Latest Entries
SignalR And Knockout In ASP.NET Web Pages Using WebMatrix
calendar_today 27 December 2012 20:17
SignalR is a library that simplifies the creation and management of persistent connections between web servers and clients. This facilitates the development of applications that can display updates to data held on the server in real-time. Chat applications are the most obvious beneficiaries of this technology, but line-of-business applications that need to report availability to users can benefit too. Here, I look at extending the canonical SignalR chat example to incorporate a "who's typing" feature, and I also extend my previous Knockout example to use SignalR.
Exporting The Razor WebGrid To PDF Using iTextSharp
calendar_today 20 December 2012 13:31
This article looks at how you can provide your users with the ability to export the contents of a Razor Web Pages WebGrid to a PDF file using the popular free PDF library, iTextSharp.
Exporting The Razor WebGrid To Excel
calendar_today 17 December 2012 20:17
This article looks at how you can provide your users with the ability to export the contents of a Razor Web Pages WebGrid to an Excel file.
Enhancing The WebGrid With Sort Arrows
calendar_today 14 December 2012 19:24
The Web Pages WebGrid offers sorting capability out of the box. However, it's not always obvious to the user on which column the grid data is being sorted at any one time, nor the direction in which it is being sorted. The convention is to provide arrows in the column header to act as a clear visual cue. This article looks at a three ways in which you can enhance your grids with sorting arrows.
Inline Editing With The WebGrid
calendar_today 13 November 2012 10:37
Unlike the Web Forms GridView control, the Web Pages WebGrid doesn't offer anything by way of inline editing capability. This article looks at one approach to solving that requirement through the addition of a sprinkling of jQuery.
Cleaner Conditional HTML Attributes In Razor Web Pages
calendar_today 23 October 2012 21:27
Every so often, you will want to conditionally render HTML attributes or their values within your Razor Web Pages based on the outcome of some runtime logic. Often, the logic required to manage this can become messy and lead to unnecessary spaghetti code. This article explores a few common scenarios and provides some solutions, as well as introducing a nice new feature that was released as part of Razor v 2.0.
The SimpleMembershipProvider, Secure Passwords And The Crypto Helper
calendar_today 27 September 2012 13:39
Some people have questioned the security of the ASP.NET SimpleMembershipProvider's storage of passwords. The cause for concern seems to stem from the fact that the PasswordSalt field in the standard membership table is unused by the SimpleMembershipProvider, whereas it is used by, for example, SqlMembershipProvider. So what is the PasswordSalt field, and why should the fact that it isn't used raise an eyebrow?
HTML5 Form Helpers For WebMatrix
calendar_today 20 September 2012 14:56
It's an odd thing: WebMatrix 2 is lauded for its support of HTML5, but the Web Pages framework doesn't include any helpers for the new HTML5 form input types such as email or color. It's fair to say that support among browsers for the new inputs is patchy at the moment, but with barely a week flying past without a new version of one or other browser being released, it won't take long for that to change. So in the meantime, if you prefer to use helpers, you have to write your own for rendering HTML5 forms.
Cannot use a lambda expression as an argument to a dynamically dispatched operation
calendar_today 18 September 2012 08:08
Since the introduction of the Web Pages framework, ASP.NET has been making use of the dynamic type introduced in C# 4.0. Along with that comes some new error messages which at first glance don't make a lot of sense - mainly because they are unexpected. I have already looked at how dynamics do not support extension methods, and a recent question in the ASP.NET forums illustrated another way in which the dynamic type can catch you out.
Optimising ASP.NET Web Pages Sites - Bundling And Minification
calendar_today 15 September 2012 17:05
ASP.NET 4.5 saw the introduction of new features for improving the performance of web sites. Delivered within a new library called System.Web.Optimization, bundling and minification enables you to combine multiple JavaScript or CSS files into one bundle, and to minify them thereby reducing the number of HTTP requests that browsers have to make, reducing the size of the files, and improving performance of the site overall, especially over slower (read 3G) networks.
