Latest Entries
Storing Files and Images in Access with ASP.NET
calendar_today 06 December 2009 19:46
Should you store files and images in the database or the filesystem in an ASP.NET application? With SQL Server this is a dilemma, with both approaches having their pros and cons. When it comes to Access, the decision is much easier to make. Because an Access database is restricted to 2Gb, it makes more sense to store files in the file system. However, sometimes, you may not have the choice. If you have to use the database, here's how.
Simple File Download Protection with ASP.NET
calendar_today 25 November 2009 09:09
When it comes to protecting files from unauthorised downloading, the vast majority of articles offer solutions that involve mapping common file types (.pdf, .txt, .doc etc) to ASP.NET within Internet Information Services. However, often in a shared hosting environment, you don't have access to IIS and the hosting company will not agree to providing such mappings for you, so what do you do?
What ASP.NET Can And Cannot Do
calendar_today 23 November 2009 22:26
If you are new to web development and choose ASP.NET Web Forms as your starting point, you may be forgiven for not understanding how ASP.NET works, and what its role is. This article covers the basics which should help you discover your limits.
Book Review - Professional Enterprise .NET
calendar_today 28 October 2009 15:49
I reviewed an ASP.NET Architecture and Design book recently. It was OK. I felt it was a bit thin, and didn't cover topics beyond beginner level. Then I got sent a review copy of another book: Professional Enterprise .NET. Having read it, this is the book that the previous book should want to be when it grows up.
Displaying Google Analytics Data in ASP.NET
calendar_today 26 October 2009 22:30
If you have a Google Analytics account, you can use the Data Export API provided by Google to access your visitor stats, and retrieve them for use elsewhere. Here's how to display some stats in ASP.NET.
Book Review - ASP.NET 3.5 Application Architecture and Design
calendar_today 11 October 2009 18:36
Back in the day, when I began to get interested in ASP.NET application architecture and design, I spent hours hunting for a book that would explain all I needed to know. I wanted one that focused on ASP.NET, with its special demands, rather than a general .NET development book. I wanted a book that would explain what layers and tiers were, and how I should separate code out to make it more scalable and reusable. I wanted a book that would explain how I could take my skills to the next level. I couldn't find one. There was a big gap in the market. Vivek Thakur has attempted to fill this gap, with this apty named title: ASP.NET 3.5 Application Architecture and Design.
Dependency Injection and Inversion of Control with ASP.NET MVC
calendar_today 10 October 2009 22:46
As you delve more into ASP.NET MVC you start to come across a whole new way of doing things that Web Forms development didn't really expose you to. Inversion of Control (IoC) and Dependency Injection (DI) are two phrases that crop up a lot in the MVC space. So what are they all about? And should you care?
Parameterized IN clauses with ADO.NET and LINQ
calendar_today 28 September 2009 21:53
Since my article on using parameters for Preventing SQL Injection In ASP.NET, I have had a few emails asking how to do the same with an IN clause expression. In this entry, I explore a couple of ways to do this.
Microsoft Chart Controls to PDF with iTextSharp and ASP.NET MVC
calendar_today 15 September 2009 22:16
If you are developing a business application using ASP.NET MVC, and need to produce some kind of dashboard-style reporting, the Chart Controls from Microsoft are a good place to start. Having a summary in some form of document, say a PDF is also a common requirement. This article introduces you to satisfying both needs.
jQuery Star Rating with ASP.NET MVC
calendar_today 08 September 2009 13:40
There are a number of jQuery star rating plugins to choose from. All have their pros and cons. For this site, I decided to implement the one from FyneWorks because it allows for split stars. Here's how I did it.
Preventing SQL Injection in ASP.NET
calendar_today 19 August 2009 07:28
I, and many other contributors to the forums at www.asp.net find examples of code posted on a daily basis that are vulnerable to SQL Injection attacks. We continue to exhort beginners (and some more experienced programmers) to code against them. This article examines just how serious a flaw vulnerable coding can be, and what you should do about it.
