SingingEels : Development Community & Resource

Model Binders in ASP.NET MVC - Part 2

Timothy Khouri — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 06:44:49 -0600

The previous article on ModelBinders gave a basic introduction, showed a few code samples, and showed a creative usage of ModelBinders. However, some questions arose, some claims were challenged (particularly about comparing ModelBinders to the WebForms ViewState) and some controversial code needs further flushing out. This article will do just that.

Test Driven Development with ASP.NET MVC

Timothy Khouri — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:05:02 -0600

One of the biggest benefits of MVC is it's direct link to Test Driven Development. Because of some of the new features of ASP.NET MVC Preview 5 (ModelBinders in particular), testing your Action methods is even easier. This article will demonstrate how easy it is to ensure the quality of your MVC app with unit tests.

Model Binders in ASP.NET MVC

Timothy Khouri — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 08:40:20 -0600

Hot off the presses, and new to ASP.NET MVC (Preview 5) is an awesome capability that (in my opinion) revolutionizes the way we design web applications. This feature is being touted (by me) as "the ViewState for MVC".

Logging with ASP.NET MVC Action Filters

Timothy Khouri — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:23:15 -0600

Logging is a common Cross-Cutting Concern that many ASP.NET developers solve in the Global.asax file. Because MVC is built on top of ASP.NET you *could* tap into the same solution, but there is a better way. This article will show how easy it is to add logging to your web app using ASP.NET MVC Action Filters.

Building Custom ASP.NET MVC Controls

Timothy Khouri — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:31:04 -0600

Most .NET web developers have built at least one custom control (or user control) in their time. But MVC is a completely different beast. There's no ViewState, Page Life-Cycle, no code behind (not the way you think of it). In this article, we'll see how to create 'custom controls' in ASP.NET MVC.

AJAX Panels with ASP.NET MVC

Timothy Khouri — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 08:10:10 -0600

ASP.NET MVC Preview 4 brought a bit of AJAX support, which is a natural fit for the MVC design pattern. This article will show how incredibly easy it is to create "lazy loading AJAX panels" with ASP.NET MVC.

ASP.NET MVC in the Real World

Timothy Khouri — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:32:09 -0600

MVC (the "model view control" pattern) isn't new, but it is new to ASP.NET. If you're like me, you may have been impressed by a demo, but you've probably thought "how does this work in the real world?" I hope to answer that question in this article.

Images as a Service with ADO.NET Data Services

Timothy Khouri — Sat, 17 May 2008 20:00:06 -0600

For those of you who have already put your feet into the waters of .NET 3.5 SP1, you have probably seen some amazing things with ADO.NET Data Services coupled to the Entity Framework. But that coupling may lead to blindness. Allow me to explain.

ADO.NET Data Services - AJAX Tree View

Timothy Khouri — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:29:30 -0600

ADO.NET Data Services (formerly "project Astoria") is a new mindset to developing data driven applications. Based on a RESTful architecture, this tool provides powerful services for querying and altering your data. This article will walk you through the steps of exposing your data as a service and consuming it with AJAX.

Entity Framework and Lazy Loading

Timothy Khouri — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:10:40 -0600

Microsoft's Entity Framework is a new, powerful tool bringing data modeling, O/RM (object relational mapping) functionality and more. One expected feature of major ORMs is 'Lazy Loading'. Learn how the Entity Framework provides this functionality in a different way. This article will explain the design reasons behind why EF is different than what you would expect, as well as how to achieve the lazy-load functionality you're looking for.

Self Sorting GridView with LINQ Expression Trees

Timothy Khouri — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 23:21:04 -0600

The GridView control in ASP.NET 2.0 is lacking some major (yet common) functionality - sorting. This article will show you how to create a "self-sorting" GridView using LINQ expression trees.

Silverlight Basics - XAML and Layout

Timothy Khouri — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:55:44 -0600

Silverlight is a powerful, but very different tool than most .NET developers are used to. This article will teach all the basics of getting your Silverlight application to look and feel the way you want it.

