Archives
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Silverlight 4 - MVVM with Commanding and WCF RIA Services
Note: The code example in this post uses Silverlight 4 PDC Beta and WCR RIA Services PDC Beta, so some changes can be made before RTM.
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WCF RIA Services Unity DomainServiceFactory
Note: This post is based on WCR RIA Services PDC beta and changes can be made in a future release.
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WCF RIA Services and a guide to use DTO/”Presentation Model”
NOTE: Examples in this blog post is based on the VS 2010 Beta 2, WCF RIA Services PDC Beta, some changes to the WCF RIA Services can happen until RTM.
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WCF RIA Services Binding Deep dive
Note: This is based on WCF RIA Services beta, and some stuffs can change in a future release.
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Refresh the cached EntitySet after a SubmitChanges – WCF RIA Services
Note: This post is based on the WCF RIA Services PDC Beta.
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Using the WebBrowser control and debug a Silverlight Out-of-browser (OOB) application in VS 2010
Yesterday I played with the WebBrowser control shipped with Silverlight 4. I was trying to create a little RSS Reader for Silverlight 4, only to try out some of the new features. The WebBrowser control have two methods to display a web page, the Navigate and the NavigateToString. The Navigate takes an URI, the NavigateToString takes a string with for example HTML to be diplsyed inside of the WebBrowser window. In my case I didn’t want to use the Navigate, instead the NavigateToString so I could just grab some RSS feeds and get the body of a post and pass it to the WebBrowser control. First of all I notice that the WebBrowser control will only work in a Out-of-browser application, if we try to use it in a browser we will se the following:
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Silverlight 4 and Asynchronous Validation with INotifyDataErrorInfo
During this week I helped a company with the design of a RIA with Silverlight. In the existing Web and Window Forms application they have a form where the users can enter an account id (or was it a customer id ;)). When they leave the TextBox they did a check if the account id already exists or not. They use their own way of showing the validation message. Now in the new application they want to use the red boxes showed up in Silverlight when a validation fails. In Silverlight 3 the validation only showed up if the bounded property of a TextBox thrown an exception in the set method. It’s not easy to manually trigger the nice red validation message box for a specific control outside the set method of a bounded property. Every call to the service layer from the Client should be asynchronous and in that way the callback can’t trigger the validation error box. With Silverlight 4 it’s now possible to notify when a validation fails when an async. method is completed. This is thanks to the INotifyDataErrorInfo interface. This interface can be used to notify the UI when an validation fails, and that can be done outside the set method of a property, for example in a async. callback method. The INotifyDataErrorInfo has the following members:
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WCF RIA Services – What you need to know when creating DTO/Presentation Model
Note: This is based on the WCF RIA Services Beta, so the code in this post can change in a future release of the framework.
When defining DTO or a “Presentation Model” (Not the Presentation Model pattern by Martin Fowler, a model suited for presentation purpose, not all entities are) there are things you may want to now. The following is an simple DTO: -
WCF RIA Services and DTO with association
This post will be short, I notice that some people are asking about how to send an object graph which will include an association to other objects. First of all, be careful with the distribution of an object graph, wrong design can affect performance in a way that to much data is passed over the wire.
Here is an simple Order class, this class has OrderRows: -
Silverlight 4 Commanding enables ViewModels
One feature out of many really great feature shipped with Silverlight 4 Beta, is Commanding. With Commanding we can use the MVVM (Model View View Model) Pattern. Commanding is something that WPF has and preview Silverlight doesn’t. Commanding can only be used on ButtonBase controls and Hyperlink control at the moment, and will only be executed by the Click event. In this post I’m going to show how you can use the new Commanding feature and create use the MVVM pattern in Silverlight 4. Here is my simple UI:
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Is WCF RIA Services ready for the Enterprise?
Today Microsoft released the WCF RIA Services Beta, it’s now on top of WCF and by default uses binary data end points and data contract serialization. By using binary data end points we will get better performance and make the data sent over the wire smaller (The other preview versions uses pure JSON). WCF RIA Services is a great framework for Rapid Application Development (RAD) of 2-tier applications. Based on the new changes to the WCF RIA Services it’s defiantly ready for the Intranet and small applications, but how about the Enterprise. First of all if you uses the Entity Framework or Linq to SQL Domain Services, it’s not ready for the Enterprise and will never be, IMO, because when we use it it distribute DAL types to the client. They are useful for small data driven applications. BUT! WCF RIA Services with the DTO (Data Transfer Object) support will make it closer to be ready for the Enterprise, but is that enough?
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How to create a Module based Silverlight application (Part 1)
When building RIA (Rich Internet Application) with Silverlight, it’s important to make sure the Silverlight application is loaded as fast as possible. Users don’t like to see a splash screen for several seconds or minutes, they want an application to start directly. One way to make a Silverlight app load fast, is by minimizing the XAP file, this can be done by not adding to much images, videos or other files to the Silverlight application project. If we have a large application, we can also split the application into small “modules”, for example assemblies or .XAP files. We can then load them on demand when they are needed. The base application can be kept small and be the core engine for the other modules. In this first part of my blog post I will add some examples how we can split our Silverlight applications into modules, and load them on demand asynchronous. The next part will be about how to use MEF (Managed Extensibility Framework) to create module bases Silverlight application.
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Fluent-API to add ActionFilters to Controllers – ASP.NET MVC Part 3
The latest source code for my Fluent-API to add Action Filters to Controllers is no available here. If you haven’t read about my test project, you can find the other posts here:
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.NET 4.0 is so Lazy
With .NET 4.0 there is a new class added to the System namespace called Lazy<T>. This class is what the name says, lazy. Here is an example where Lazy is used:
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Fluent-API to add ActionFilters to Controllers – ASP.NET MVC Part 2
I’m working with my Fluent-API for adding Action Filters to Controllers and Action Methods. In my previous post, I created a new instance of each Action Filter and add it to an Action Method or Controller. Based on how the Action Filters are often implemented they don’t or shouldn’t keep any state, so in that case I don’t need to create a new instance of the same Action Filter with the same configuration for each Action Method I want to add it to. I also want to have an option to have a better overview of which Action Filter is added to which Controllers and Action Methods. I have added to methods, AddFilterToControllers and AddFilterToActions:
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Fluent-API to add ActionFilters to Controller in ASP.NET MVC
Note: The name of the classes and the methods are just temporary and may change, I’m so bad when it comes to naming classes and methods. The source code is simple and haven’t done so much refactoring etc. Just wanted to see if I could get it to work, so please have that in mind.
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Visual Studio 2010 Launch Countdown Sidebar Widget
<style type="text/css">
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Introduction to Templates in ASP.NET MVC 2 Screen cast
I have recorded some screen casts during the last week for Microsoft, one is was published today on Channel 9 (The Screen cast is in Swedish, I will eventually try to record screen casts also in English, but when that happens, I don’t now). You can found the screen cast here:
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/MSDNSweden/Introduktion-till-Template-i-ASPNET-MVC-2/