually expecting previously. But - clearing out all values might be a bit heavy handed. You might want to fix up one or two values in a model but rarely would you want the entire model to update from the model. So, you can also clear out individual values on an as needed basis:if (userBus.DoesEmailExist(user.Email)) { userBus.ValidationErrors.Add("New email address exists already. Please…"); user.Email = oldEmail; ModelState.Remove("User.Email"); } This allows you to remove a single value from the ModelState and effectively allows you to replace that value for display from the model. Why? While researching this I came across a post from Microsoft's Brad Wilson who describes the default binding behavior best in a forum post: The reason we use the posted value for editors rather than the model value is that the model may not be able to contain the value that the user typed. Imagine in your "int" editor the user had typed "dog". You want to display an error message which says "dog is not valid", and leave "dog" in the editor field. However, your model is an int: there's no way it can store "dog". So we keep the old value. If you don't want the old values in the editor, clear out the Model State. That's where the old value is stored and pulled from the HTML helpers. There you have it. It's not the most intuitive behavior, but in hindsight this behavior does make some sense even if at first glance it looks like you should be able to update values from the model. The solution of clearing ModelState works and is a reasonable one but you have to know about some of the innards of ModelState and how it actually works to figure that out.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in ASP.NET  MVC   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • ASP.NET MVC ModelCopier

    - by shiju
     In my earlier post ViewModel patten and AutoMapper in ASP.NET MVC application, We have discussed the need for  View Model objects and how to map values between View Model objects and Domain model objects using AutoMapper. ASP.NET MVC futures assembly provides a static class ModelCopier that can also use for copying values between View Model objects and Domain model objects. ModelCopier class has two static methods - CopyCollection and CopyModel.CopyCollection method would copy values between two collection objects and CopyModel would copy values between two model objects. <PRE class="c#" name="code"> var expense=new Expense(); ModelCopier.CopyModel(expenseViewModel, expense);</PRE>The above code copying values from expenseViewModel object to  expense object.                For simple mapping between model objects, you can use ModelCopier but for complex scenarios, I highly recommending to using AutoMapper for mapping between model objects.

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  • LLBLGen Pro and JSON serialization

    - by FransBouma
    I accidentally removed a reply from my previous blogpost, and as this blog-engine here at weblogs.asp.net is apparently falling apart, I can't re-add it as it thought it would be wise to disable comment controls on all posts, except new ones. So I'll post the reply here as a quote and reply on it. 'Steven' asks: What would the future be for LLBLGen Pro to support JSON for serialization? Would it be worth the effort for a LLBLGenPro user to bother creating some code templates to produce additional JSON serializable classes? Or just create some basic POCO classes which could be used for exchange of client/server data and use DTO to map these back to LLBGenPro ones? If I understand the work around, it is at the expense of losing xml serialization. Well, as described in the previous post, to enable JSON serialization, you can do that with a couple of lines and some attribute assignments. However, indeed, the attributes might make the XML serialization not working, as described in the previous blogpost. This is the case if the service you're using serializes objects using the DataContract serializer: this serializer will give up to serialize the entity objects to XML as the entity objects implement IXmlSerializable and this is a no-go area for the DataContract serializer. However, if your service doesn't use a DataContract serializer, or you serialize the objects manually to Xml using an xml serializer, you're fine. When you want to switch to Xml serializing again, instead of JSON in WebApi, and you have decorated the entity classes with the data-contract attributes, you can switch off the DataContract serializer, by setting a global configuration setting: var xml = GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Formatters.XmlFormatter; xml.UseXmlSerializer = true; This will make the WebApi use the XmlSerializer, and run the normal IXmlSerializable interface implementation.

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  • Validating Data Using Data Annotation Attributes in ASP.NET MVC

    - by bipinjoshi
    The data entered by the end user in various form fields must be validated before it is saved in the database. Developers often use validation HTML helpers provided by ASP.NET MVC to perform the input validations. Additionally, you can also use data annotation attributes from the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace to perform validations at the model level. Data annotation attributes are attached to the properties of the model class and enforce some validation criteria. They are capable of performing validation on the server side as well as on the client side. This article discusses the basics of using these attributes in an ASP.NET MVC application.http://www.bipinjoshi.net/articles/0a53f05f-b58c-47b1-a544-f032f5cfca58.aspx       

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  • Implementing google dashboard type interface in asp.net

    - by Sam_Cogan
    I'm looking at implementing a Google IG type dashboard in a .net app. There are a number of options I've found to do this, and i'm trying to establish what is going to be the best to use, in terms of speed, versatility etc. So far the options I am looking at are either to use asp.net webparts and .net Ajax, this would make it quicker to build, but I'm concerned this is going to make the application bulky and slow, or using JQuery, and either .net MVC or Webforms, to custom build an interface. Does anyone have any thoughts on what the best option may be, or any options I may have missed? All I want to do here is to allow users to customise a dashboard with a number of components (which will be user controls). I do also have access to Telerik controls, but I'm not sure if they would be any use here.

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  • GZip/Deflate Compression in ASP.NET MVC

    - by Rick Strahl
    A long while back I wrote about GZip compression in ASP.NET. In that article I describe two generic helper methods that I've used in all sorts of ASP.NET application from WebForms apps to HttpModules and HttpHandlers that require gzip or deflate compression. The same static methods also work in ASP.NET MVC. Here are the two routines:/// <summary> /// Determines if GZip is supported /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static bool IsGZipSupported() { string AcceptEncoding = HttpContext.Current.Request.Headers["Accept-Encoding"]; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(AcceptEncoding) && (AcceptEncoding.Contains("gzip") || AcceptEncoding.Contains("deflate"))) return true; return false; } /// <summary> /// Sets up the current page or handler to use GZip through a Response.Filter /// IMPORTANT: /// You have to call this method before any output is generated! /// </summary> public static void GZipEncodePage() { HttpResponse Response = HttpContext.Current.Response; if (IsGZipSupported()) { string AcceptEncoding = HttpContext.Current.Request.Headers["Accept-Encoding"]; if (AcceptEncoding.Contains("gzip")) { Response.Filter = new System.IO.Compression.GZipStream(Response.Filter, System.IO.Compression.CompressionMode.Compress); Response.Headers.Remove("Content-Encoding"); Response.AppendHeader("Content-Encoding", "gzip"); } else { Response.Filter = new System.IO.Compression.DeflateStream(Response.Filter, System.IO.Compression.CompressionMode.Compress); Response.Headers.Remove("Content-Encoding"); Response.AppendHeader("Content-Encoding", "deflate"); } } // Allow proxy servers to cache encoded and unencoded versions separately Response.AppendHeader("Vary", "Content-Encoding"); } The first method checks whether the client sending the request includes the accept-encoding for either gzip or deflate, and if if it does it returns true. The second function uses IsGzipSupported() to decide whether it should encode content and uses an Response Filter to do its job. Basically response filters look at the Response output stream as it's written and convert the data flowing through it. Filters are a bit tricky to work with but the two .NET filter streams for GZip and Deflate Compression make this a snap to implement. In my old code and even now in MVC I can always do:public ActionResult List(string keyword=null, int category=0) { WebUtils.GZipEncodePage(); …} to encode my content. And that works just fine. The proper way: Create an ActionFilterAttribute However in MVC this sort of thing is typically better handled by an ActionFilter which can be applied with an attribute. So to be all prim and proper I created an CompressContentAttribute ActionFilter that incorporates those two helper methods and which looks like this:/// <summary> /// Attribute that can be added to controller methods to force content /// to be GZip encoded if the client supports it /// </summary> public class CompressContentAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute { /// <summary> /// Override to compress the content that is generated by /// an action method. /// </summary> /// <param name="filterContext"></param> public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext) { GZipEncodePage(); } /// <summary> /// Determines if GZip is supported /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static bool IsGZipSupported() { string AcceptEncoding = HttpContext.Current.Request.Headers["Accept-Encoding"]; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(AcceptEncoding) && (AcceptEncoding.Contains("gzip") || AcceptEncoding.Contains("deflate"))) return true; return false; } /// <summary> /// Sets up the current page or handler to use GZip through a Response.Filter /// IMPORTANT: /// You have to call this method before any output is generated! /// </summary> public static void GZipEncodePage() { HttpResponse Response = HttpContext.Current.Response; if (IsGZipSupported()) { string AcceptEncoding = HttpContext.Current.Request.Headers["Accept-Encoding"]; if (AcceptEncoding.Contains("gzip")) { Response.Filter = new System.IO.Compression.GZipStream(Response.Filter, System.IO.Compression.CompressionMode.Compress); Response.Headers.Remove("Content-Encoding"); Response.AppendHeader("Content-Encoding", "gzip"); } else { Response.Filter = new System.IO.Compression.DeflateStream(Response.Filter, System.IO.Compression.CompressionMode.Compress); Response.Headers.Remove("Content-Encoding"); Response.AppendHeader("Content-Encoding", "deflate"); } } // Allow proxy servers to cache encoded and unencoded versions separately Response.AppendHeader("Vary", "Content-Encoding"); } } It's basically the same code wrapped into an ActionFilter attribute, which intercepts requests MVC requests to Controller methods and lets you hook up logic before and after the methods have executed. Here I want to override OnActionExecuting() which fires before the Controller action is fired. With the CompressContentAttribute created, it can now be applied to either the controller as a whole:[CompressContent] public class ClassifiedsController : ClassifiedsBaseController { … } or to one of the Action methods:[CompressContent] public ActionResult List(string keyword=null, int category=0) { … } The former applies compression to every action method, while the latter is selective and only applies it to the individual action method. Is the attribute better than the static utility function? Not really, but it is the standard MVC way to hook up 'filter' content and that's where others are likely to expect to set options like this. In fact,  you have a bit more control with the utility function because you can conditionally apply it in code, but this is actually much less likely in MVC applications than old WebForms apps since controller methods tend to be more focused. Compression Caveats Http compression is very cool and pretty easy to implement in ASP.NET but you have to be careful with it - especially if your content might get transformed or redirected inside of ASP.NET. A good example, is if an error occurs and a compression filter is applied. ASP.NET errors don't clear the filter, but clear the Response headers which results in some nasty garbage because the compressed content now no longer matches the headers. Another issue is Caching, which has to account for all possible ways of compression and non-compression that the content is served. Basically compressed content and caching don't mix well. I wrote about several of these issues in an old blog post and I recommend you take a quick peek before diving into making every bit of output Gzip encoded. None of these are show stoppers, but you have to be aware of the issues. Related Posts GZip Compression with ASP.NET Content ASP.NET GZip Encoding Caveats© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in ASP.NET  MVC   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • Controller Action Methods with different signatures

