Carlos Figueroa

Visual Studio interesting tool

2008-05-23T20:04:00Z

One of the tools I have found very interesting lately is RockScroll, developed by Rocky Downs. It basically extends the scrollbar in Visual Studio to show a syntax highlighted thumbnail view of your source. This is very useful when you have large code files as for instance this CS file generated by Visual Studio when you create a Linq to SQL class containing all the tables in the Nortwind database. I am exploring line 2450, but I can easily figure it out in which part of the document I am working...(read more)

Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 Beta are now available

2008-05-13T02:32:00Z

From ScottGu's Blog: "Earlier today we shipped a public beta of our upcoming .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 releases. These servicing updates provide a roll-up fixes and performance improvements for issues reported since we released the products last November. They also contain a number of feature additions and enhancements that make building .NET applications better. We plan to ship the final release of both .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 this summer as free updates." You can find Installation Notes...(read more)

The easiest way to start with ASP.NET 3.5 Dynamic Data

2008-05-09T16:48:00Z

This post is meant to introduce you to one of the six new features that are coming with ASP.NET Extensions. You can find an introduction post about extensions here.

Step 1: Get the machine ready

Be sure you have already installed Visual Studio 2008 (any version) or Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition. Also it is mandatory to install any SQL Server 2000, 2005, 2008 version.

Download and install ASP.NET 3.5 extensions preview. (3.6 MB)

Download and install .NET 3.5 enhancements training kit. (34.9 MB)

After you have installed the training kit, go to the folder you have installed it, and look for the setup folder into the AspNetDynamicData Labs; in my case C:\NETFramework35Enhancements_TrainingKit\Labs\AspNetDynamicData\Setup.

There you will find the file Lab_CreateDatabase.sql. Execute it from a SQL Server Console to create the data model used in this example.

Step 2: Create a Dynamic Data application project

Open Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 from Start | All Programs | Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 | Microsoft Visual Studio 2008.
On the File menu, point to New Project.
In the New Project dialog box select Visual C# | Web. Make sure that .NET Framework 3.5 is selected and select the Dynamic Data Web Application project type. You may set the name to AspNetDynamicData and the location to AspNetDynamicData\Ex01-CreatingDynamicDataApp\begin which is the provided folder.
Click OK to create the application project.

Step 3: Adding the database to the project

In this task you will add a new connection to the AdventureWorks database, so then you can create classes to represent database entities by using LINQ to SQL classes.

Add a new database connection in the Server Explorer. To do this, in Server Explorer, right-click Data Connections and click Add Connection. (to display Server Explorer if it is not being shown, press Ctrl + Alt + S)

In the Add Connection dialog window, enter the name of your SQL Server instance as Server Name, then select AdventureWorksLT database and click OK.

Step 4: Create the database model

In this task you will create the database model using LINQ to SQL classes; Visual Studio will persist out .NET classes that represent the entities and the database relationships modeled.

Add an App_Code folder in the case that the Web site does not already have one. To do this, in Solution Explorer, right-click the project, point to Add New Folder, and then type App_Code.

Add the LINQ to SQL class that will represent the database model. To do this, right-click the App_Code folder and then click Add New Item. On the Add New Item dialog, click on LINQ to SQL Classes. Type AdventureWorks.dbml in the Name textbox and click Add.

Add some database tables to the AdventureWorks LINQ to SQL class. To do this, in Server Explorer, expand the AdventureWorksLT connection node you have added in the previous task, and expand the Tables node by clicking on the + (plus sign) next to each node. Drag the following tables into the Object Relational Designer:

Product(SalesLT)

ProductCategory(SalesLT)

ProductModel(SalesLT)

Save the AdventureWorks.dbml file. To do this, press Ctrl + S. Note: If you open the AdventureWorks.designer.cs file, you will notice that it now has the AdventureWorksDataContext, Product, ProductCategory and ProductModel classes. The AdventureWorksDataContext class represents the database, and the Product, ProductCategory, and ProductModel classes represent database tables. The parameterless constructor of the AdventureWorksDataContext class reads the connection string from the Web.Config file. If you open the Web.Config file, you will notice that the connection string has been added in the connectionStrings element.

Step 5: Enabling scaffolding

Enable automatic scaffolding feature in the Dynamic Data application. To do this, open the Web.config file and find the DynamicData section. Change the value of the enableTemplates property to true. Automatic scaffolding is not enabled by default for security reasons, because you are exposing all the tables in the data model for display and edit operations.

<dynamicData dataContextType="" enableTemplates="true">

Save and close the Web.config file.

Now you can run the application and navigate your data model from the Default.aspx file and perform data operations. From this point you can also modify the scaffolding infrastructure to extend and personalize the web site.