WebMatrix - jQuery Cascading Dropdown Lists
calendar_today 08 September 2012 09:56
I have looked at cascading dropdown lists with WebMatrix previously, but the approach I featured demonstrated the use of jQuery Templates. At the time, the jQuery Templates project looked promising, but since then, the jQuery team have decided not to take them beyond beta stage. So the reason for this article is to illustrate a more "traditional" jQuery approach to managing cascading dropdown lists when developing ASP.NET Web Pages using WebMatrix.
ASP.NET Web Pages - Creating Custom Validators
calendar_today 31 August 2012 14:33
Version 2 of the Web Pages framework includes a new validation framework. Included are a number of specific validators that cover common scenarios such as validating for presence, data type or range. It may be however, that you want to create your own custom validator to test for something that isn't covered by the existing validators, or to combine multiple tests in one composite validator. Fortunately, the Web Pages team have made the validation system extensible so that you can create your own validators.
Book Review - jQuery Mobile Web Development Essentials
calendar_today 07 August 2012 21:07
The imminent release of Visual Studio (2012) will include jQuery Mobile as part of the ASP.NET MVC 4 Mobile application template, and some enhancements to the framework to make developing for mobile devices much easier. So it was a well-timed invitation that I received from Packt Publishing to review their latest jQuery title: jQuery Mobile Web Development Essentials.
Working With Entity Framework Code First And JSON In ASP.NET Web Pages
calendar_today 22 July 2012 20:46
If you want to build AJAX powered rich client interfaces with ASP.NET Web Pages, you will work with JSON - a lot. You might also be attracted to the Entity Framework for your data access technology. There are some special considerations to take account of when serialising Entity Framework objects to JSON for use in Web Pages applications. This article explores some of the issues you will encounter through the example of a simple To Do list manager.
Transferring Data Between ASP.NET Web Pages
calendar_today 14 July 2012 20:24
There are a huge number of articles and blog posts on persisting data between user requests in ASP.NET. However, the ASP.NET Web Pages framework introduces a couple of additional mechanisms so this article explores those, as well as reviewing some of the standard approaches already available to Web Pages developers from other parts of the ASP.NET framework.
Validation In Razor Web Pages 2
calendar_today 14 June 2012 12:47
The new release of ASP.NET Web Pages - version 2 - doesn't include many obvious changes, but the most significant one is an enhanced Validation system. A couple of new classes have been introduced, and Web Pages validation now works with the MVC Unobtrusive jQuery validation library. This article explores the new validation system and sees what it brings to the party.
Using Knockout With Razor Web Pages In WebMatrix 2
calendar_today 09 June 2012 11:40
Knockout is an increasingly popular JavaScript UI library. Its popularity is likely to increase among ASP.NET developers soon as it comes as part of some of the new MVC 4 site templates. This article looks at what Knockout is, what problems it is intended it solve and how to use it in an ASP.NET Razor Web Pages site built in WebMatrix.
Efficiently Displaying Hierarchical Data With The jQuery Accordion In Razor Web Pages
calendar_today 03 June 2012 10:30
A frequent requirement is to display data hierarchically, such as products by category. This article shows how to use LINQ to Objects and the jQuery Accordion to display the result of a database query in such a fashion within Razor Web Pages.
View Model Design And Use In Razor Views
calendar_today 26 May 2012 23:21
The recommended practice for transferring data to and from views in ASP.NET MVC is to use a View Model. But what is a View Model? How to you design one and how should they be used? This article attempts to provide answers to those questions.
More Flexible Routing For ASP.NET Web Pages
calendar_today 01 February 2012 21:52
The built-in Web Pages routing system offers a fair degree of freedom in terms of how friendly URLs can be constructed and managed. However, the major limitation with the standard routing mechanism is that it relies on matching segments of the URL to files on disk. ASP.NET MVC and Web Forms enjoy a much more flexible routing system. This article looks at a Package that brings full ASP.NET routing control to Web Pages and examines how to use it.