    - by Narsil
    I am trying to get my URLs in files/id format. I am guessing I should have two Index methods in my controller, one with a parameter and one with not. But I get this error message in browser below. Anyway here is my controller methods: public ActionResult Index() { return Content("Index "); } // // GET: /Files/5 public ActionResult Index(int id) { File file = fileRepository.GetFile(id); if (file == null) return Content("Not Found"); else return Content(file.FileID.ToString()); } Error: Server Error in '/' Application. The current request for action 'Index' on controller type 'FilesController' is ambiguous between the following action methods: System.Web.Mvc.ActionResult Index() on type FileHosting.Controllers.FilesController System.Web.Mvc.ActionResult Index(Int32) on type FileHosting.Controllers.FilesController Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. Exception Details: System.Reflection.AmbiguousMatchException: The current request for action 'Index' on controller type 'FilesController' is ambiguous between the following action methods: System.Web.Mvc.ActionResult Index() on type FileHosting.Controllers.FilesController System.Web.Mvc.ActionResult Index(Int32) on type FileHosting.Controllers.FilesController Source Error: An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below. Stack Trace: [AmbiguousMatchException: The current request for action 'Index' on controller type 'FilesController' is ambiguous between the following action methods: System.Web.Mvc.ActionResult Index() on type FileHosting.Controllers.FilesController System.Web.Mvc.ActionResult Index(Int32) on type FileHosting.Controllers.FilesController] System.Web.Mvc.ActionMethodSelector.FindActionMethod(ControllerContext controllerContext, String actionName) +396292 System.Web.Mvc.ReflectedControllerDescriptor.FindAction(ControllerContext controllerContext, String actionName) +62 System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.FindAction(ControllerContext controllerContext, ControllerDescriptor controllerDescriptor, String actionName) +13 System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.InvokeAction(ControllerContext controllerContext, String actionName) +99 System.Web.Mvc.Controller.ExecuteCore() +105 System.Web.Mvc.ControllerBase.Execute(RequestContext requestContext) +39 System.Web.Mvc.ControllerBase.System.Web.Mvc.IController.Execute(RequestContext requestContext) +7 System.Web.Mvc.<c_DisplayClass8.b_4() +34 System.Web.Mvc.Async.<c_DisplayClass1.b_0() +21 System.Web.Mvc.Async.<c__DisplayClass81.<BeginSynchronous>b__7(IAsyncResult _) +12 System.Web.Mvc.Async.WrappedAsyncResult1.End() +59 System.Web.Mvc.MvcHandler.EndProcessRequest(IAsyncResult asyncResult) +44 System.Web.Mvc.MvcHandler.System.Web.IHttpAsyncHandler.EndProcessRequest(IAsyncResult result) +7 System.Web.CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() +8677678 System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +155 Updated Code: public ActionResult Index(int? id) { if (id.HasValue) { File file = fileRepository.GetFile(id.Value); if (file == null) return Content("Not Found"); else return Content(file.FileID.ToString()); } else return Content("Index"); } It's still not the thing I want. URLs have to be in files?id=3 format. I want files/3 routes from global.asax routes.MapRoute( "Default", // Route name "{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults ); //files/3 //it's the one I wrote routes.MapRoute("Files", "{controller}/{id}", new { controller = "Files", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional} ); I tried adding a new route after reading Jeff's post but I can't get it working. It still works with files?id=2 though.

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  • ASP.NET WebForms vs MVC [after VS2010/.NET 4.0 announcement]

    - by fjxx
    Two of the biggest advantages of MVC over webforms were non-existent viewstate and URL routing. VS2010 and .NET 4.0 incorporates built-in URL routing for Webforms as well as better control for viewstate. I advocate use of MVC for extranet sites due to the MVC design pattern and its general lightweight nature but in light of this new announcement has Webforms closed the gap? Why would you still pick MVC over Webforms? Thanks

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  • DiscountASP.NET Launches SQL Server Profiling as a Service

    - by wisecarver
    DiscountASP.NET announces enhancing our SQL Server hosting with the launch of SQL Server Profiling as a service. SQL Profiler is a powerful tool that allows the application and database developer to troubleshoot general SQL locking problems, performance issues, and perform database tuning. With our SQL Profiling as a Service customers can schedule a database trace at a specific time of their choosing and offers a new way to help our customers troubleshoot. For more information, visit: http://www...(read more)

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  • DiscountASP.NET Launches SQL Server Profiling as a Service

    - by wisecarver
    DiscountASP.NET announces enhancing our SQL Server hosting with the launch of SQL Server Profiling as a service. SQL Profiler is a powerful tool that allows the application and database developer to troubleshoot general SQL locking problems, performance issues, and perform database tuning. With our SQL Profiling as a Service customers can schedule a database trace at a specific time of their choosing and offers a new way to help our customers troubleshoot. For more information, visit: http://www...(read more)

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  • DiscountASP.NET adds Web Application Gallery

    - by wisecarver
    Apr 23, 2010 What if you could install a blog, CMS, image gallery, wiki or other application with a few simple entries and one click of your mouse? Now you can! DiscountASP.NET is happy to announce that we are now providing access to "one-click" installation of many popular applications in Control Panel . The applications are part of Microsoft's Web Application Gallery and are tested for compatibility with our platform before they are made available to you.  You can glean more details...(read more)

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  • What&rsquo;s New in ASP.NET 4.0 Part Two: WebForms and Visual Studio Enhancements

