Gunnar Peipman's ASP.NET blog

We recently implemented some changes in the software development methodology used at Developers Team and quite by chance encountered an interesting .Net 2.0 problem. Namely, when an object array inherited from the same base class is cast on a base class and submitted to the data binder, the latter gets confused. The array contained objects from different classes but all these classes had one and the same base class.

Some time ago I had to clone objects and .Net's shallow copy proved to be insufficient – it was necessary to use deep copy. No good tools are provided by .Net itself. If required, the object to be cloned must conform to the ICloneable interface and the Clone() method can be defined for the object. As the classes were not very numerous, but relatively bulky and complicated, there was no point in writing a Clone() method for all of them. I needed something else.

In addition to other new and interesting things ASP.NET also brought along controllers supporting representation of hierarchical data. This posting introduces IHierarchyData and IHierarchyEnumerable interfaces we can use to create wrappers for classes representing hierarchical data of the business logic layer.

I recently wrote two postings on the subject of WCF services: WCF Services – Let's Get Started and WCF and Unit Tests. One could see that creating and testing services was not complicated at all. Let's go on and take some steps nearer to the real world – our service is used by SOAP clients running on different platforms.

My current project required a way for exporting data to Excel. I could of course write a separate export method for every data set but in my opinion it would be a pointless waste of time. I would also like to utilise the existing functionality as much as possible – as it is, the lists going to Excel are displayed to the user in the browser.

Good practices demand tests for every new thing you have been able to get running. Otherwise our TDD chief is glum and moody during smoke breaks. So, to maintain the ever cheerful and busy climate in our office, this posting is going to discuss testing.

This is my welcome message to the world from my very own ASP.NET blog. I wrote mainly to my company's blog that is in estonian language. I will publish here best articles I have written about ASP.NET and related technologies. As I'm new to Community Builder it takes a little time to study it, so I try to publish here one post per week. I hope I'm able for more in near future. So, thank you for visiting this blog and have a nice stay!