There is a new version available of the free Ajax.NET Wrapper DLL. The main new features are:

1. Support unicode chars in both directions
2. Support your own object converters. There are already some converters installed like System.Data.DataSet/DataTable/DataRow, System.Collections.ArrayList, System.DateTime/TimeSpan.
3. Support your own objects as Javascript objects, i.e. create a new instance of an System.DateTime object on the client and send it as an argument to a method on the server. Every object converter can render client script that will be needed to do this transformation.
4. Updated: support for the SessionState variables

There is also a new example available at http://ajax.schwarz-interactive.de/csharpsample/default.aspx

The examples are working with Internet Explorer 5 or higher, Firefox, Netscape 7.2. Safari should be working also, is there anyone who can send me a screenshot if the page is working on safari? Thanks to Andre Seifert who tested it on a Linux machine.

11 Comments

• Arno said Monday, April 25, 2005 6:19:00 PM

  I'm currently trying out your module and i'm very impressed.
  A problem I ran in to is that i couldn't access session objects in the javascript enabled methods. After some searching i found out this is because the pagehandler doesn't extend/implements the IRequiresSessionState interface.
  Is this intentional?

• Michael Schwarz said Monday, April 25, 2005 6:44:00 PM

  Hi Arno, SessionState is available, now. I forgot to include this source.

• Marc said Monday, April 25, 2005 7:26:00 PM

  Hey, this is what we want!!! I asked for the session variable for 5 days and today we get a new release. Michael, why do we need open source if everythink is done automatic...? Ok, that was a joke.

• Michael Schwarz said Monday, April 25, 2005 8:13:00 PM

  @Marc: I'd like to change it to an open source project but I am not sure if it is the best way. At the moment I have time enought to fix bugs and add new features in my free time.

• Michael Hensen said Monday, April 25, 2005 8:26:00 PM

  Superb work Michael..
  
  Do you have a wished feature or soon to come, or at least thinking of list .. ?
  Just curious :-)
  
  

• James said Monday, April 25, 2005 8:59:00 PM

  I needed to mark some classes as serializable for binary serialization. After I did that, I noticed that all of my AjaxMethod functions only returned a string containing the name of the type instead of the actual object since I didn't overload the ToString() method. Am I going to need to create a class implementing the IAjaxObjectConverter to get around this?

• Michael Schwarz said Monday, April 25, 2005 9:03:00 PM

  @James: Yes, if the Ajax.NET Wrapper DLL will not find any IAjaxObjectConverter it will use the .ToString() method to serialize the object. Because Javascript cannot use a binary stream you have to write your own converter. If you need help contact me using the contact form here at my blog.

• karl said Tuesday, April 26, 2005 12:24:00 AM

  Hey guys,
  I realize the new version made the doc really out of date. I've sent a new updated version to Michael. Nothing on object converters yet, but hopefully I'll write something up on it soon.
  
  Cheers,
  Karl

• Michael Schwarz said Tuesday, April 26, 2005 8:43:00 AM

  I put the new documentation online. Thanks to Karl for his work!!!!

• Andrew Cupper said Tuesday, April 26, 2005 9:24:00 AM

  Great work. It would be nice if you could mark individual methods as requiring session state, rather than loading it for every callback.

• Michael Schwarz said Tuesday, April 26, 2005 10:24:00 AM

  Ok, I will add a new attribute [Ajax.RequireSessionState].