    - by Rick Strahl
    In the last installment I talked about the core changes in the ASP.NET runtime that I’ve been taking advantage of. In this column, I’ll cover the changes to the Web Forms engine and some of the cool improvements in Visual Studio that make Web and general development easier. WebForms The WebForms engine is the area that has received most significant changes in ASP.NET 4.0. Probably the most widely anticipated features are related to managing page client ids and of ViewState on WebForm pages. Take Control of Your ClientIDs Unique ClientID generation in ASP.NET has been one of the most complained about “features” in ASP.NET. Although there’s a very good technical reason for these unique generated ids - they guarantee unique ids for each and every server control on a page - these unique and generated ids often get in the way of client-side JavaScript development and CSS styling as it’s often inconvenient and fragile to work with the long, generated ClientIDs. In ASP.NET 4.0 you can now specify an explicit client id mode on each control or each naming container parent control to control how client ids are generated. By default, ASP.NET generates mangled client ids for any control contained in a naming container (like a Master Page, or a User Control for example). The key to ClientID management in ASP.NET 4.0 are the new ClientIDMode and ClientIDRowSuffix properties. ClientIDMode supports four different ClientID generation settings shown below. For the following examples, imagine that you have a Textbox control named txtName inside of a master page control container on a WebForms page. <%@Page Language="C#"      MasterPageFile="~/Site.Master"     CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="WebApplication1.WebForm2"  %> <asp:Content ID="content"  ContentPlaceHolderID="content"               runat="server"               ClientIDMode="Static" >       <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtName" /> </asp:Content> The four available ClientIDMode values are: AutoID This is the existing behavior in ASP.NET 1.x-3.x where full naming container munging takes place. <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"        id="ctl00_content_txtName" /> This should be familiar to any ASP.NET developer and results in fairly unpredictable client ids that can easily change if the containership hierarchy changes. For example, removing the master page changes the name in this case, so if you were to move a block of script code that works against the control to a non-Master page, the script code immediately breaks. Static This option is the most deterministic setting that forces the control’s ClientID to use its ID value directly. No naming container naming at all is applied and you end up with clean client ids: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName"         type="text" id="txtName" /> Note that the name property which is used for postback variables to the server still is munged, but the ClientID property is displayed simply as the ID value that you have assigned to the control. This option is what most of us want to use, but you have to be clear on that because it can potentially cause conflicts with other controls on the page. If there are several instances of the same naming container (several instances of the same user control for example) there can easily be a client id naming conflict. Note that if you assign Static to a data-bound control, like a list child control in templates, you do not get unique ids either, so for list controls where you rely on unique id for child controls, you’ll probably want to use Predictable rather than Static. I’ll write more on this a little later when I discuss ClientIDRowSuffix. Predictable The previous two values are pretty self-explanatory. Predictable however, requires some explanation. To me at least it’s not in the least bit predictable. MSDN defines this value as follows: This algorithm is used for controls that are in data-bound controls. The ClientID value is generated by concatenating the ClientID value of the parent naming container with the ID value of the control. If the control is a data-bound control that generates multiple rows, the value of the data field specified in the ClientIDRowSuffix property is added at the end. For the GridView control, multiple data fields can be specified. If the ClientIDRowSuffix property is blank, a sequential number is added at the end instead of a data-field value. Each segment is separated by an underscore character (_). The key that makes this value a bit confusing is that it relies on the parent NamingContainer’s ClientID to build its own ClientID value. This effectively means that the value is not predictable at all but rather very tightly coupled to the parent naming container’s ClientIDMode setting. For my simple textbox example, if the ClientIDMode property of the parent naming container (Page in this case) is set to “Predictable” you’ll get this: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"         id="content_txtName" /> which gives an id that based on walking up to the currently active naming container (the MasterPage content container) and starting the id formatting from there downward. Think of this as a semi unique name that’s guaranteed unique only for the naming container. If, on the other hand, the Page is set to “AutoID” you get the following with Predictable on txtName: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"         id="ctl00_content_txtName" /> The latter is effectively the same as if you specified AutoID because it inherits the AutoID naming from the Page and Content Master Page control of the page. But again - predictable behavior always depends on the parent naming container and how it generates its id, so the id may not always be exactly the same as the AutoID generated value because somewhere in the NamingContainer chain the ClientIDMode setting may be set to a different value. For example, if you had another naming container in the middle that was set to Static you’d end up effectively with an id that starts with the NamingContainers id rather than the whole ctl000_content munging. The most common use for Predictable is likely to be for data-bound controls, which results in each data bound item getting a unique ClientID. Unfortunately, even here the behavior can be very unpredictable depending on which data-bound control you use - I found significant differences in how template controls in a GridView behave from those that are used in a ListView control. For example, GridView creates clean child ClientIDs, while ListView still has a naming container in the ClientID, presumably because of the template container on which you can’t set ClientIDMode. Predictable is useful, but only if all naming containers down the chain use this setting. Otherwise you’re right back to the munged ids that are pretty unpredictable. Another property, ClientIDRowSuffix, can be used in combination with ClientIDMode of Predictable to force a suffix onto list client controls. For example: <asp:GridView runat="server" ID="gvItems"              AutoGenerateColumns="false"             ClientIDMode="Static"              ClientIDRowSuffix="Id">     <Columns>     <asp:TemplateField>         <ItemTemplate>             <asp:Label runat="server" id="txtName"                        Text='<%# Eval("Name") %>'                   ClientIDMode="Predictable"/>         </ItemTemplate>     </asp:TemplateField>     <asp:TemplateField>         <ItemTemplate>         <asp:Label runat="server" id="txtId"                     Text='<%# Eval("Id") %>'                     ClientIDMode="Predictable" />         </ItemTemplate>     </asp:TemplateField>     </Columns>  </asp:GridView> generates client Ids inside of a column in the master page described earlier: <td>     <span id="txtName_0">Rick</span> </td> where the value after the underscore is the ClientIDRowSuffix field - in this case “Id” of the item data bound to the control. Note that all of the child controls require ClientIDMode=”Predictable” in order for the ClientIDRowSuffix to be applied, and the parent GridView controls need to be set to Static either explicitly or via Naming Container inheritance to give these simple names. It’s a bummer that ClientIDRowSuffix doesn’t work with Static to produce this automatically. Another real problem is that other controls process the ClientIDMode differently. For example, a ListView control processes the Predictable ClientIDMode differently and produces the following with the Static ListView and Predictable child controls: <span id="ctrl0_txtName_0">Rick</span> I couldn’t even figure out a way using ClientIDMode to get a simple ID that also uses a suffix short of falling back to manually generated ids using <%= %> expressions instead. Given the inconsistencies inside of list controls using <%= %>, ids for the ListView might not be a bad idea anyway. Inherit The final setting is Inherit, which is the default for all controls except Page. This means that controls by default inherit the parent naming container’s ClientIDMode setting. For more detailed information on ClientID behavior and different scenarios you can check out a blog post of mine on this subject: http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/54760.aspx. ClientID Enhancements Summary The ClientIDMode property is a welcome addition to ASP.NET 4.0. To me this is probably the most useful WebForms feature as it allows me to generate clean IDs simply by setting ClientIDMode="Static" on either the page or inside of Web.config (in the Pages section) which applies the setting down to the entire page which is my 95% scenario. For the few cases when it matters - for list controls and inside of multi-use user controls or custom server controls) - I can use Predictable or even AutoID to force controls to unique names. For application-level page development, this is easy to accomplish and provides maximum usability for working with client script code against page controls. ViewStateMode Another area of large criticism for WebForms is ViewState. ViewState is used internally by ASP.NET to persist page-level changes to non-postback properties on controls as pages post back to the server. It’s a useful mechanism that works great for the overall mechanics of WebForms, but it can also cause all sorts of overhead for page operation as ViewState can very quickly get out of control and consume huge amounts of bandwidth in your page content. ViewState can also wreak havoc with client-side scripting applications that modify control properties that are tracked by ViewState, which can produce very unpredictable results on a Postback after client-side updates. Over the years in my own development, I’ve often turned off ViewState on pages to reduce overhead. Yes, you lose some functionality, but you can easily implement most of the common functionality in non-ViewState workarounds. Relying less on heavy ViewState controls and sticking with simpler controls or raw HTML constructs avoids getting around ViewState problems. In ASP.NET 3.x and prior, it wasn’t easy to control ViewState - you could turn it on or off and if you turned it off at the page or web.config level, you couldn’t turn it back on for specific controls. In short, it was an all or nothing approach. With ASP.NET 4.0, the new ViewStateMode property gives you more control. It allows you to disable ViewState globally either on the page or web.config level and then turn it back on for specific controls that might need it. ViewStateMode only works when EnableViewState="true" on the page or web.config level (which is the default). You can then use ViewStateMode of Disabled, Enabled or Inherit to control the ViewState settings on the page. If you’re shooting for minimal ViewState usage, the ideal situation is to set ViewStateMode to disabled on the Page or web.config level and only turn it back on particular controls: <%@Page Language="C#"      CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="Westwind.WebStore.WebForm2"        ClientIDMode="Static"                ViewStateMode="Disabled"     EnableViewState="true"  %> <!-- this control has viewstate  --> <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtName"  ViewStateMode="Enabled" />       <!-- this control has no viewstate - it inherits  from parent container --> <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtAddress" /> Note that the EnableViewState="true" at the Page level isn’t required since it’s the default, but it’s important that the value is true. ViewStateMode has no effect if EnableViewState="false" at the page level. The main benefit of ViewStateMode is that it allows you to more easily turn off ViewState for most of the page and enable only a few key controls that might need it. For me personally, this is a perfect combination as most of my WebForm apps can get away without any ViewState at all. But some controls - especially third party controls - often don’t work well without ViewState enabled, and now it’s much easier to selectively enable controls rather than the old way, which required you to pretty much turn off ViewState for all controls that you didn’t want ViewState on. Inline HTML Encoding HTML encoding is an important feature to prevent cross-site scripting attacks in data entered by users on your site. In order to make it easier to create HTML encoded content, ASP.NET 4.0 introduces a new Expression syntax using <%: %> to encode string values. The encoding expression syntax looks like this: <%: "<script type='text/javascript'>" +     "alert('Really?');</script>" %> which produces properly encoded HTML: &lt;script type=&#39;text/javascript&#39; &gt;alert(&#39;Really?