February 2008 - Posts
This article presents a simple HTML parser library developed for an automated application. The parser mainly detects tag syntax and it can collect a tag pair as a group.
The parser was intended to be used with HTML content retrieved by .Net WebResponse class. So Ruxo Zheng also have developed a tool, named NativeWebSurf, that downloads HTML content by WebResponse and uses its parser to parse it into an HTML structure.
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This is an interesting project. You can find on this site all the latest Asp.Net newsgroups posts with some search features.
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The first public beta of Silverlight 2.0 is expected from Microsoft in the next few weeks. By all accounts, those that have seen the private beta report that the features outlined by the General Manager of Microsoft's Developer Division, Scott Guthrie, in a November blog posting are pretty much on track.
Silverlight 2.0 will provide a subset of the .NET Framework and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) so that developers and designers can build rich Internet applications (RIAs). Silverlight 1.0, which shipped in September, is primarily a media player for video and other content that uses a JavaScript programming model.
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Get up to speed with ASP.NET AJAX by building a simple Virtual Earth mashup.
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Dino Esposito introduces the ASP.NET DynamicGridView Control.
Dynamic Data Controls are a new family of strongly-typed data-oriented controls made available with the first CTP of ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions. Right after installing the package, a brand new project template shows up in your Visual Studio 2008 project box - Dynamic Data Web site. If you choose to create such a new project, you instantly get a complete Web application that just works and allows you to view and edit all the tables bound to a given LINQ-to-SQL domain model. Put another way, the Dynamic Data engine can give you a back-office application to edit and fill the contents consumed by a Web application. At least for relatively simple admin scenarios, you get the final code in a matter of seconds. And all that you have to do is point the web.config file of the auto-generated project to your LINQ-to-SQL DBML class.
The Web application you get in this way contains a few predefined pages and user controls and makes use of a handful of new data-bound controls. By editing page templates and user controls, you can further customize the vanilla code, polish and adapt it to your needs and preferences. At this point, many developers spend their time trying to figure out how to adapt the scaffolded site to their needs. Customization may happen at several levels. You can change page templates, indicate ad hoc pages for displaying data from certain tables, change the way in which a few data types are rendered and edited, add attributes to your domain model that the scaffolded site will automatically recognize and dynamically apply.
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Introduction
Go to any travel or event booking website and you'll find the same user interface for collecting date information: the Calendar. Providing such an interface in an ASP.NET application is a breeze, thanks to the built-in Calendar Web control. There are two downsides to ASP.NET's Calendar control: first, it is not very useful when selecting dates far into the future or past, as you can only navigate to the next or previous month; and, second, the Calendar does not use AJAX techniques, so each click, be it selecting a date or moving to the next or previous month, requires a full postback.
Mehmet Genc addressed this first shortcoming in Extending the Calendar Control's Date Navigation by showing how to add month and year drop-down lists. But Mehmet's article was written in 2004 and since then AJAX-enabled websites have become all the rage. I decided it was high time to update Mehmet's custom Calendar control to support AJAX. Specifically, I implemented the AJAX-enabled Calendar control as a User Control. The User Control renders a TextBox control that, when clicked, displays a Calendar control from which the user can select the date. Like with Mehmet's Calendar, users can quickly jump to a particular month or year by using two drop-down lists. And best of all, the user experience is very responsive.
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This is an example of a customized tag/search cloud.
Features
- Free Source Code or Component-Only
- Generated by Dataset (use with XML, Databases, Programmatically Created, etc.)
- Optional 2-Color Gradient Cloud
- Various Font Size Units (em, px, pt, %)
- Max and Min Font Sizes (in Hex format)
- Sort by a field name, ascending or descending
- Customizable URL w/ variables
- Customizable Link Title Format w/ variables
- Assignable CSS Class
- Ability to add custom HTML attributes to links (w/ variables)
- XHTML Valid and CSS Friendly
Download and documentation
Latest Assembly Version: 1.0.0.36834
See: SearchCloud Page for Latest Download and Implementation
In this article, Joydip explains the basics of the MVC design pattern, the advantages and the disadvantages of it. He also examines how effectively we can decouple the business logic layer of an application from the UI layer. The article provides source code to illustrate the concepts in C# with relevant explanation.
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This book is the fruit of a collaborative work. In a time of globalization, where ideas know no frontiers, this is a refreshing take on a hot topic like LINQ.
We have here three well known experts in their fields (Fabrice Marguerie, Steve Eichert, Jim Wooley) coming together to produce an excellent text book on LINQ.
The introduction is an appetizer for what comes next.
LINQ is not a language you will fall in love with at first sight. It demands that you get to know it but when you do you're hooked.
In this book we get a good summary outlining why we can't live without LINQ anymore. Also, a nice touch from the authors is that the code is written in both C# and VB.NET. It's a pity that this is not continued throughout the book. However, according to the writers, all the samples used in the book are available for download in both languages. So guys you are forgiven!
Because LINQ introduces new features, a full chapter is dedicated to C# 3.0 and VB.NET 9.0 enhancements. This chapter is for me the weakest part of the book. Even if LINQ in action is not intended for beginners, I would suggest to the readers to skip this section and come back to it later, because it will give intermediate developers the idea that LINK is only comprehendible by experts. It is too complicated too early in the book.
The rest of the book is cleverly divided into roughly three parts: LINQ for objects, LINQ for XML and LINQ for SQL. It is a very good idea indeed to have pushed the SQL part further down, after all, LINQ is much more than a mere language for relational databases. It is an advanced technology with many capabilities. For example, Object paradigm is at the heart of LINQ and this is well demonstrated throughout the book.
To conclude I would warmly recommend this book but for intermediate developers not for real beginners because some of the explanations introduced by the authors are not for the faint hearted!
I also give credit to the authors for creating from a blank canvas something as colorful as this book about LINQ. A hard challenge when you consider that nobody has really fully embraced the concept in a commercial application to date.
It's also a first book for Fabrice Marguerie, who I know well by his blog. Fabrice is a strong minded person, an expert in Object Relational Mapping, which gives you even more reason to purchase this book.
Check how to purchase the book on Manning website...
Microsoft released the first CTP of ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions and it includes ASP.NET MVC Framework as one of the main extensions for ASP.NET 3.5. In the first part of this article series about building a simple blog engine with ASP.NET MVC and LINQ, Keyvan introduces the MVC pattern, ASP.NET MVC Framework, and the fundamentals of a simple blogging engine.
Read the Part 2...
Read the Part 1...
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