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  • Getting the hang of CodeIgniter - Templating / loading views

    - by kilrizzy
    Attempting to learn CI and going through the docs to get a better understanding. Without getting a separate library, I could make a template by including a list of views like so: $this->load->view('header'); $this->load->view('navigation'); $this->load->view('sidenav_open'); $this->load->view('blocks/userinfo'); $this->load->view('blocks/stats'); $this->load->view('sidenav_close'); $this->load->view('content',$data); $this->load->view('footer'); This makes sense but would I actually have that on each of my controllers (pages)? Not sure if there is a way to include this in the initial controller (welcome) and then in the others somehow reference it? Or perhaps there is something I am missing completely

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  • Class templating std::set key types

    - by TomFLuff
    I have a class to evaluate set algebra but wish to template it. At the minute it looks a bit like this set.h: template<typename T> class SetEvaluation { public: SetEvaluation<T>(); std::set<T> evaluate(std::string in_expression); } set.cpp template<typename T> std::set<T> SetEvaluation<T>::evaluate(std::string expression) { std::set<T> result; etc etc... } But i'm getting undefined reference errors when compiling. Is it possible to declare the return type as std::set<T> and then pass std::string as the class template param. There are no errors in the class but only when I try to instantiate SetEvaluation<std::string> Can anyone shed light on this problem? thanks

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  • Can you recommend a .net template engine?

    - by serg10
    I am looking for a .net templating engine - something simple, lightweight, stable with not too many dependencies. All I need it for at the moment is creating templated plain text and html emails. Can anyone give me a good recommendation? If it helps at all - something like Java's Freemarker or Velocity libraries. [UPDATE] Thanks for the answers so far - much appreciated. I am really intested in recommendations or war stories from when you have used these libraries. Seems to be the best way to make a decision without trying each in turn.

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  • Pass associative arrays in call_user_func_array(...)

    - by Matt
    Hey all, I'm building a templating system and I'm running in to an issue with calling functions on the fly. When I try the following: $args = array( 4, 'test' => 'hello', 'hi' ); You know.. some numerical elements some associative elements, call_user_func_array($function, $args); converts the array to something like this: $args = array( 4, 'hello', 'hi' ); Is there any way around this other than passing an array like this: $args = array( 4, array('test' => 'hello'), 'hi' ); Thanks! Matt

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  • Frontend Intertag Communication

    - by Matt
    Hey all, I've had a question that I've been wondering for a while. I'm making a templating system for front-ends where tags are interpretted (like Smarty). I was wondering if there is value in having the tags be able to communicate with the HTML document and other "Smartyish" tags. I was hoping that the community would have some thoughts on this situation. Benefits: More power (tags can tell other tags how to look) Better structure (smartyish tags behave and look just like html tags) Tags can manipulate any element on the page Drawbacks: Tags can manipulate any element on the page Tags can interfere with other tags Code time will increase

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  • Why don't I just build the whole web app in Javascript and Javascript HTML Templates?

    - by viatropos
    I'm getting to the point on an app where I need to start caching things, and it got me thinking... In some parts of the app, I render table rows (jqGrid, slickgrid, etc.) or fancy div rows (like in the New Twitter) by grabbing pure JSON and running it through something like Mustache, jquery.tmpl, etc. In other parts of the app, I just render the info in pure HTML (server-side HAML templates), and if there's searching/paginating, I just go to a new URL and load a new HTML page. Now the problem is in caching and maintainability. On one hand I'm thinking, if everything was built using Javascript HTML Templates, then my app would serve just an HTML layout/shell, and a bunch of JSON. If you look at the Facebook and Twitter HTML source, that's basically what they're doing (95% json/javascript, 5% html). This would make it so my app only needed to cache JSON (pages, actions, and/or records). Which means you'd hit the cache no matter if you were some remote api developer accessing a JSON api, or the strait web app. That is, I don't need 2 caches, one for the JSON, one for the HTML. That seems like it'd cut my cache store down in half, and streamline things a little bit. On the other hand, I'm thinking, from what I've seen/experienced, generating static HTML server-side, and caching that, seems to be much better performance wise cross-browser; you get the graphics instantly and don't have to wait that split-second for javascript to render it. StackOverflow seems to do everything in plain HTML, and you can tell... everything appears at once. Notice how though on twitter.com, the page is blank for .5-1 seconds, and the page chunks in: the javascript has to render the json. The downside with this is that, for anything dynamic (like endless scrolling, or grids), I'd have to create javascript templates anyway... so now I have server-side HAML templates, client-side javascript templates, and a lot more to cache. My question is, is there any consensus on how to approach this? What are the benefits and drawbacks from your experience of mixing the two versus going 100% with one over the other? Update: Some reasons that factor into why I haven't yet made the decision to go with 100% javascript templating are: Performance. Haven't formally tested, but from what I've seen, raw html renders faster and more fluidly than javascript-generated html cross-browser. Plus, I'm not sure how mobile devices handle dynamic html performance-wise. Testing. I have a lot of integration tests that work well with static HTML, so switching to javascript-only would require 1) more focused pure-javascript testing (jasmine), and 2) integrating javascript into capybara integration tests. This is just a matter of time and work, but it's probably significant. Maintenance. Getting rid of HAML. I love HAML, it's so easy to write, it prints pretty HTML... It makes code clean, it makes maintenance easy. Going with javascript, there's nothing as concise. SEO. I know google handles the ajax /#!/path, but haven't grasped how this will affect other search engines and how older browsers handle it. Seems like it'd require a significant setup.