&#39;);&lt;/script&gt; Effectively this is a shortcut to: <%= HttpUtility.HtmlEncode( "<script type='text/javascript'>" + "alert('Really?');</script>") %> Of course the <%: %> syntax can also evaluate expressions just like <%= %> so the more common scenario applies this expression syntax against data your application is displaying. Here’s an example displaying some data model values: <%: Model.Address.Street %> This snippet shows displaying data from your application’s data store or more importantly, from data entered by users. Anything that makes it easier and less verbose to HtmlEncode text is a welcome addition to avoid potential cross-site scripting attacks. Although I listed Inline HTML Encoding here under WebForms, anything that uses the WebForms rendering engine including ASP.NET MVC, benefits from this feature. ScriptManager Enhancements The ASP.NET ScriptManager control in the past has introduced some nice ways to take programmatic and markup control over script loading, but there were a number of shortcomings in this control. The ASP.NET 4.0 ScriptManager has a number of improvements that make it easier to control script loading and addresses a few of the shortcomings that have often kept me from using the control in favor of manual script loading. The first is the AjaxFrameworkMode property which finally lets you suppress loading the ASP.NET AJAX runtime. Disabled doesn’t load any ASP.NET AJAX libraries, but there’s also an Explicit mode that lets you pick and choose the library pieces individually and reduce the footprint of ASP.NET AJAX script included if you are using the library. There’s also a new EnableCdn property that forces any script that has a new WebResource attribute CdnPath property set to a CDN supplied URL. If the script has this Attribute property set to a non-null/empty value and EnableCdn is enabled on the ScriptManager, that script will be served from the specified CdnPath. [assembly: WebResource(    "Westwind.Web.Resources.ww.jquery.js",    "application/x-javascript",    CdnPath =  "http://mysite.com/scripts/ww.jquery.min.js")] Cool, but a little too static for my taste since this value can’t be changed at runtime to point at a debug script as needed, for example. Assembly names for loading scripts from resources can now be simple names rather than fully qualified assembly names, which make it less verbose to reference scripts from assemblies loaded from your bin folder or the assembly reference area in web.config: <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" id="Id"          EnableCdn="true"         AjaxFrameworkMode="disabled">     <Scripts>         <asp:ScriptReference          Name="Westwind.Web.Resources.ww.jquery.js"         Assembly="Westwind.Web" />     </Scripts>        </asp:ScriptManager> The ScriptManager in 4.0 also supports script combining via the CompositeScript tag, which allows you to very easily combine scripts into a single script resource served via ASP.NET. Even nicer: You can specify the URL that the combined script is served with. Check out the following script manager markup that combines several static file scripts and a script resource into a single ASP.NET served resource from a static URL (allscripts.js): <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" id="Id"          EnableCdn="true"         AjaxFrameworkMode="disabled">     <CompositeScript          Path="~/scripts/allscripts.js">         <Scripts>             <asp:ScriptReference                    Path="~/scripts/jquery.js" />             <asp:ScriptReference                    Path="~/scripts/ww.jquery.js" />             <asp:ScriptReference            Name="Westwind.Web.Resources.editors.js"                 Assembly="Westwind.Web" />         </Scripts>     </CompositeScript> </asp:ScriptManager> When you render this into HTML, you’ll see a single script reference in the page: <script src="scripts/allscripts.debug.js"          type="text/javascript"></script> All you need to do to make this work is ensure that allscripts.js and allscripts.debug.js exist in the scripts folder of your application - they can be empty but the file has to be there. This is pretty cool, but you want to be real careful that you use unique URLs for each combination of scripts you combine or else browser and server caching will easily screw you up royally. The script manager also allows you to override native ASP.NET AJAX scripts now as any script references defined in the Scripts section of the ScriptManager trump internal references. So if you want custom behavior or you want to fix a possible bug in the core libraries that normally are loaded from resources, you can now do this simply by referencing the script resource name in the Name property and pointing at System.Web for the assembly. Not a common scenario, but when you need it, it can come in real handy. Still, there are a number of shortcomings in this control. For one, the ScriptManager and ClientScript APIs still have no common entry point so control developers are still faced with having to check and support both APIs to load scripts so that controls can work on pages that do or don’t have a ScriptManager on the page. The CdnUrl is static and compiled in, which is very restrictive. And finally, there’s still no control over where scripts get loaded on the page - ScriptManager still injects scripts into the middle of the HTML markup rather than in the header or optionally the footer. This, in turn, means there is little control over script loading order, which can be problematic for control developers. MetaDescription, MetaKeywords Page Properties There are also a number of additional Page properties that correspond to some of the other features discussed in this column: ClientIDMode, ClientTarget and ViewStateMode. Another minor but useful feature is that you can now directly access the MetaDescription and MetaKeywords properties on the Page object to set the corresponding meta tags programmatically. Updating these values programmatically previously required either <%= %> expressions in the page markup or dynamic insertion of literal controls into the page. You can now just set these properties programmatically on the Page object in any Control derived class on the page or the Page itself: Page.MetaKeywords = "ASP.NET,4.0,New Features"; Page.MetaDescription = "This article discusses the new features in ASP.NET 4.0"; Note, that there’s no corresponding ASP.NET tag for the HTML Meta element, so the only way to specify these values in markup and access them is via the @Page tag: <%@Page Language="C#"      CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="Westwind.WebStore.WebForm2"      ClientIDMode="Static"                MetaDescription="Article that discusses what's                      new in ASP.NET 4.0"     MetaKeywords="ASP.NET,4.0,New Features" %> Nothing earth shattering but quite convenient. Visual Studio 2010 Enhancements for Web Development For Web development there are also a host of editor enhancements in Visual Studio 2010. Some of these are not Web specific but they are useful for Web developers in general. Text Editors Throughout Visual Studio 2010, the text editors have all been updated to a new core engine based on WPF which provides some interesting new features for various code editors including the nice ability to zoom in and out with Ctrl-MouseWheel to quickly change the size of text. There are many more API options to control the editor and although Visual Studio 2010 doesn’t yet use many of these features, we can look forward to enhancements in add-ins and future editor updates from the various language teams that take advantage of the visual richness that WPF provides to editing. On the negative side, I’ve noticed that occasionally the code editor and especially the HTML and JavaScript editors will lose the ability to use various navigation keys like arrows, back and delete keys, which requires closing and reopening the documents at times. This issue seems to be well documented so I suspect this will be addressed soon with a hotfix or within the first service pack. Overall though, the code editors work very well, especially given that they were re-written completely using WPF, which was one of my big worries when I first heard about the complete redesign of the editors. Multi-Targeting Visual Studio now targets all versions of the .NET framework from 2.0 forward. You can use Visual Studio 2010 to work on your ASP.NET 2, 3.0 and 3.5 applications which is a nice way to get your feet wet with the new development environment without having to make changes to existing applications. It’s nice to have one tool to work in for all the different versions. Multi-Monitor Support One cool feature of Visual Studio 2010 is the ability to drag windows out of the Visual Studio environment and out onto the desktop including onto another monitor easily. Since Web development often involves working with a host of designers at the same time - visual designer, HTML markup window, code behind and JavaScript editor - it’s really nice to be able to have a little more screen real estate to work on each of these editors. Microsoft made a welcome change in the environment. IntelliSense Snippets for HTML and JavaScript Editors The HTML and JavaScript editors now finally support IntelliSense scripts to create macro-based template expansions that have been in the core C# and Visual Basic code editors since Visual Studio 2005. Snippets allow you to create short XML-based template definitions that can act as static macros or real templates that can have replaceable values that can be embedded into the expanded text. The XML syntax for these snippets is straight forward and it’s pretty easy to create custom snippets manually. You can easily create snippets using XML and store them in your custom snippets folder (C:\Users\rstrahl\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Code Snippets\Visual Web Developer\My HTML Snippets and My JScript Snippets), but it helps to use one of the third-party tools that exist to simplify the process for you. I use SnippetEditor, by Bill McCarthy, which makes short work of creating snippets interactively (http://snippeteditor.codeplex.com/). Note: You may have to manually add the Visual Studio 2010 User specific Snippet folders to this tool to see existing ones you’ve created. Code snippets are some of the biggest time savers and HTML editing more than anything deals with lots of repetitive tasks that lend themselves to text expansion. Visual Studio 2010 includes a slew of built-in snippets (that you can also customize!) and you can create your own very easily. If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to spend a little time examining your coding patterns and find the repetitive code that you write and convert it into snippets. I’ve been using CodeRush for this for years, but now you can do much of the basic expansion natively for HTML and JavaScript snippets. jQuery Integration Is Now Native jQuery is a popular JavaScript library and recently Microsoft has recently stated that it will become the primary client-side scripting technology to drive higher level script functionality in various ASP.NET Web projects that Microsoft provides. In Visual Studio 2010, the default full project template includes jQuery as part of a new project including the support files that provide IntelliSense (-vsdoc files). IntelliSense support for jQuery is now also baked into Visual Studio 2010, so unlike Visual Studio 2008 which required a separate download, no further installs are required for a rich IntelliSense experience with jQuery. Summary ASP.NET 4.0 brings many useful improvements to the platform, but thankfully most of the changes are incremental changes that don’t compromise backwards compatibility and they allow developers to ease into the new features one feature at a time. None of the changes in ASP.NET 4.0 or Visual Studio 2010 are monumental or game changers. The bigger features are language and .NET Framework changes that are also optional. This ASP.NET and tools release feels more like fine tuning and getting some long-standing kinks worked out of the platform. It shows that the ASP.NET team is dedicated to paying attention to community feedback and responding with changes to the platform and development environment based on this feedback. If you haven’t gotten your feet wet with ASP.NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010, there’s no reason not to give it a shot now - the ASP.NET 4.0 platform is solid and Visual Studio 2010 works very well for a brand new release. Check it out. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

