Archives
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Combining ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Charting Controls
As ScottGu recently posted on his blog, Microsoft have recently released a set of charting components. Several people followed up with comments on his post asking whether it was possible to use them with ASP.NET MVC. The good news is that it certainly is, if you are using ASP.NET as the View engine (the default). And there's actually relatively little that you have to do. This post outlines the steps you'll need to take to get it up and running.
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MVC ModelBinder and Localization
One of the great things about the way in which the Microsoft ASP.NET MVC Framework is being developed is the fact that the team are publishing the source code as they go along. This makes it very simple to dig into the framework when something slightly surprising is happening and figure out exactly how it is supposed to work. A good example of this cropped up for us yesterday when looking at a form posting scenario using DateTimes. We were dealing with an Action Method that looked something like this:
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C# 4.0 Duck Typing and mocking extension methods
Seeing some of the early blog posts from people who are at PDC, I have thus far been paying most attention to the information starting to come out about C# 4.0. In particular, this focus will look at Dynamic Lookup and the dynamic type. In particular, this should be able to be used to solve a problem with mocking objects where you are using extension methods.
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ANTS Profiler 4 Links
ANTS Profiler 4 has been out a short while now, and there's already some traffic cropping up relating to it. I thought I'd just drop in a quick couple of links to interesting blog articles about it:
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How to use the ASP.NET MVC ModelBinder
One of the new features in the latest build of ASP.NET MVC is the ModelBinder, which is provided to allow Action methods to take complex types as their parameters. Previously, action methods were only able to take simple types such as strings and integers as their parameters. The new ModelBinder provides the facility to build complex types from component parts that (for example) may be part the result of submitting a form with several fields. To see an example of this in action, we will first need a fairly simple class to work with. The following class definition will typically be placed in the Models directory. I have left the using statements at the start of the file as an 'exercise for the reader'!
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ASP.NET MVC Codeplex Preview 5
ASP.NET MVC Codeplex preview 5 went live last night. Available here. I haven't had a dig into it yet to have (just downloading now), but according to the release notes, some of the highlights include:
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Red Gate to continue development of .NET Reflector
Exciting times here at Red Gate. Red Gate has taken on Lutz Roeder's .NET reflector and will continue development on this in the future. It will continue to be free for the community. You can read more details about the ins and outs of the deal here: http://www.simple-talk.com/reflector/interview.htm
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ANTS Profiler 4 Beta Released
Exciting news from within the bowels of Red Gate - ANTS Profiler version 4 has reached the public beta version. The team are really over the moon about it, and the feedback that has already been received suggests that it's going to be a big hit. I'd encourage anyone that hasn't yet had a go with it to download it and give it a try - it's a massive step on from version 3 and certainly worth a look. For an in depth discussion of what's made it into this version, you'll need to go and read Bart's Blog. If you want to just get in there and give it a go, here's where you need to go to get the new version of ANTS:
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Free SQL Server Training Videos
SQL Server Central have just launched a new series of free SQL Server training videos.
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Clean Separation of Concerns in MVC
One of the main areas that is cited as a benefit of using the new ASP.NET MVC Framework is that you can obtain a 'clean separation of concerns'. But the question is, what does this really mean, how achievable is it in reality, and should we really be interested in doing it?
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Web Application Usability
Although this blog is principally about ASP.NET and web application development, I thought I'd drop in a link to an interesting article over on Simple Talk. It's about how to design a software tool. A large portion of what Stephen discusses is to do with user interaction, which is, in my view, absolutely critical to web based applications. The process we use for application design, and for web application design is fundamentally the same here at Red Gate, and this article gives a few insights into the way we do it.
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MVC AJAX Support
In the latest preview of the Microsoft ASP.NET MVC Framework, one of the newly included features is AJAX helper methods. It's going to be interesting to see where they go with these. At the moment, they've added just a couple of tasters. This blog post discusses how to set them up and make use of them if you want to try them out. Currently, there are two helper methods that have been created, Ajax.ActionLink and Ajax.Form. I will discuss both below. They both generate HTML, much in the manner of pre-existing helpers such as Html.Form.
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New versions of Red Gate products
Well, we've rolled out new versions of several of our products here at Red Gate. In particular, these have been adding SQL Server 2008 support. You can read more about these updates on the website http://www.red-gate.com
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MVC Preview 4
It's been announced on ScottGu's blog that MVC Preview 4 is due out later this week. Obviously we'll need to wait and see what it feels like when we get to have a play for real with it, but first impressions from reading down the article is that they seem to have nearly nailed down the core API to create a version that's close to what will go live, and are now busy working on all the bits and pieces that will be necessary for actually using it in a commercial sense. So we're now getting good authorisation, error handling and the like. I'll be getting it as soon as it's released and giving it a good going over to see how the new features play.
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MVC training day 2
Back for more! We started the day with a quick look at Dynamic Data (no more than an overview for those that hadn't seen it before), then moved on to look at unit testing the MVC framework, before finishing off with a look at jQuery and how it works with MVC.
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MVC training day 1
We've had the first of our two half days with Steven Sanderson this morning. It was split in half, with the first half covering the new C# 3.0 language features and the second tackling MVC.
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MVC Training
Starting tomorrow we've got a couple of training sessions on the new ASP.NET MVC framework lined up here at Red Gate with Steven Sanderson. Steven used to work here, but is currently busy writing one of the books that's going to be an authority on the subject. Check it out here!
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Red Gate Community Blog
Well, I'm settling in well at Red Gate, and enjoying the company culture very much. The culture is something that the company prides itself on very much. So much so that we've launched a new blog where team members will be giving you all an insight into some of how the company runs and what we think makes it great! Head on over for a look at why Red Gate is cool!
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Welcome
Welcome to my new Blog. A little background on me - I've just started with Red Gate and I'm going to be working in their Web division. I'll hopefully be blogging about some of the interesting things we've got lined up in the coming months as well as any technical bits and pieces that take my interest along the way!