A link to Virtual Path Providers

Published 09 February 06 06:47 PM | despos

The first week of the month is when I usually start working on the MSDN Magazine Cutting Edge column. This month I was supposed to write about ASP.NET virtual path providers--that neat feature that allows you plug your own custom pseudo file system into ASP.NET. In this way, the runtime retrieves the source code of the requested resource asking your provider instead of going down to the physical file system. Designed to allow the next version of SharePoint to be built on top of ASP.NET 2.0, virtual path providers let you--for example--put most of your web site in a MDF database.

So I was just going to write such an article, but a quick search with Google--you never know what's in the Web--found this recently published article. It's just great, well written and insightful. To cut an otherwise long story short, I changed the topics being covered in the June 2006 issue of MSDN Magazine. Victor, great job!

Comments

# Victor Garcia Aprea said on February 9, 2006 10:38 PM:

Sorry about that! :-)

# DinoE said on February 10, 2006 04:29 AM:

Actually, reading a very well done article is easier than delving deep into the subject yourself :)

BTW--the new topic for Cutting Edge June 2006 is a custom provider-based service to enhance ASP.NET tracing.

# Victor Garcia Aprea said on February 10, 2006 01:59 PM:

Looking forward to it!

# KayaksTheAtlantic said on February 14, 2006 09:26 AM:

Dino,
If you are looking for ideas, how about hosting ASP.Net 2.0. The old Cassini articles are out of date. There seem to be lots of new classes in Hosting, but no examples. Hosting ASP.NET makes a great reporting engine when your data is not conveniently stored in some central repository. But there are lots of unanswered questions from a practical side, like who cleans up temp files and when. How to control the environment without letting users mess up web.config. Virtual Path would be great if there was some way to remove the restrictions when hsoting ASP.NET 2.0 yourself.

I'm still waiting for your book on ASP.NET 2.0 custom controls and will not buy another until yours is out.

# Maurizio Tammacco's blog said on October 3, 2006 08:19 AM:

Una tra le feature piùinnovative di ASP .NET 2.0 è il cosiddetto Virtual Path Provider. Devo dire...

# nathanaeljones said on June 6, 2008 03:11 PM:

I get a 404 trying to find the article you reference here.

If you're interested in VirtualPathProviders, here's some info I discovered:

nathanaeljones.com/11081_Using_a_custom_Virtual_Path_Provider_can_cause_OutOfMemoryExceptions

<a href="nathanaeljones.com/11081_Using_a_custom_Virtual_Path_Provider_can_cause_OutOfMemoryExceptions

">nathanaeljones.com/11081_Using_a_custom_Virtual_Path_Provider_can_cause_OutOfMemoryExceptions

</a>

Not sure what the syntax is, here :)  Hope one of the links work.

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