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  • ASP.NET 4 Unleashed in Bookstores!

    - by Stephen Walther
    I’m happy to announce that ASP.NET 4 Unleashed is now in bookstores! The book is over 1,800 pages and it is packed with code samples and tutorials on all the features of ASP.NET 4. Given the size of the book – did I mention that it is over 1,800 pages? -- I can safely say that it is the most comprehensive book on ASP.NET  This edition of the book has several new chapters written by Kevin Hoffman and Nate Dudek. Kevin and Nate did a fantastic job of covering the new features of ASP.NET 4 including: The new ASP.NET Chart Control The new ASP.NET QueryExtender Control The new ASP.NET routing framework jQuery You can buy the book from your local bookstore or buy the book from Amazon:

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  • Table sorting & pagination with jQuery and Razor in ASP.NET MVC

    - by hajan
    Introduction jQuery enjoys living inside pages which are built on top of ASP.NET MVC Framework. The ASP.NET MVC is a place where things are organized very well and it is quite hard to make them dirty, especially because the pattern enforces you on purity (you can still make it dirty if you want so ;) ). We all know how easy is to build a HTML table with a header row, footer row and table rows showing some data. With ASP.NET MVC we can do this pretty easy, but, the result will be pure HTML table which only shows data, but does not includes sorting, pagination or some other advanced features that we were used to have in the ASP.NET WebForms GridView. Ok, there is the WebGrid MVC Helper, but what if we want to make something from pure table in our own clean style? In one of my recent projects, I’ve been using the jQuery tablesorter and tablesorter.pager plugins that go along. You don’t need to know jQuery to make this work… You need to know little CSS to create nice design for your table, but of course you can use mine from the demo… So, what you will see in this blog is how to attach this plugin to your pure html table and a div for pagination and make your table with advanced sorting and pagination features.   Demo Project Resources The resources I’m using for this demo project are shown in the following solution explorer window print screen: Content/images – folder that contains all the up/down arrow images, pagination buttons etc. You can freely replace them with your own, but keep the names the same if you don’t want to change anything in the CSS we will built later. Content/Site.css – The main css theme, where we will add the theme for our table too Controllers/HomeController.cs – The controller I’m using for this project Models/Person.cs – For this demo, I’m using Person.cs class Scripts – jquery-1.4.4.min.js, jquery.tablesorter.js, jquery.tablesorter.pager.js – required script to make the magic happens Views/Home/Index.cshtml – Index view (razor view engine) the other items are not important for the demo. ASP.NET MVC 1. Model In this demo I use only one Person class which defines Person entity with several properties. You can use your own model, maybe one which will access data from database or any other resource. Person.cs public class Person {     public string Name { get; set; }     public string Surname { get; set; }     public string Email { get; set; }     public int? Phone { get; set; }     public DateTime? DateAdded { get; set; }     public int? Age { get; set; }     public Person(string name, string surname, string email,         int? phone, DateTime? dateadded, int? age)     {         Name = name;         Surname = surname;         Email = email;         Phone = phone;         DateAdded = dateadded;         Age = age;     } } 2. View In our example, we have only one Index.chtml page where Razor View engine is used. Razor view engine is my favorite for ASP.NET MVC because it’s very intuitive, fluid and keeps your code clean. 3. Controller Since this is simple example with one page, we use one HomeController.cs where we have two methods, one of ActionResult type (Index) and another GetPeople() used to create and return list of people. HomeController.cs public class HomeController : Controller {     //     // GET: /Home/     public ActionResult Index()     {         ViewBag.People = GetPeople();         return View();     }     public List<Person> GetPeople()     {         List<Person> listPeople = new List<Person>();                  listPeople.Add(new Person("Hajan", "Selmani", "[email protected]", 070070070,DateTime.Now, 25));                     listPeople.Add(new Person("Straight", "Dean", "[email protected]", 123456789, DateTime.Now.AddDays(-5), 35));         listPeople.Add(new Person("Karsen", "Livia", "[email protected]", 46874651, DateTime.Now.AddDays(-2), 31));         listPeople.Add(new Person("Ringer", "Anne", "[email protected]", null, DateTime.Now, null));         listPeople.Add(new Person("O'Leary", "Michael", "[email protected]", 32424344, DateTime.Now, 44));         listPeople.Add(new Person("Gringlesby", "Anne", "[email protected]", null, DateTime.Now.AddDays(-9), 18));         listPeople.Add(new Person("Locksley", "Stearns", "[email protected]", 2135345, DateTime.Now, null));         listPeople.Add(new Person("DeFrance", "Michel", "[email protected]", 235325352, DateTime.Now.AddDays(-18), null));         listPeople.Add(new Person("White", "Johnson", null, null, DateTime.Now.AddDays(-22), 55));         listPeople.Add(new Person("Panteley", "Sylvia", null, 23233223, DateTime.Now.AddDays(-1), 32));         listPeople.Add(new Person("Blotchet-Halls", "Reginald", null, 323243423, DateTime.Now, 26));         listPeople.Add(new Person("Merr", "South", "[email protected]", 3232442, DateTime.Now.AddDays(-5), 85));         listPeople.Add(new Person("MacFeather", "Stearns", "[email protected]", null, DateTime.Now, null));         return listPeople;     } }   TABLE CSS/HTML DESIGN Now, lets start with the implementation. First of all, lets create the table structure and the main CSS. 1. HTML Structure @{     Layout = null;     } <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head>     <title>ASP.NET & jQuery</title>     <!-- referencing styles, scripts and writing custom js scripts will go here --> </head> <body>     <div>         <table class="tablesorter">             <thead>                 <tr>                     <th> value </th>                 </tr>             </thead>             <tbody>                 <tr>                     <td>value</td>                 </tr>             </tbody>             <tfoot>                 <tr>                     <th> value </th>                 </tr>             </tfoot>         </table>         <div id="pager">                      </div>     </div> </body> </html> So, this is the main structure you need to create for each of your tables where you want to apply the functionality we will create. Of course the scripts are referenced once ;). As you see, our table has class tablesorter and also we have a div with id pager. In the next steps we will use both these to create the needed functionalities. The complete Index.cshtml coded to get the data from controller and display in the page is: <body>     <div>         <table class="tablesorter">             <thead>                 <tr>                     <th>Name</th>                     <th>Surname</th>                     <th>Email</th>                     <th>Phone</th>                     <th>Date Added</th>                 </tr>             </thead>             <tbody>                 @{                     foreach (var p in ViewBag.People)                     {                                 <tr>                         <td>@p.Name</td>                         <td>@p.Surname</td>                         <td>@p.Email</td>                         <td>@p.Phone</td>                         <td>@p.DateAdded</td>                     </tr>                     }                 }             </tbody>             <tfoot>                 <tr>                     <th>Name</th>                     <th>Surname</th>                     <th>Email</th>                     <th>Phone</th>                     <th>Date Added</th>                 </tr>             </tfoot>         </table>         <div id="pager" style="position: none;">             <form>             <img src="@Url.Content("~/Content/images/first.png")" class="first" />             <img src="@Url.Content("~/Content/images/prev.png")" class="prev" />             <input type="text" class="pagedisplay" />             <img src="@Url.Content("~/Content/images/next.png")" class="next" />             <img src="@Url.Content("~/Content/images/last.png")" class="last" />             <select class="pagesize">                 <option selected="selected" value="5">5</option>                 <option value="10">10</option>                 <option value="20">20</option>                 <option value="30">30</option>                 <option value="40">40</option>             </select>             </form>         </div>     </div> </body> So, mainly the structure is the same. I have added @Razor code to create table with data retrieved from the ViewBag.People which has been filled with data in the home controller. 2. CSS Design The CSS code I’ve created is: /* DEMO TABLE */ body {     font-size: 75%;     font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Sans-Serif;     color: #232323;     background-color: #fff; } table { border-spacing:0; border:1px solid gray;} table.tablesorter thead tr .header {     background-image: url(images/bg.png);     background-repeat: no-repeat;     background-position: center right;     cursor: pointer; } table.tablesorter tbody td {     color: #3D3D3D;     padding: 4px;     background-color: #FFF;     vertical-align: top; } table.tablesorter tbody tr.odd td {     background-color:#F0F0F6; } table.tablesorter thead tr .headerSortUp {     background-image: url(images/asc.png); } table.tablesorter thead tr .headerSortDown {     background-image: url(images/desc.png); } table th { width:150px;            border:1px outset gray;            background-color:#3C78B5;            color:White;            cursor:pointer; } table thead th:hover { background-color:Yellow; color:Black;} table td { width:150px; border:1px solid gray;} PAGINATION AND SORTING Now, when everything is ready and we have the data, lets make pagination and sorting functionalities 1. jQuery Scripts referencing <link href="@Url.Content("~/Content/Site.css")" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery-1.4.4.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.tablesorter.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.tablesorter.pager.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> 2. jQuery Sorting and Pagination script   <script type="text/javascript">     $(function () {         $("table.tablesorter").tablesorter({ widthFixed: true, sortList: [[0, 0]] })         .tablesorterPager({ container: $("#pager"), size: $(".pagesize option:selected").val() });     }); </script> So, with only two lines of code, I’m using both tablesorter and tablesorterPager plugins, giving some options to both these. Options added: tablesorter - widthFixed: true – gives fixed width of the columns tablesorter - sortList[[0,0]] – An array of instructions for per-column sorting and direction in the format: [[columnIndex, sortDirection], ... ] where columnIndex is a zero-based index for your columns left-to-right and sortDirection is 0 for Ascending and 1 for Descending. A valid argument that sorts ascending first by column 1 and then column 2 looks like: [[0,0],[1,0]] (source: http://tablesorter.com/docs/) tablesorterPager – container: $(“#pager”) – tells the pager container, the div with id pager in our case. tablesorterPager – size: the default size of each page, where I get the default value selected, so if you put selected to any other of the options in your select list, you will have this number of rows as default per page for the table too. END RESULTS 1. Table once the page is loaded (default results per page is 5 and is automatically sorted by 1st column as sortList is specified) 2. Sorted by Phone Descending 3. Changed pagination to 10 items per page 4. Sorted by Phone and Name (use SHIFT to sort on multiple columns) 5. Sorted by Date Added 6. Page 3, 5 items per page   ADDITIONAL ENHANCEMENTS We can do additional enhancements to the table. We can make search for each column. I will cover this in one of my next blogs. Stay tuned. DEMO PROJECT You can download demo project source code from HERE.CONCLUSION Once you finish with the demo, run your page and open the source code. You will be amazed of the purity of your code.Working with pagination in client side can be very useful. One of the benefits is performance, but if you have thousands of rows in your tables, you will get opposite result when talking about performance. Hence, sometimes it is nice idea to make pagination on back-end. So, the compromise between both approaches would be best to combine both of them. I use at most up to 500 rows on client-side and once the user reach the last page, we can trigger ajax postback which can get the next 500 rows using server-side pagination of the same data. I would like to recommend the following blog post http://weblogs.asp.net/gunnarpeipman/archive/2010/09/14/returning-paged-results-from-repositories-using-pagedresult-lt-t-gt.aspx, which will help you understand how to return page results from repository. I hope this was helpful post for you. Wait for my next posts ;). Please do let me know your feedback. Best Regards, Hajan

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  • Web 2.0 Extension for ASP.NET

    - by Visual WebGui
    ASP.NET is now much extended to support line of business and data centric applications, providing Web 2.0 rich user interfaces within a native web environment. New capabilities allowed by the Visual WebGui extension turn Visual Studio into a rapid development tool for the web, leveraging the wide set of ASP.NET web infrastructures runtime and extending its paradigms to support highly interactive applications. Taking advantage of the ASP.NET infrastructures Using the native ASP.NET ISAPI filter: aspnet_isapi...(read more)

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  • Creating STA COM compatible ASP.NET Applications