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  • JQuery Pure Template

    - by cem
    I cant figure out whats wrong. Its working when i tried to refresh only topics but it doesnt works when tried to refresh topics and page-links. ie. topics table's refreshing, and 'pagelinks' disappearing, i thought pure cannot reach - read second template node. By the way, i tested their code, first message box show up all of nodes - includes 'pagelinks' node, but second one - in function only show up topic rows. Its look like a bug. Anyone knows how can i solve this? ps. I'm using latest version of pure. Thanks. Test Code - pure.js line: 189 function dataselectfn(sel) { // ... m = sel.split('.'); alert(m.toSource()); return function (ctxt) { var data = ctxt.context; if (!data) { return ''; } alert('in function: ' + m.toSource()); // ... Json: {"topics":[{"name":"foo"}],"pagelinks":[{"Page":1},{"Page":2}]} HTML - before pure rendering: <table> <tbody> <tr> <td class="pagelinks"> <a page="1" href="/Topics/IndexForAreas?page=1" class="p Page@page">1</a> </td> <td class="pagelinks"> <a page="2" href="/Topics/IndexForAreas?page=2" class="p Page@page">2</a> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> HTML - after pure rendering: <table> <tbody> <tr> </tr> </tbody> </table> Controller: [Transaction] public ActionResult IndexForAreas(int? page) { TopicService topicService = new TopicService(); PagedList<Topic> topics = topicService.GetPaged(page); if (Request.IsAjaxRequest()) { return Json(new { topics = topics.Select(t => new { name = t.Name, }), pagelinks = PagingHelper.AsPager(topics, 1) }); } return View(topics); } ASP.NET - View: <div class="topiccontainer"> <table> <% foreach (Topic topic in ViewData.Model) { %> <tr class="topics"> <td> <%= Html.ActionLink<ForumPostsController>(ec => ec.Index(topic.Name, null), topic.Name, new { @class="name viewlink@href" })%> </td> //bla bla... </tr> <%} %> </table> <table> <tr> <% Html.Pager(Model, 1, p => { %> <td class="pagelinks"> <%= Html.ActionLink<TopicsController>(c => c.IndexForAreas(p.Page), p.Page.ToString(), new { page = p.Page, @class = "Page@page" })%> </td> <% }); %> </tr> </table> </div> Master Page: <% Html.RenderAction("IndexForAreas", "Topics", new { area = "" }); %> <script type="text/javascript"> $.post("<%= Html.BuildUrlFromExpressionForAreas<TopicsController>(c => c.IndexForAreas(null)) %>", { page: page }, function (data) { $(".topiccontainer").autoRender(data); }, "json" ); </script>

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  • Conditional Styling In Silverlight?

    - by DeanMc
    Hi, While I'm fine with standard control styling in silverlight I have recently began using more dynamic methods of fetching data to be displayed in items controls. One of the controls I am reworking is a collection of links. The issue I am having is that each link is coloured differently when moused over. One red, one blue, one green, etc. Is there a way to style these items without sacrificing the dynamics of using an items control with a data template?