Client Server Programming with WCF

Timothy Khouri — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 04:46:38 -0600

Client/server programming isn't a new concept. In fact, it's been around so long that developers can quickly mention a set of problems that will need to be overcome: security, difficulty of implimentation, error handling and identity tracking. This article will show how WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) quickly solves all of that and more.

Real-Time Progress Bar With ASP.NET AJAX

Timothy Khouri — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 05:02:46 -0600

Due to the disconnected nature of the web, developers have often wondered how to display certain metrics such as a real-time progress bar. This article will show you how to easily build a real progress bar that actually reports progress of a process running on the server using ASP.NET AJAX.

Getting Started With Silverlight

Michael O'Brien — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 04:48:38 -0700

Silverlight has been billed as Microsoft's Flash-killer and combines a media and graphics engine with a mini-CLR to run .NET code in all the major browsers. This article explains a little of the history behind Silverlight and what you can use it for. You’ll see how easy it is to get started, and then you’ll actually practice using a free InnerWorkings coding challenge featuring a sample app that demonstrates how to use and transform video in Silverlight.

Creating Your First ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Application

Michael O'Brien — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 04:47:51 -0700

This article shows you how to AJAX-enable an existing ASP.NET web page by using Microsoft’s ASP.NET AJAX Extensions. The UpdatePanel control provided by the framework makes it really easy to start with AJAX programming by defining the areas of the page you want to update independently without a full page reload.

Creating Custom Configuration Sections In ASP.NET

Timothy Khouri — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:13:53 -0600

As you advance in your usage of ASP.NET, you will likely get into building your own control libraries, helper classes or any other bit of "common" functionality that you have needed on multiple projects. A powerful feature of ASP.NET is the concept of a configuration file (the web.config) that lets you tailor custom classes for each project without changing any code. This article will show how to build your own custom class and custom configuration section in ASP.NET.

Learn The Basics Of LINQ

Timothy Khouri — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 20:15:50 -0600

LINQ (Language INtegrated Query) is a powerful but misunderstood new language feature brought to us in the .NET framework version 3.5 (C# 3.0 and VB 9). Even though this is a new feature, it already has some huge misconceptions (such as thinking LINQ is a replacement to SQL). This article will teach you how to use LINQ (the language itself), where LINQ can save you a lot of time and will cover some basic concepts of Extension Methods and Lamda expressions.

AJAX: Client Side Actions Before and After PostBack

Rob Meade — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 08:09:29 -0600

On several occasions I have wanted to perform other client side tasks either before or after, sometimes before and after an asynchronous PostBack in ASP.NET AJAX. In this article I'll divulge my recent findings and how this can be achieved.

Creating Your Own ListView Control

Timothy Khouri — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 20:15:49 -0600

The Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 is another huge improvement for web developers. The language enhancements, introduction of LINQ and new web controls all make it a long anticipated upgrade. But have you ever wondered how these new controls are made? Even if you've already read the articles, "The ListView Dominates The Repeater" and "Custom Controls And Control Builders", you'll learn even more about custom control development, and even how to make your own "ListView" control in ASP.NET 2.0.

Custom Controls And Control Builders

Timothy Khouri — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 22:43:25 -0600

ASP.NET has a strong set of web controls that provide common functionality for web developers. But there are times when you need to build something custom for your specific web project. Or you may want to author some controls that you think everyone can use. This article will show how to make your own custom controls and utilize control builders.

The ListView Dominates The Repeater

Timothy Khouri — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 07:43:15 -0600

The Repeater control that was introduced with the dawn of ASP.NET encapsulated much needed functionality and has given web developers a customizable, object oriented way of repeating any kind of data (that doesn't belong in a table which is handled by the GridView control). But the new ListView control in ASP.NET 3.5 blows the Repeater control out of the water. This article will discuss the differences between the two controls showing all the powerful features of the ListView control.