Regards,

Carlos Figueroa - Quito, Ecuador

How to implement Cross-Page Posting in Web Applications

2008-05-08T16:09:00Z

One of the development features that ASP.NET 1.x developers have ever wanted is to be able to submit a form, and have this form and all the control values post themselves to another page. This is something that is possible in ASP.NET 3.5, and it is quite simple process.

First, create a page called Page1.aspx that contains a simple form just like this:

Here you can clearly identify a Textbox to capture the name, a Calendar to capture the flight date, a Button to post it to the same page (Page1.aspx), a Button to post it to another page (Page2.aspx), and a Label to show the information when the page is posted back to itself.

It is important to notice that Button2 has an attribute called PostBackUrl which value is the page that will be posted back when clicked.

This code has to be added to Page1.aspx to implement the behavior when the Button1 is clicked:

At this point it is possible to run the application and to see what the first button does:

This is the traditional behavior, any page created in ASP.NET 1.0/1.1 simply posted to itself, and you handled the control values within this page instance. Button2 is able to post back the data and objects contained in Page1.aspx to Page2.aspx, but Page2.aspx must read if from somewhere. This is how Page2.aspx has to be implemented:

There are two ways to recover data from the previous page. The first one is using the FindControl method in the PreviousPage property using the text name of the previous page object as a parameter and performing a cast to assign it to a local variable. Then you can forget about previous page and work with the local variable as usual. But as I said before, there is another way to acomplish this...

To do this it is mandatory to expose your controls as public properties in Page1.aspx like in the figure:

Now it is possible to refer to these properties from Page2.aspx. To do this it is important to include the PreviousPageType directive (line 2) and the value of the VirtualPath attribute must be the previous page. When it has been done, you can access the previous page properties directly from the PreviousPage property:

When running the application and selecting "Submit page to Page2.aspx", the result should look like this:

Finally, what happens if someone requests Page2.aspx before it works its way through Page1.aspx? It is actually quite easy to determine if the request is coming from Page1.aspx of if someone just hit Page2.aspx directly. You can work with the request through the use of the IsCrossPagePostBack property that is quite similar to the IsPostBack property from ASP.NET 1.0/1.1. The IsCrossPagePostBack property enables you to check whether the request is from Page1.aspx.

Examples taken from Professional ASP.NET 3.5 (Evjen, Hanselman, Rader)

Regards,

Carlos Figueroa - Quito, Ecuador

ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions... What are the new features anyway? How can I get started?

2008-05-07T21:20:00Z

New features are being added to ASP.NET and ADO.NET this year that increase the power of the .NET Framework 3.5. These enhancements target:

Enabling high productivity data scenarios by using the .NET Entity Framework, ADO.NET Data Services, ASP.NET MVC, and ASP.NET Dynamic Data.
Supporting test-driven development by using a powerful and extensible ASP.NET MVC framework.
Creating the best server for rich clients by using AJAX history support and ASP.NET controls for Silverlight.

ASP.NET controls for Silverlight

You can integrate the rich behavior of Microsoft Silverlight into your Web application by using the familiar model of ASP.NET server controls. The MediaPlayer server control lets you integrate media sources such as audio (WMA) and video (WMV) and take advantage of rich built-in media player skins. The Silverlight server control lets you add your own Silverlight XAML content to ASP.NET pages, using a custom JavaScript type of a Silverlight 2 managed-code XAP package.

ASP.NET MVC

ASP.NET MVC provides a framework that enables you to easily implement the model-view-controller (MVC) pattern for Web applications. This pattern lets you separate applications into loosely coupled, pluggable components for application design, processing logic, and display. ASP.NET MVC also greatly facilitates test-driven development (TDD).

ASP.NET Dynamic Data

ASP.NET Dynamic Data helps developers build a fully customizable, data-driven app quickly. It provides a rich scaffolding framework that allows rapid data driven development without writing code, yet it is easily extendible using the traditional ASP.NET programming model.

ADO.NET Entity Framework

ADO.NET Entity Framework is a new modeling framework that enables developers to define a conceptual model of a database schema that closely aligns to a real world view of the information. Benefits include easier to understand and easier to maintain application code that is shielded from underlying database schema changes.

ADO.NET Data Services

ADO.NET Data Services provide new services that find, manipulate and deliver data over the web using simple URIs. Benefits include an easy and flexible way to access data over the web, while enabling the separation of presentation and data access code.

ASP.NET AJAX

New additions to ASP.NET AJAX include support for managing browser history (Back button support).

Sounds interesting... So, how can I start playing with it?

