Guthrie and Hanselman, two of the best references in the Microsoft development world, wrote a step by step tutorial for building an ASP.NET MVC application from scratch. This will be added to a new ASP.NET MVC book to be released soon.
The tutorial is extremely detailed with screenshots, but it doesn’t go much deeper into the tool fundamentals (you should wait for the book or go through Hanselman or Scott tutorials in their blogs).
However it is nice to see how an application can be build on top of this cool new technology (to be released soon).
Our guys at UruIT have been using the Preview versions of this technologies with excellent results. It demonstrated to have a better organized and cleaner code, improving testing approach (TDD) among others.
So it worth sharing this cool resource. You can get all the details in the post by Scott Gu
Tags: Tutorials / Tips · ASP.NET
There is a lot of buzz around about the new MVC framework from Microsoft. This will be an Optional feature for those who want an implementation of an MVC architecture in ASP.NET.
Latest Scott Guthrie post explains in great detail how to implement a simple e-commerce site using the new framework.
MVC maps URLs to classes, instead of files in disk, as most of the other web frameworks do.
You need create your Controller classes (which use a ControllerAction attribute on each method to map the requested URL to the proper controller method and use the parameters requested from the URL).
Scott uses Linq to SQL ORM for coding the data model. You can use DataSets, N-Hibernate or whatever you like to handle the data access and data objects.
Having such a layer architecture improves not only maintanance but also reusability. You can easily change the controller logic to render different data to the same view page.
This architecture is also very convenient for implementing test cases for each layer/class. For example, you can have a N-Unit class to test each controller. You don’t need the View/browser to do your unit testing, so it simplifies this task a lot.
Finally you render the UI implementing Views, and having a RenderView method to the proper View from the Controller.
For the view, MVC supports aspx, ascx, master pages and AJAX.NET. MVC View Pages by default derive from the System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage base class. This class includes helpers that you can use in the UI, such as the Html.ActionLink Method that allow you to have links in the page mapping to a Controller method.
So far, using the MVC Framework is pretty straight forward.
I suggest you to read Socott Guthrie first post explaining the new model here with lot of concepts and clear samples.
Brad Adams also posted about using MVC for creating a RSS Feed and Frederk Normen wrote about using Spring.NET to handle dependencies when creating Controllers through a Controller Factory.
If you’d like to learn in detail about all of these MVC concepts, then go to Scott’s post right away !
Tags: ASP.NET
I’ve been very busy last month working for our new customer Nick, from UK. We are developing a new module for his ASP.NET Recruitment System. We worked almost 15 hours a day for the past week to finish with the tricky module on time !
That is why I haven’t updated my blog in a long time. I just had some time to read the hot topics in the blogs, and some other articles that helped me a lot with my current assignment. So these are some of the bookmarked links for October:
Without any doubts, the hottest announcement during October. Microsoft plans to ship a Model View Controler version for ASP.NET so you will be able to use this well known architecture in a simple way with ASP.NET.
Expose the database in a REST format with this new tool from MS. Big companies such as Ebay and Amazon uses this model for exposing the data, and even when it can reduce the data load and perform faster, for certain scenarios I believe that WebServices are still needed. It needs entity framework in order to work.
Samples, tutorials and simple tasks you can do with Silverlight 1.1.
Understand how the update panel works, and avoid some common mistakes when working with it.
Use these scripts to add AJAX functionality to ANY kind of website. These will definitely help to have your visitors happier.
NHibernate Data Source Control
A datasource control for NHibernate. If you use this ORM you must give it a try !
I hope these few links help you to be updated in this evolving world. Stay tuned, this week I’ll be writting about our outsourcing experience from Uruguay !
Tags: Resources · ASP.NET · AJAX.NET
Inspired by Scott Guthrie , the General Manager for MS Technologies, and source for most of the cool articles I usually read, I will be posting a Monthly list of Microsoft Articles and Code Samples that I liked the most over the past month. Every month there are hundreds of posts over there, but having a list of the best ones would save you time and effort.
Since now I am trying to focus in Design, Architecture and How To Apply Latest Microsoft Technologies to the Projects I work with, most of the articles I read are not about “low level” programming. But because I still work as .NET Web Developer for some of the Projects I am involved, I still need to read and learn a lot from a programmer perspective.
In these monthly posts I’ll cover the blog articles and samples that really added value to my developer/architect life. In order to come with this list I just went to my RSS Reader (I use and love Google Reader) and my del.icio.us account, among others.
Well, enough intro so far, these are some fo the posts that caught my attention and helped me during the month of August 2007. I hope you find something interesting for you as well, I categorized them for your better understanding.
ASP.NET, AJAX and Silverlight Articles and Samples.
How to customize the ASP.NET GridView control to have a better presentation for Sorting, Paging, Row Numbers, Page Size and GoToPage features, with just a few code lines. By Matt Berseth
This serie of 15 posts (so far), show us how to build a complete Web Site, similar to iTunes one, with a nice look&feel improved with Silverlight (1.1 alpha version). It is a great reading for all interested in watching Silverlight, ASP.NET and AJAX.NET Playing together. A must read and includes source code. By Jose Fajardo.
This post show the powerful new control available in the ASP.NET 3.5. It gives us full control of the layout, and when using CSS we end up having a rich and clean user interface. By Scott Gu
In August, the Applications Showcase in the Silverlight home page was updated. There are more than 10 amazing examples of what can be done using Silverlight. Companies are investing a lot of money following this hot trend. You can also check Taifiti, the new Microsoft Search Engine powered with Silverlight, released in August.
Async postbacks and page refresh can sometimes have some delay. During that time, user is still able to modify data in the page. When updatepanel refresh, data might be loss. We ran to this issue last week with some AJAX development we were working on. This control (still marked as “prototype”) disables the user interface (using a DIV and a bit of code) and displays a progress status bar to the user. It worth a try. By Matt Berseth.
Another good tip. You can declare Page Web Methods ( adding [System.Web.Services.WebMethod] attribute) in your ASPX and invoke it from client with just a few lines of code. Even this is useful, you need to be careful, because you are exposing more entry points to your application code. In next posts I’ll be writing about some AJAX security tips like reducing entry points, increasing parameter validations, using scr= includes and others. By Matt Berseth.
File Upload with AJAX
If you had to provide a file upload functionallity for any customer in the past, while using AJAX, then you probably found the XMLHTTPRequest object doesn’t support it. Alexander Gimenez pointed us to a good post for Creating an AJAX Style File Upload in a tricky way. There is also some other AJAX File Download control for downloading here.
A great example of new technologies comming up: ListView control, Datapager, LinqDataSource, Media Control and more. It works for Silverlight 1.0 and ASP.NET Futures July 2007. Includes Source Code and you need VS 2008 Beta 2 installed. Steve says he did it in one night. Amazing! By Steve Marx
Tools & Misc.
If you are a .NET programmer and you’re trying to increase your productivity, this is the place to search. Scott has a complete list of tools (most of them are free) that will help you in your daily coding. It is categorized and every tool has a good description. I cannot believe he is using all of them ! Some are well known, but some are not and those also deserves a try! by Scott Hanselman
“On this final episode of the .NET Show, Scott Guthrie, general manager for .NET Platform technologies, and Jason Zander, general manager for the .NET Framework, join host Robert Hess to discuss and demonstrate Silverlight”. Just click Play and Enjoy.
I hope this helps ! And if you have some other post to recommend from past month, just drop a comment !
Tags: Resources · Silverlight · ASP.NET · AJAX.NET