Understanding SQL: Many to Many Relationships

Timothy Khouri — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 20:18:15 -0600

In the world of relational data, many-to-many relationships are one of the hardest concepts to understand and implement correctly. Quite likely the scenario will arise for a developer to decide whether to support a one-to-many or a many-to-many schema, and out of fear we crumble to an "easy" design. This article will use real world scenarios to show how and why to use a many-to-many relationship as well as how to achieve perfect performance.

Improving Performance With LINQ

Timothy Khouri — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 19:50:04 -0600

While the title of this article may seem misleading, you actually can achieve incredible performance gains by updating your web application to use LINQ. This article will dispell some common myths about LINQ and demonstrate how LINQ can practically increase performance. The examples in this article will be using LINQ to SQL, but the principles apply to LINQ to Entities as well.

Understanding ASP.NET Web Parts

Timothy Khouri — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 10:51:19 -0600

ASP.NET 2.0 was a major improvement upon web development everywhere. One very powerful aspect of ASP.NET 2.0 is the ability to make your web application personalizable using the Web Part framework. With the launch of MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007) many companies and developers have rekindled focus on utilizing this amazing tool. This article will start with the basics of understanding web parts and personalization. Attached at the end of the article is a full source code solution.

Considerations When Designing A Database

Timothy Khouri — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 17:21:43 -0600

The most powerful applications, whether web or windows apps, usually utilize large amounts of relational data. However, many developers skip the design process of their database, or design as they code which often paints them into a corner. This article will explain steps all developers should take when designing a database.

Understanding SQL: Complex Queries

Timothy Khouri — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 22:53:04 -0600

The previous article in the "Understanding SQL" series brought us from easy SELECT statements to more useful JOINs and subselects. This article will go into more advanced queries using Common Table Expressions (CTE) and aggregated results with the GROUP BY clause. The two don't need to go hand in hand, but this article will utilize them both.

Populating Related Drop Down Lists With AJAX

Rob Meade — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 17:23:03 -0600

Making related DropDownLists used to require downloading bloated JavaScript arrays, or posting back to the server upon each selection. This article covers how to populate a DropDownList based on the selection from another DropDownList using ASP.NET AJAX.

Globalization And Localization In ASP.NET AJAX

Timothy Khouri — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 20:16:19 -0600

Globalization and localization are often overlooked features in ASP.NET. The fact that the names sound alike, and the functionality is similar doesn't help either. ASP.NET AJAX has refreshed the face of these two beauties now by bringing them to the client-side world. We'll see what these two topics cover as well as how easy it is to utilize them in JavaScript with ASP.NET AJAX.

Understanding SQL: SELECT The Data You Want

Timothy Khouri — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 21:27:46 -0600

Many articles about SQL are spread too thin with "the basics" of a SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE and a DELETE. By the time your done, you know a little about everything, and nothing useful. This article will focus on the meat of SQL, getting the data you want. We'll start off with the simple, and move to the more advanced and creative.

Membership Using ASP.NET AJAX

Timothy Khouri — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 17:22:27 -0600

Previous articles have discussed how to use AJAX to consume web services, call page methods and interact with the Profile API. This article will demonstrate how to perform membership functionality (authentication) with ASP.NET AJAX. Attached will be the full source, including a sample database to keep the login information.

Dynamically Created Controls in ASP.NET

Yuriy Solodkyy — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 08:04:26 -0600

I spent some time before I found a pattern to work with dynamically created controls in ASP.NET that satisfied my requirements. I tried multiple approaches and faced multiple problems. If you'd like to avoid getting into the same problems I got, learn about them here first.

How To: Pure CSS Design

Timothy Khouri — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:18:59 -0600

Many web developers will argue that you simply can't make a "real" website with a pure CSS design. They may point out how they have tried for hours, and then frustraitingly have to conform to using un-semantic markup (like <table>s for layout). This article will dispell the myth, and show how much easier it is to use a pure CSS design.