Download the Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008 that includes the new ASP.NET MediaPlayer and Silverlight server controls.

Download the ASP.NET MVC Preview 2 release that contains the latest version of the ASP.NET MVC framework and related Visual Studio tools support.

Download the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview (December 2007) release that includes the ADO.NET Entity Framework runtime, ADO.NET Data Services, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, and new additions to ASP.NET AJAX.

Note: The ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview (December 2007) also contains older versions of the ASP.NET controls for Silverlight and the ASP.NET MVC framework and tools support. While MS recommend that you uninstall the previous releases before using the new ASP.NET MVC Preview 2 release for Visual Studio 2008, it is not dangerous to have both the Extensions Preview and the Preview 2 versions of the MVC installed. Make sure to use the new Web application project templates to create new ASP.NET MVC Web applications instead of using the Web application project templates that the previous released installed.

Uhmm... Download... done! but... where can I find information about how to use it?

Ok... don't panic... there are at least three good sources of information that I know so far

Quickstarts to learn more about the new features being added to ASP.NET and ADO.NET

Videos that cover the new features being added to ASP.NET and ADO.NET

.NET Framework 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit containing Labs, Demos and PPTs

Finally, where can I ask questions and discuss?

ASP.NET controls for Silverlight Forum. Question and discussions related to new ASP.NET controls for Silverlight.

ASP.NET MVC Forum. Question and discussions related to ASP.NET MVC.

ASP.NET MVC Dynamic Data Forum. Question and discussions related to ASP.NET Dynamic Data.

ADO.NET Entity Framework Forum. Question and discussions related to ADO.NET Entity Framework.

ADO.NET Data Services Forum. Question and discussions related to ADO.NET Data Services.

ASP.NET AJAX UI Forum. Question and discussions related to ASP.NET AJAX

ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview Forum. Setup issues and general questions regarding the ASP.NET Extensions Preview (December 2007) release.

Regards,

Carlos Figueroa - Quito, Ecuador

It is still the time to buy good ASP.NET books (with discount)

2008-05-07T02:42:00Z

This morning Scott Guthrie announced this book was only $16; when normally it is $54.99. Right now it is $27.49, and even though I bought it a month ago when it was $35 it is worth it! 1673 pages of fun with the best web development technology ever ASP.NET 3.5, in C# and VB (I prefer C#, always).

Another thing that is very remarkable, please check the Amazon.com Sales Rank... right now it is #5 in Books of all topics, an excellent ranking specially due to the fact that it is a technology book !!!

My personal opinion, I bought it and I really enjoyed it. A great book to catch up with the lastest concepts and examples about ASP.NET 3.5 and a good book for reference. I strongly recommend it.

Disclosure agreement: I am not a Microsoft employee, Wrox employee or relative of any of the authors; I am only a big fan of technology.

Regards,

Carlos Figueroa - Quito, Ecuador.

Scott Guthrie is the 28th most influential person in IT (eWeek)

2008-05-06T01:40:00Z

I read this in Joe Stagner's blog this morning. Like it says on the eWeek report, they "looked for people who not only had a tangible track record of IT success, but also have far-reaching influence, the ability to effect change and a deep level of engagement in developing emerging technologies".

In late 1998, Scott and Marc Anders generated what they called XSP (an abbreviation with no meaning) - a new way of creating Web applications in and object-oriented manner instead of the procedural manner of ASP 3.0. They showed their idea to many different groups within Microsoft, and they were well received. In the summer of 2000, the beta of what was then called ASP+ was released at Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference. The attendees eagerly started working with it. When the technology became available (with the final release of the .NET Framework 1.0), it was renamed ASP.NET - receiving the .NET moniker that most of Microsoft's new products were receiving at that time. (Taken from the introduction of the book Professional ASP.NET 3.5 Evjen, Hanselman, Rader).

Nowadays, Scott is a Vice President in the Microsoft Developer Division. He runs the development teams that build ASP.NET, Common Language Runtime (CLR), Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Silverlight, Windows Forms, Internet Information Services 7.0, Commerce Server, .NET Compact Framework, Visual Web Developer and Visual Studio Web and Client Development Tools. He is best known for his work on ASP.NET, which he and his colleague Marc Anders developed while at Microsoft. (Architecture Journal Profile).

I decided to start my blogging adventure with this post because I do like ASP.NET (a lot!!!). It is not only the technology I prefer to implement web solutions, but my hobby too. It is great to know this innovation will never stop because always something new shows up, and it is challenging to take this innovation into the real world every day. Ok, I have started blogging... I hope this also never stops!

Regards,

Carlos Figueroa - Quito, Ecuador