    - by Rick Strahl
    When building ASP.NET applications that interface with old school COM objects like those created with VB6 or Visual FoxPro (MTDLL), it's extremely important that the threads that are serving requests use Single Threaded Apartment Threading. STA is a COM built-in technology that allows essentially single threaded components to operate reliably in a multi-threaded environment. STA's guarantee that COM objects instantiated on a specific thread stay on that specific thread and any access to a COM object from another thread automatically marshals that thread to the STA thread. The end effect is that you can have multiple threads, but a COM object instance lives on a fixed never changing thread. ASP.NET by default uses MTA (multi-threaded apartment) threads which are truly free spinning threads that pay no heed to COM object marshaling. This is vastly more efficient than STA threading which has a bit of overhead in determining whether it's OK to run code on a given thread or whether some sort of thread/COM marshaling needs to occur. MTA COM components can be very efficient, but STA COM components in a multi-threaded environment always tend to have a fair amount of overhead. It's amazing how much COM Interop I still see today so while it seems really old school to be talking about this topic, it's actually quite apropos for me as I have many customers using legacy COM systems that need to interface with other .NET applications. In this post I'm consolidating some of the hacks I've used to integrate with various ASP.NET technologies when using STA COM Components. STA in ASP.NET Support for STA threading in the ASP.NET framework is fairly limited. Specifically only the original ASP.NET WebForms technology supports STA threading directly via its STA Page Handler implementation or what you might know as ASPCOMPAT mode. For WebForms running STA components is as easy as specifying the ASPCOMPAT attribute in the @Page tag:<%@ Page Language="C#" AspCompat="true" %> which runs the page in STA mode. Removing it runs in MTA mode. Simple. Unfortunately all other ASP.NET technologies built on top of the core ASP.NET engine do not support STA natively. So if you want to use STA COM components in MVC or with class ASMX Web Services, there's no automatic way like the ASPCOMPAT keyword available. So what happens when you run an STA COM component in an MTA application? In low volume environments - nothing much will happen. The COM objects will appear to work just fine as there are no simultaneous thread interactions and the COM component will happily run on a single thread or multiple single threads one at a time. So for testing running components in MTA environments may appear to work just fine. However as load increases and threads get re-used by ASP.NET COM objects will end up getting created on multiple different threads. This can result in crashes or hangs, or data corruption in the STA components which store their state in thread local storage on the STA thread. If threads overlap this global store can easily get corrupted which in turn causes problems. STA ensures that any COM object instance loaded always stays on the same thread it was instantiated on. What about COM+? COM+ is supposed to address the problem of STA in MTA applications by providing an abstraction with it's own thread pool manager for COM objects. It steps in to the COM instantiation pipeline and hands out COM instances from its own internally maintained STA Thread pool. This guarantees that the COM instantiation threads are STA threads if using STA components. COM+ works, but in my experience the technology is very, very slow for STA components. It adds a ton of overhead and reduces COM performance noticably in load tests in IIS. COM+ can make sense in some situations but for Web apps with STA components it falls short. In addition there's also the need to ensure that COM+ is set up and configured on the target machine and the fact that components have to be registered in COM+. COM+ also keeps components up at all times, so if a component needs to be replaced the COM+ package needs to be unloaded (same is true for IIS hosted components but it's more common to manage that). COM+ is an option for well established components, but native STA support tends to provide better performance and more consistent usability, IMHO. STA for non supporting ASP.NET Technologies As mentioned above only WebForms supports STA natively. However, by utilizing the WebForms ASP.NET Page handler internally it's actually possible to trick various other ASP.NET technologies and let them work with STA components. This is ugly but I've used each of these in various applications and I've had minimal problems making them work with FoxPro STA COM components which is about as dififcult as it gets for COM Interop in .NET. In this post I summarize several STA workarounds that enable you to use STA threading with these ASP.NET Technologies: ASMX Web Services ASP.NET MVC WCF Web Services ASP.NET Web API ASMX Web Services I start with classic ASP.NET ASMX Web Services because it's the easiest mechanism that allows for STA modification. It also clearly demonstrates how the WebForms STA Page Handler is the key technology to enable the various other solutions to create STA components. Essentially the way this works is to override the WebForms Page class and hijack it's init functionality for processing requests. Here's what this looks like for Web Services:namespace FoxProAspNet { public class WebServiceStaHandler : System.Web.UI.Page, IHttpAsyncHandler { protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e) { IHttpHandler handler = new WebServiceHandlerFactory().GetHandler( this.Context, this.Context.Request.HttpMethod, this.Context.Request.FilePath, this.Context.Request.PhysicalPath); handler.ProcessRequest(this.Context); this.Context.ApplicationInstance.CompleteRequest(); } public IAsyncResult BeginProcessRequest( HttpContext context, AsyncCallback cb, object extraData) { return this.AspCompatBeginProcessRequest(context, cb, extraData); } public void EndProcessRequest(IAsyncResult result) { this.AspCompatEndProcessRequest(result); } } public class AspCompatWebServiceStaHandlerWithSessionState : WebServiceStaHandler, IRequiresSessionState { } } This class overrides the ASP.NET WebForms Page class which has a little known AspCompatBeginProcessRequest() and AspCompatEndProcessRequest() method that is responsible for providing the WebForms ASPCOMPAT functionality. These methods handle routing requests to STA threads. Note there are two classes - one that includes session state and one that does not. If you plan on using ASP.NET Session state use the latter class, otherwise stick to the former. This maps to the EnableSessionState page setting in WebForms. This class simply hooks into this functionality by overriding the BeginProcessRequest and EndProcessRequest methods and always forcing it into the AspCompat methods. The way this works is that BeginProcessRequest() fires first to set up the threads and starts intializing the handler. As part of that process the OnInit() method is fired which is now already running on an STA thread. The code then creates an instance of the actual WebService handler factory and calls its ProcessRequest method to start executing which generates the Web Service result. Immediately after ProcessRequest the request is stopped with Application.CompletRequest() which ensures that the rest of the Page handler logic doesn't fire. This means that even though the fairly heavy Page class is overridden here, it doesn't end up executing any of its internal processing which makes this code fairly efficient. In a nutshell, we're highjacking the Page HttpHandler and forcing it to process the WebService process handler in the context of the AspCompat handler behavior. Hooking up the Handler Because the above is an HttpHandler implementation you need to hook up the custom handler and replace the standard ASMX handler. To do this you need to modify the web.config file (here for IIS 7 and IIS Express): <configuration> <system.webServer> <handlers> <remove name="WebServiceHandlerFactory-Integrated-4.0" /> <add name="Asmx STA Web Service Handler" path="*.asmx" verb="*" type="FoxProAspNet.WebServiceStaHandler" precondition="integrated"/> </handlers> </system.webServer> </configuration> (Note: The name for the WebServiceHandlerFactory-Integrated-4.0 might be slightly different depending on your server version. Check the IIS Handler configuration in the IIS Management Console for the exact name or simply remove the handler from the list there which will propagate to your web.config). For IIS 5 & 6 (Windows XP/2003) or the Visual Studio Web Server use:<configuration> <system.web> <httpHandlers> <remove path="*.asmx" verb="*" /> <add path="*.asmx" verb="*" type="FoxProAspNet.WebServiceStaHandler" /> </httpHandlers> </system.web></configuration> To test, create a new ASMX Web Service and create a method like this: [WebService(Namespace = "http://foxaspnet.org/")] [WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo = WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)] public class FoxWebService : System.Web.Services.WebService { [WebMethod] public string HelloWorld() { return "Hello World. Threading mode is: " + System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.GetApartmentState(); } } Run this before you put in the web.config configuration changes and you should get: Hello World. Threading mode is: MTA Then put the handler mapping into Web.config and you should see: Hello World. Threading mode is: STA And you're on your way to using STA COM components. It's a hack but it works well! I've used this with several high volume Web Service installations with various customers and it's been fast and reliable. ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET MVC has quickly become the most popular ASP.NET technology, replacing WebForms for creating HTML output. MVC is more complex to get started with, but once you understand the basic structure of how requests flow through the MVC pipeline it's easy to use and amazingly flexible in manipulating HTML requests. In addition, MVC has great support for non-HTML output sources like JSON and XML, making it an excellent choice for AJAX requests without any additional tools. Unlike WebForms ASP.NET MVC doesn't support STA threads natively and so some trickery is needed to make it work with STA threads as well. MVC gets its handler implementation through custom route handlers using ASP.NET's built in routing semantics. To work in an STA handler requires working in the Page Handler as part of the Route Handler implementation. As with the Web Service handler the first step is to create a custom HttpHandler that can instantiate an MVC request pipeline properly:public class MvcStaThreadHttpAsyncHandler : Page, IHttpAsyncHandler, IRequiresSessionState { private RequestContext _requestContext; public MvcStaThreadHttpAsyncHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { if (requestContext == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("requestContext"); _requestContext = requestContext; } public IAsyncResult BeginProcessRequest(HttpContext context, AsyncCallback cb, object extraData) { return this.AspCompatBeginProcessRequest(context, cb, extraData); } protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e) { var controllerName = _requestContext.RouteData.GetRequiredString("controller"); var controllerFactory = ControllerBuilder.Current.GetControllerFactory(); var controller = controllerFactory.CreateController(_requestContext, controllerName); if (controller == null) throw new InvalidOperationException("Could not find controller: " + controllerName); try { controller.Execute(_requestContext); } finally { controllerFactory.ReleaseController(controller); } this.Context.ApplicationInstance.CompleteRequest(); } public void EndProcessRequest(IAsyncResult result) { this.AspCompatEndProcessRequest(result); } public override void ProcessRequest(HttpContext httpContext) { throw new NotSupportedException("STAThreadRouteHandler does not support ProcessRequest called (only BeginProcessRequest)"); } } This handler code figures out which controller to load and then executes the controller. MVC internally provides the information needed to route to the appropriate method and pass the right parameters. Like the Web Service handler the logic occurs in the OnInit() and performs all the processing in that part of the request. Next, we need a RouteHandler that can actually pick up this handler. Unlike the Web Service handler where we simply registered the handler, MVC requires a RouteHandler to pick up the handler. RouteHandlers look at the URL's path and based on that decide on what handler to invoke. The route handler is pretty simple - all it does is load our custom handler: public class MvcStaThreadRouteHandler : IRouteHandler { public IHttpHandler GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { if (requestContext == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("requestContext"); return new MvcStaThreadHttpAsyncHandler(requestContext); } } At this point you can instantiate this route handler and force STA requests to MVC by specifying a route. The following sets up the ASP.NET Default Route:Route mvcRoute = new Route("{controller}/{action}/{id}", new RouteValueDictionary( new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }), new MvcStaThreadRouteHandler()); RouteTable.Routes.Add(mvcRoute);   To make this code a little easier to work with and mimic the behavior of the routes.MapRoute() functionality extension method that MVC provides, here is an extension method for MapMvcStaRoute(): public static class RouteCollectionExtensions { public static void MapMvcStaRoute(this RouteCollection routeTable, string name, string url, object defaults = null) { Route mvcRoute = new Route(url, new RouteValueDictionary(defaults), new MvcStaThreadRouteHandler()); RouteTable.Routes.Add(mvcRoute); } } With this the syntax to add  route becomes a little easier and matches the MapRoute() method:RouteTable.Routes.MapMvcStaRoute( name: "Default", url: "{controller}/{action}/{id}", defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } ); The nice thing about this route handler, STA Handler and extension method is that it's fully self contained. You can put all three into a single class file and stick it into your Web app, and then simply call MapMvcStaRoute() and it just works. Easy! To see whether this works create an MVC controller like this: public class ThreadTestController : Controller { public string ThreadingMode() { return Thread.CurrentThread.GetApartmentState().ToString(); } } Try this test both with only the MapRoute() hookup in the RouteConfiguration in which case you should get MTA as the value. Then change the MapRoute() call to MapMvcStaRoute() leaving all the parameters the same and re-run the request. You now should see STA as the result. You're on your way using STA COM components reliably in ASP.NET MVC. WCF Web Services running through IIS WCF Web Services provide a more robust and wider range of services for Web Services. You can use WCF over HTTP, TCP, and Pipes, and WCF services support WS* secure services. There are many features in WCF that go way beyond what ASMX can do. But it's also a bit more complex than ASMX. As a basic rule if you need to serve straight SOAP Services over HTTP I 'd recommend sticking with the simpler ASMX services especially if COM is involved. If you need WS* support or want to serve data over non-HTTP protocols then WCF makes more sense. WCF is not my forte but I found a solution from Scott Seely on his blog that describes the progress and that seems to work well. I'm copying his code below so this STA information is all in one place and quickly explain. Scott's code basically works by creating a custom OperationBehavior which can be specified via an [STAOperation] attribute on every method. Using his attribute you end up with a class (or Interface if you separate the contract and class) that looks like this: [ServiceContract] public class WcfService { [OperationContract] public string HelloWorldMta() { return Thread.CurrentThread.GetApartmentState().ToString(); } // Make sure you use this custom STAOperationBehavior // attribute to force STA operation of service methods [STAOperationBehavior] [OperationContract] public string HelloWorldSta() { return Thread.CurrentThread.GetApartmentState().ToString(); } } Pretty straight forward. The latter method returns STA while the former returns MTA. To make STA work every method needs to be marked up. The implementation consists of the attribute and OperationInvoker implementation. Here are the two classes required to make this work from Scott's post:public class STAOperationBehaviorAttribute : Attribute, IOperationBehavior { public void AddBindingParameters(OperationDescription operationDescription, System.ServiceModel.Channels.BindingParameterCollection bindingParameters) { } public void ApplyClientBehavior(OperationDescription operationDescription, System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ClientOperation clientOperation) { // If this is applied on the client, well, it just doesn’t make sense. // Don’t throw in case this attribute was applied on the contract // instead of the implementation. } public void ApplyDispatchBehavior(OperationDescription operationDescription, System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.DispatchOperation dispatchOperation) { // Change the IOperationInvoker for this operation. dispatchOperation.Invoker = new STAOperationInvoker(dispatchOperation.Invoker); } public void Validate(OperationDescription operationDescription) { if (operationDescription.SyncMethod == null) { throw new InvalidOperationException("The STAOperationBehaviorAttribute " + "only works for synchronous method invocations."); } } } public class STAOperationInvoker : IOperationInvoker { IOperationInvoker _innerInvoker; public STAOperationInvoker(IOperationInvoker invoker) { _innerInvoker = invoker; } public object[] AllocateInputs() { return _innerInvoker.AllocateInputs(); } public object Invoke(object instance, object[] inputs, out object[] outputs) { // Create a new, STA thread object[] staOutputs = null; object retval = null; Thread thread = new Thread( delegate() { retval = _innerInvoker.Invoke(instance, inputs, out staOutputs); }); thread.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA); thread.Start(); thread.Join(); outputs = staOutputs; return retval; } public IAsyncResult InvokeBegin(object instance, object[] inputs, AsyncCallback callback, object state) { // We don’t handle async… throw new NotImplementedException(); } public object InvokeEnd(object instance, out object[] outputs, IAsyncResult result) { // We don’t handle async… throw new NotImplementedException(); } public bool IsSynchronous { get { return true; } } } The key in this setup is the Invoker and the Invoke method which creates a new thread and then fires the request on this new thread. Because this approach creates a new thread for every request it's not super efficient. There's a bunch of overhead involved in creating the thread and throwing it away after each thread, but it'll work for low volume requests and insure each thread runs in STA mode. If better performance is required it would be useful to create a custom thread manager that can pool a number of STA threads and hand off threads as needed rather than creating new threads on every request. If your Web Service needs are simple and you need only to serve standard SOAP 1.x requests, I would recommend sticking with ASMX services. It's easier to set up and work with and for STA component use it'll be significantly better performing since ASP.NET manages the STA thread pool for you rather than firing new threads for each request. One nice thing about Scotts code is though that it works in any WCF environment including self hosting. It has no dependency on ASP.NET or WebForms for that matter. STA - If you must STA components are a  pain in the ass and thankfully there isn't too much stuff out there anymore that requires it. But when you need it and you need to access STA functionality from .NET at least there are a few options available to make it happen. Each of these solutions is a bit hacky, but they work - I've used all of them in production with good results with FoxPro components. I hope compiling all of these in one place here makes it STA consumption a little bit easier. I feel your pain :-) Resources Download STA Handler Code Examples Scott Seely's original STA WCF OperationBehavior Article© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in FoxPro   ASP.NET  .NET  COM   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • Editing Routes in ASP.NET MVC