ASP.NET Profiles Purely With AJAX

Timothy Khouri — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 12:33:59 -0600

ASP.NET 2.0 brought a lot to the table with the Membership and Profiles API. Now with ASP.NET AJAX, you can fully work with these right there in your client script. This article will show you how easy it is to make an "edit your profile" page that doesn't even have a code-behind file. That's right, no C#, no VB.NET, just AJAX.

Using Page Methods in ASP.NET AJAX

Timothy Khouri — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 21:34:13 -0600

If you are looking to enhance your web application using AJAX to provide a more fluid user experience, but you don't know where to start, you might want to start here... using code-behind page methods right in your client script.

Consuming Web Services With ASP.NET AJAX

Timothy Khouri — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 18:01:58 -0600

One of the most powerful features of ASP.NET AJAX is often times one of the most overlooked uses - consuming web services. Many ASP.NET developers are beginning to implement AJAX into their site by the use of the drop-in-place controls such as the UpdatePanel, ModalPopup and Timer. This article will focus on some of the deeper things of ASP.NET AJAX.

ASP.NET AJAX - Things To Know

Timothy Khouri — Thu, 31 May 2007 09:14:52 -0600

Unless you've been hiding under a rock for the past few years you probably are at least somewhat familiar with ASP.NET AJAX. There are a few things though that you might not realize. We will discuss 1) why ASP.NET AJAX is so popular, 2) what are some potential dangers that you should be aware of and 3) how to begin using some of the basics of ASP.NET AJAX.

Pagination In SQL Server 2005

Timothy Khouri — Sat, 26 May 2007 17:43:25 -0600

If you've used other flavors of SQL (such as MySQL or PostgreSQL) and now you have switched over to TSQL (Microsoft SQL Server) you may have noticed that there is no native way of doing pagination. In some SQL versions, pagination was as easy as "SELECT * FROM 'myTable' LIMIT 0, 10" and that would pull out the first 10 records from your table. SQL Server 2005 introduced a beautiful new world of 'Ranking Functions', one of which we can use to easily perform pagination directly in SQL.

Get Identity Field and More From Inserts

Timothy Khouri — Tue, 22 May 2007 05:32:36 -0600

Often times when inserting a new record into a table that has an auto-key field (an identity field that is set to auto increment), you may need to get that new ID back to use in other SQL statments. This can be done with @@IDENTITY or SCOPE_IDENTITY(), but those methods are very limited when compared to the new OUTPUT clause in SQL Server 2005. This article will show how and when to use these powerful TSQL features.

Sending Encrypted Emails With S/MIME Protocol

Jonathan DeMarks — Mon, 21 May 2007 14:10:15 -0600

If you've ever needed to send an encrypted email you know the pain of dealing with third party encryption and decryption tools especially if you need to try to explain and support them for people in management. The S/MIME protocol takes care of all the dirty work for you, allowing seemingly transparent encryption and decryption that works beautifully with all the major email applications available today.

How To: Maintain Customer Payment History

Timothy Khouri — Tue, 15 May 2007 05:09:52 -0600

Creating and maintaining 'customer' data is a common task that most people handle by creating a single table that holds a customer's FirstName, LastName, Address, City, State, Zip etc. But when it comes to tracking changes in a customer record this type of table fails to provide needed functionality. This article will show how to maintain a customer's basic data (name, address etc.) and also keep track of transient data such as an 'IsActive' status that is derived from whether or not the customer has paid for service within the last 30 days.

How To: Control Adapters

Timothy Khouri — Thu, 10 May 2007 12:40:05 -0600

Control Adapters give the ability to change how any web control is rendered. This is a very powerful tool as you can just plug in your adapter to your web application and automatically change your content for the better. With very little code we are going to see how to change the way a very simple control is rendered, the RadioButtonList, without changing our ASP.NET code! We'll discuss some of the awesome benefits that come with this power, as well as some drawbacks.