ASP.NET MVC - Battle of the Books
calendar_today 27 July 2009 13:25
There's always a splurge of new books that come out around the RTM of any new ASP.NET related technology. Authors all over the place are burning the midnight oil, cursing the changes from one CTP to the next, through to Betas and hoping against hope that the Release Candidates and final RTMs aren't stuffed with "breaking changes" which inevitably mean total rewrites of whole sections or chapters in their draft. And then the race between the publishers is on, as each tries to get their offer to market before the others. Here, I look at three of the titles that were published around the time that ASP.NET MVC was launched, and give my judgement on how they fare in covering not only the core Framework but the key features that ASP.NET MVC is designed to offer:
RSS Feeds and Google Sitemaps for ASP.NET MVC with LINQ To XML
calendar_today 10 July 2009 22:43
For the majority of personal web sites, two uses of XML are commonplace: creating an RSS feed and a Google Sitemap. Here, I look at how to create both of those using LINQ to XML for an ASP.NET MVC web site.
ASP.NET MVC, Entity Framework, Modifying One-to-Many and Many-to-Many Relationships
calendar_today 28 June 2009 21:37
Building on my previous article, which looked at adding data with one-to-many and many-to-many relationships via the Entity Framework, here's a look at how to modify that data within an ASP.NET MVC application.
ASP.NET MVC, Entity Framework, One-to-Many and Many-to-Many INSERTS
calendar_today 17 June 2009 21:55
Taking on two new technologies - ASP.NET MVC and the Entity Framework - at the same time was bound to provide some "interesting" moments. Getting data out via EF has so far been pretty straightforward. But when it got to building the back end of my site, I had some fun trying to manage INSERTS with One-To-Many and Many-To-Many relationships.
Handling Legacy URLs with ASP.NET MVC
calendar_today 08 June 2009 07:37
According to Google's Webmaster tools, there are about 15,000 incoming links to my site. 13,000 of those reference a .ASPX file on disk. When I convert to MVC, with new Search Engine Friendly urls, all those links will break unless I do something about it. Presenting users with a 404 - file not found is not an option. I need to show them the content they were expecting, and update Search Engines with the news that things have changed. Here's how I will be managing those Legacy URLs.
Creating a Tag Cloud using ASP.NET MVC and the Entity Framework
calendar_today 01 June 2009 07:26
A Tag Cloud is a visual depiction of Tags or categories on a web site. CSS is used to set the variable font size of each Tag to illustrate its relative frequency or popularity within the site. As part of the migration of my site to ASP.NET MVC, I am introducing one to replace the Categories navigation that appears on the left hand side of each page, which contains a count of items within each category.
A Degradable jQuery AJAX Email Form for ASP.NET MVC
calendar_today 29 May 2009 15:58
Pretty much every web site on the Internet features a form for users to provide feedback via email to site owners. This site is no different. Migrating to ASP.NET MVC requires a slightly different approach to that used by Web Forms development, so this article looks at one way to implement a web site contact form using the MVC framework and jQuery that degrades nicely. AJAX functionality is said to be "degradable" if a way is provided for the process to work, even though users don't have Javascript available to them.
ASP.NET MVC Partial Views and Strongly Typed Custom ViewModels
calendar_today 11 May 2009 07:06
I'm in the process of rewriting mikesdotnetting.com using the ASP.NET MVC framework. It's an interesting experience, in that this is my first exposure to MVC. The first stumbling block I encountered was how to pass data in a satisfactory way to Partial Views which only represent part of the data that is to be displayed in the View. Since I struggled to find clear guidance on this, I thought I would share a way to do it.
Many ways to communicate with your database using jQuery AJAX and ASP.NET
calendar_today 04 May 2009 18:39
I've recently done a series of articles that feature calling databases via AJAX using jQuery. In pretty much all of the articles, I have used Web Services as my data access mechanism. Judging from the comments that some of the articles have attracted, this has caused a little confusion. But Web Services is just one mechanism. Page Methods and simple ASPX files are two more. And finally, as pointed out by a commenter, Benny Halperin, ASHX files are yet another option. In this article, I shall review each of these approaches.