    - by imran_ku07
    Introduction :        Phil Haack's had written two great articles about Editable Routes, Editable Routes or Editable Routes Using App_Code.These Article are great. But if you not need to unit test your Routes and don't care about restart Application Domian during editing your Routes then global.asax file is the fastest and easiest to achieve the same. In this Article I will use Global.asax file instead of Global.asax.cs file for defining Routes and you will also see how this whole process will works.   Description :          You just need to Cut (or Copy) the code inside Global.asax.cs and paste it in Global.asax inside runat server tag.          You can simply do this by cutting the code of Global.asax.cs,          and paste it inside Global.asax,               Easy and quick ,Now you can change Global.asax without compiling the application. How this works :        I think it is worth here to see what is happening here.        Actually, ASP.NET will use Global.asax file to create a class named global_asax within ASP namespace and place all the code in Global.asax inside the class global_asax class which is created at runtime,                namespace ASP               {                    public class global_asax: NerdDinner.MvcApplication                    {                         //Any definitions defined in Global.asax like Application_Start method                                     }               }         Which inherits from class defined in Application tag,      <%@ Application Codebehind="Global.asax.cs" Inherits="NerdDinner.MvcApplication" Language="C#" %>          Actually ASP.NET creates a pool of application objects of this class, which varies from 1 to 100. Every request take one of these application objects to a serve incoming requests. After receiving an application object then it will call application specific events, like Application_Start(for only firstRequest), Application_BeginRequest(for every request), and so on. Therefore if these methods are defined in global_asax class then ASP.NET will call these method from global_asax, if not then it will use base class methods may be defined in Global.asax.cs(the concept known as shadowing or hiding). Summary :        In this article, I showed how easily and quickly you can make your Routes Editable. But also note that any change in global.asax results in Application Domain restart and this technique also makes your Route Unit Test difficult.

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  • Visual Studio RTM, Silverlight 4 RTM and WCF RIA Services download links

    - by Harish Ranganathan
    Its been a long time since I blogged.  Primarily due to Tech Ed India, the ongoing Great Indian Developer Summit (GIDS 2010) and the related travels.  However, here is a quick post with a few updates.  Visual Studio 2010 RTMed in India during Tech Ed.  We had the privilege of having Soma our Senior VP launch VS 2010 RTM in Bangalore, India, during Tech Ed India 2010.   With that we also had Silverlight 4 getting RTMed during the same week. Earlier I had written posts around using the VS 2010 Beta, RC and the corresponding Silverlight, WCF RIA bits etc., and getting them all to work together.  Now that, both VS 2010 and Silverlight have RTMed, I wanted to post a quick update on the necessary downloads. Visual Studio 2010 RTM can be downloaded from MSDN Visual Studio site  If you are doing Silverlight 4 development with Visual studio, then you can download the Silverlight 4 Tools RC2 for Visual Studio  Then, if you are developing with WCF RIA Services, you can download the WCF RIA Services RC 2 for SL4 and VS 2010 And finally, if you want to use WCF RIA Services in ASP.NET you would require the Domain DataSource control.  Also, to use some of the additional Service Utility tools, you would require the WCF RIA Services Toolkit.  You can download the same from WCF RIA Services Toolkit April 2010 Once you have installed all the above, you should be able to see the following in your add-remove programs WCF RIA Services v1.0 for Visual Studio 2010 (Version 4.0.50401.0) WCF RIA Services Toolkit (Version 4.0.50401.0) Microsoft Silverlight (Version 4.0.50401.0) Microsoft Silverlight 4 SDK (Version 4.0.50401.0) Also, you would need the Expression Blend 4 for designing the apps for Silverlight 4.  You can download the release candidate from here Thats it.  You are all set for development with Visual Studio 2010 and Silverlight 4, WCF RIA Services. Cheers !!!