Semantic CheckBoxList & RadioButtonList

Timothy Khouri — Tue, 08 May 2007 21:37:52 -0600

In an earlier article (Making Your Own Semantic Controls) we talked about how HTML tags should have a "meaning", and should define your content. An <ol> tag describes an ordered list of items, such as your "top 10 favorite sites." Because that list is in a specific order, you would use the <ol> tag. A <ul> tag describes an un-ordered list of items, such as your site's navigation links, or as in the case with this article, a list of radio buttons or checkboxes.

Connect Your Site With HttpContext Items

Timothy Khouri — Sun, 06 May 2007 15:36:44 -0600

ASP.NET gives developers a lot of powerful tools to seperate functionality into Master Pages, Custom Controls, User Controls and Content Pages allowing clean and segragated application design. The problem comes in when you actually WANT two pages to talk to each other. A common scenario is when you have a control, such as a DropDownList, on one part of the page that needs to filter results on another part of the page that is not directly accessable (meaning it's in a UserControl, or part of the MasterPage and you are in another UserControl or the ContentPage). This article will describe how to easily tie your entire web application together without running into cross-threading issues due to using static objects.

Design by CSS, Not Markup

Timothy Khouri — Sat, 05 May 2007 18:08:41 -0600

Back when I first started making web pages, I thought of HTML tags as a way to get pictures, text, sound and input boxes to display on a web browser. Back then I would pride myself on my extensive use of the <table> tag to design an entire website. I could open up PhotoShop and slice my giant JPEG of a site into dozens of smaller images and then spend a couple of hours making my <table>'s, <tr>'s and <td>'s. Looking back at the aweful code and even worse coding standards that I used to follow is like looking back at MC Hammer's parachute pants and wondering why we ever thought that was cool.

Naming Conventions and Clarity

Timothy Khouri — Tue, 01 May 2007 20:46:42 -0600

Just like a programming language has a standard set of rules for how to accomplish a desired task, so does development and design in general. While syntax errors are quickly brought to your attention thanks to your compiler, most developers go for years before learning about proper development standards. This article will briefly discuss the small but significant area of naming conventions and clarity.

PCI Requirements for Programmers

Jonathan DeMarks — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 13:04:05 -0600

The PCI (Payment Card Industry) requirements are a set of rules designed to prevent unauthorized computer users from obtaining credit card data. Unauthorized users include you, the network administrators, the database administrator, and most everyone except the credit card authorization company. The first question that you might have is, "How do I prevent myself from seeing something I programmed?" This and all other questions should be answered by the end of this article.

Making Your Own Semantic Controls

Timothy Khouri — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 18:02:26 -0600

With the current thrust of the Internet moving towards "Semantic Markup" and clean HTML, you may begin to find that some ASP.NET controls that you are using render their HTML incorrectly such as a CheckBoxList using a <table> tag to render it's children, or even an ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanel forcing either a <div> or <span> tag when you may want to render to a <label> or <fieldset> tag, etc.. While I always recommend using the .NET controls if they render semantically, I do also recommend overriding the default rendering in some cases to achieve clean, semantic markup. I'll demonstrate how to overcome the bad HTML rendering of the two above mentioned controls.

Handle Your Events - Perform Better

Timothy Khouri — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 21:56:03 -0600

If you've ever looked into way Controls are done in ASP.NET by the actual .NET team you'll see some smart performance boosts that us foolish mortals (people not on the .NET team) may not be aware of. One of those techniques is to do your own "Event Accessors" which can really help keep your memory usage down on your web applications. There are a lot of benefits of doing this very simple thing.

SQL Performance - Clustered Indexes

Timothy Khouri — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:31:40 -0600

If you are reading this article, you should already have a working knowledge of SQL and are familiar with filtering your data with a WHERE clause, or limiting your result set from joining other tables with an ON clause. The part where this article comes in is when you start to see a significant amount of time passing while your once simple query is now hitting your production tables which are multitudes bigger than your test data. This article is not just for those of you who are seeing your queries start to take 30 seconds or more, but everyone could probably benefit from this simple article.