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  • Daily tech links for .net and related technologies - Mar 26-28, 2010

    - by SanjeevAgarwal
    Daily tech links for .net and related technologies - Mar 26-28, 2010 Web Development Creating Rich View Components in ASP.NET MVC - manzurrashid Diagnosing ASP.NET MVC Problems - Brad Wilson Templated Helpers & Custom Model Binders in ASP.NET MVC 2 - gshackles The jQuery Templating Plugin and Why You Should Be Excited! - Chris Love Web Deployment Made Awesome: If You're Using XCopy, You're Doing It Wrong - Scott Hansleman Dynamic User Specific CSS Selection at Run Time - Misfit Geek Sending email...(read more)

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  • Daily tech links for .net and related technologies - June 8-11, 2010

    - by SanjeevAgarwal
    Daily tech links for .net and related technologies - June 8-11, 2010 Web Development ASPNET MVC: Handling Multiple Buttons on a Form with jQuery - Donn Building a MVC2 Template, Part 14, Logging Services - Eric Simple Accordion Menu With jQuery & ASP.NET - Steve Boschi Conditional Validation in MVC -Simonince Creating a RESTful Web Service Using ASP.Net MVC Part 23 – Bug Fixes and Area Support - Shoulders of Giants Web Design The Principles Of Cross-Browser CSS Coding - Louis Lazaris Transparency...(read more)

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  • MVC Pattern, ViewModels, Location of conversion.

    - by Pino
    I've been working with ASP.Net MVC for around a year now and have created my applications in the following way. X.Web - MVC Application Contains Controller and Views X.Lib - Contains Data Access, Repositories and Services. This allows us to drop the .Lib into any application that requires it. At the moment we are using Entity Framework, the conversion from EntityO to a more specific model is done in the controller. This set-up means if a service method returns an EntityO and then the Controller will do a conversion before the data is passed to a view. I'm interested to know if I should move the conversion to the Service so that the app doesn't have Entity Objects being passed around.

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  • Project Navigation and File Nesting in ASP.NET MVC Projects

    - by Rick Strahl
    More and more I’m finding myself getting lost in the files in some of my larger Web projects. There’s so much freaking content to deal with – HTML Views, several derived CSS pages, page level CSS, script libraries, application wide scripts and page specific script files etc. etc. Thankfully I use Resharper and the Ctrl-T Go to Anything which autocompletes you to any file, type, member rapidly. Awesome except when I forget – or when I’m not quite sure of the name of what I’m looking for. Project navigation is still important. Sometimes while working on a project I seem to have 30 or more files open and trying to locate another new file to open in the solution often ends up being a mental exercise – “where did I put that thing?” It’s those little hesitations that tend to get in the way of workflow frequently. To make things worse most NuGet packages for client side frameworks and scripts, dump stuff into folders that I generally don’t use. I’ve never been a fan of the ‘Content’ folder in MVC which is just an empty layer that doesn’t serve much of a purpose. It’s usually the first thing I nuke in every MVC project. To me the project root is where the actual content for a site goes – is there really a need to add another folder to force another path into every resource you use? It’s ugly and also inefficient as it adds additional bytes to every resource link you embed into a page. Alternatives I’ve been playing around with different folder layouts recently and found that moving my cheese around has actually made project navigation much easier. In this post I show a couple of things I’ve found useful and maybe you find some of these useful as well or at least get some ideas what can be changed to provide better project flow. The first thing I’ve been doing is add a root Code folder and putting all server code into that. I’m a big fan of treating the Web project root folder as my Web root folder so all content comes from the root without unneeded nesting like the Content folder. By moving all server code out of the root tree (except for Code) the root tree becomes a lot cleaner immediately as you remove Controllers, App_Start, Models etc. and move them underneath Code. Yes this adds another folder level for server code, but it leaves only code related things in one place that’s easier to jump back and forth in. Additionally I find myself doing a lot less with server side code these days, more with client side code so I want the server code separated from that. The root folder itself then serves as the root content folder. Specifically I have the Views folder below it, as well as the Css and Scripts folders which serve to hold only common libraries and global CSS and Scripts code. These days of building SPA style application, I also tend to have an App folder there where I keep my application specific JavaScript files, as well as HTML View templates for client SPA apps like Angular. Here’s an example of what this looks like in a relatively small project: The goal is to keep things that are related together, so I don’t end up jumping around so much in the solution to get to specific project items. The Code folder may irk some of you and hark back to the days of the App_Code folder in non Web-Application projects, but these days I find myself messing with a lot less server side code and much more with client side files – HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Generally I work on a single controller at a time – once that’s open it’s open that’s typically the only server code I work with regularily. Business logic lives in another project altogether, so other than the controller and maybe ViewModels there’s not a lot of code being accessed in the Code folder. So throwing that off the root and isolating seems like an easy win. Nesting Page specific content In a lot of my existing applications that are pure server side MVC application perhaps with some JavaScript associated with them , I tend to have page level javascript and css files. For these types of pages I actually prefer the local files stored in the same folder as the parent view. So typically I have a .css and .js files with the same name as the view in the same folder. This looks something like this: In order for this to work you have to also make a configuration change inside of the /Views/web.config file, as the Views folder is blocked with the BlockViewHandler that prohibits access to content from that folder. It’s easy to fix by changing the path from * to *.cshtml or *.vbhtml so that view retrieval is blocked:<system.webServer> <handlers> <remove name="BlockViewHandler"/> <add name="BlockViewHandler" path="*.cshtml" verb="*" preCondition="integratedMode" type="System.Web.HttpNotFoundHandler" /> </handlers> </system.webServer> With this in place, from inside of your Views you can then reference those same resources like this:<link href="~/Views/Admin/QuizPrognosisItems.css" rel="stylesheet" /> and<script src="~/Views/Admin/QuizPrognosisItems.js"></script> which works fine. JavaScript and CSS files in the Views folder deploy just like the .cshtml files do and can be referenced from this folder as well. Making this happen is not really as straightforward as it should be with just Visual Studio unfortunately, as there’s no easy way to get the file nesting from the VS IDE directly (you have to modify the .csproj file). However, Mads Kristensen has a nice Visual Studio Add-in that provides file nesting via a short cut menu option. Using this you can select each of the ‘child’ files and then nest them under a parent file. In the case above I select the .js and .css files and nest them underneath the .cshtml view. I was even toying with the idea of throwing the controller.cs files into the Views folder, but that’s maybe going a little too far :-) It would work however as Visual Studio doesn’t publish .cs files and the compiler doesn’t care where the files live. There are lots of options and if you think that would make life easier it’s another option to help group related things together. Are there any downside to this? Possibly – if you’re using automated minification/packaging tools like ASP.NET Bundling or Grunt/Gulp with Uglify, it becomes a little harder to group script and css files for minification as you may end up looking in multiple folders instead of a single folder. But – again that’s a one time configuration step that’s easily handled and much less intrusive then constantly having to search for files in your project. Client Side Folders The particular project shown above in the screen shots above is a traditional server side ASP.NET MVC application with most content rendered into server side Razor pages. There’s a fair amount of client side stuff happening on these pages as well – specifically several of these pages are self contained single page Angular applications that deal with 1 or maybe 2 separate views and the layout I’ve shown above really focuses on the server side aspect where there are Razor views with related script and css resources. For applications that are more client centric and have a lot more script and HTML template based content I tend to use the same layout for the server components, but the client side code can often be broken out differently. In SPA type applications I tend to follow the App folder approach where all the application pieces that make the SPA applications end up below the App folder. Here’s what that looks like for me – here this is an AngularJs project: In this case the App folder holds both the application specific js files, and the partial HTML views that get loaded into this single SPA page application. In this particular Angular SPA application that has controllers linked to particular partial views, I prefer to keep the script files that are associated with the views – Angular Js Controllers in this case – with the actual partials. Again I like the proximity of the view with the main code associated with the view, because 90% of the UI application code that gets written is handled between these two files. This approach works well, but only if controllers are fairly closely aligned with the partials. If you have many smaller sub-controllers or lots of directives where the alignment between views and code is more segmented this approach starts falling apart and you’ll probably be better off with separate folders in js folder. Following Angular conventions you’d have controllers/directives/services etc. folders. Please note that I’m not saying any of these ways are right or wrong  – this is just what has worked for me and why! Skipping Project Navigation altogether with Resharper I’ve talked a bit about project navigation in the project tree, which is a common way to navigate and which we all use at least some of the time, but if you use a tool like Resharper – which has Ctrl-T to jump to anything, you can quickly navigate with a shortcut key and autocomplete search. Here’s what Resharper’s jump to anything looks like: Resharper’s Goto Anything box lets you type and quick search over files, classes and members of the entire solution which is a very fast and powerful way to find what you’re looking for in your project, by passing the solution explorer altogether. As long as you remember to use (which I sometimes don’t) and you know what you’re looking for it’s by far the quickest way to find things in a project. It’s a shame that this sort of a simple search interface isn’t part of the native Visual Studio IDE. Work how you like to work Ultimately it all comes down to workflow and how you like to work, and what makes *you* more productive. Following pre-defined patterns is great for consistency, as long as they don’t get in the way you work. A lot of the default folder structures in Visual Studio for ASP.NET MVC were defined when things were done differently. These days we’re dealing with a lot more diverse project content than when ASP.NET MVC was originally introduced and project organization definitely is something that can get in the way if it doesn’t fit your workflow. So take a look and see what works well and what might benefit from organizing files differently. As so many things with ASP.NET, as things evolve and tend to get more complex I’ve found that I end up fighting some of the conventions. The good news is that you don’t have to follow the conventions and you have the freedom to do just about anything that works for you. Even though what I’ve shown here diverges from conventions, I don’t think anybody would stumble over these relatively minor changes and not immediately figure out where things live, even in larger projects. But nevertheless think long and hard before breaking those conventions – if there isn’t a good reason to break them or the changes don’t provide improved workflow then it’s not worth it. Break the rules, but only if there’s a quantifiable benefit. You may not agree with how I’ve chosen to divert from the standard project structures in this article, but maybe it gives you some ideas of how you can mix things up to make your existing project flow a little nicer and make it easier to navigate for your environment. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in ASP.NET  MVC   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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