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  • Make object available within php functions without passing them or making them global

    - by Matt
    Hey all, This requirement is just for simplicity for developers and beautiful code. I'm building a template system and I really would just like an object variable to simply be there in all functions. Here's some code: Librarian.php: $class = "slideshow"; $function = "basic"; $args = array(...); $librarian = $this; // I WOULD LIKE THIS TO BE PRESENT IN CALLED FUNCTION ... return call_user_func($class.'::'.$function, $args); ... Slideshow.php: public static function basic($args) { echo $librarian; // "Librarian Object" } Thanks! Matt Mueller

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  • Looking For A Good HTML Templater for PHP

    - by Ygam
    That's an HTML templater, not a php templater, not java or whatever. I am looking for something like HAML for PHP. I tried the 2 projects for PHP, PHAML and PHPHaml both of which are suffering from serious bugs. Do you know of any good html templater out there, preferably for PHP? EDIT I''m looking for something that can turn this <h1>Heading</h1> <p>entry</p> <blockquote>quote</blockquote> to something like this h1 : heading p : entry blockquote : quote something like what phphaml does

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  • How do non-coders do simple local templating to avoid redundant HTML? [closed]

    - by Max Cantor
    I'm a web developer. When I start designing a site, I use a framework to handle templating for me, even if it's just rack + erubis. What do non-developers do? If you want to implement a site in HTML and CSS without a framework running on a webserver, without frames, and without WYSYWIG tools like Dreamweaver... how do you avoid copy-and-pasting the HTML of your navigation (for example) on every single page you're writing? I feel stupid asking this because it seems like their must be an obvious answer, but for the life of me, I can't think of one right now.

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  • Preventing a security breach

    - by Wiz
    I am creating a website where you "post", and the form content is saved in a MySql database, and upon loading the page, is retrieved, similar to facebook. I construct all the posts and insert raw html into a template. The thing is, as I was testing, I noticed that I could write javascript or other HTML into the form and submit it, and upon reloading, the html or JS would treated as source code, not a post. I figured that some simple encoding would do the trick, but using is not working. Is there an efficient way to prevent this type of security hole?

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  • Why is String Templating Better Than String Concatenation from an Engineering Perspective?

    - by stephen
    I once read (I think it was in "Programming Pearls") that one should use templates instead of building the string through the use of concatenation. For example, consider the template below (using C# razor library) <in a properties file> Browser Capabilities Type = @Model.Type Name = @Model.Browser Version = @Model.Version Supports Frames = @Model.Frames Supports Tables = @Model.Tables Supports Cookies = @Model.Cookies Supports VBScript = @Model.VBScript Supports Java Applets = @Model.JavaApplets Supports ActiveX Controls = @Model.ActiveXControls and later, in a separate code file private void Button1_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e) { BrowserInfoTemplate = Properties.Resources.browserInfoTemplate; // see above string browserInfo = RazorEngine.Razor.Parse(BrowserInfoTemplate, browser); ... } From a software engineering perspective, how is this better than an equivalent string concatentation, like below: private void Button1_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e) { System.Web.HttpBrowserCapabilities browser = Request.Browser; string s = "Browser Capabilities\n" + "Type = " + browser.Type + "\n" + "Name = " + browser.Browser + "\n" + "Version = " + browser.Version + "\n" + "Supports Frames = " + browser.Frames + "\n" + "Supports Tables = " + browser.Tables + "\n" + "Supports Cookies = " + browser.Cookies + "\n" + "Supports VBScript = " + browser.VBScript + "\n" + "Supports JavaScript = " + browser.EcmaScriptVersion.ToString() + "\n" + "Supports Java Applets = " + browser.JavaApplets + "\n" + "Supports ActiveX Controls = " + browser.ActiveXControls + "\n" ... }

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  • Where Are the Release Versions of ASP.Net AJAX 4.0 Templating Files?

    - by Lee Richardson
    I'm trying to get the production version of ASP.Net AJAX 4.0 Templating working and can't find the JavaScript files. With the beta version I needed to reference MicrosoftAjaxTemplates.js, MicrosoftAjaxAdoNet.js, and MicrosoftAjaxDataContext.js. I can get everything to work with the beta CDN versions (e.g. http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/beta/0911/MicrosoftAjaxTemplates.js). But for the life of me I can't find 1. The release CDN versions of these files or 2. Where to download the whole Release ASP.Net AJAX 4.0 JavaScript package. The files certainly are not listed on the ASP.Net AJAX 4.0 CDN at http://www.asp.net/ajaxlibrary/CDNAjax4.ashx. Maybe the files have been renamed? Theoretically this should be a rediculously easy question and I'm a little embarrased to even ask it on StackOverflow, but I've had no luck finding an answer on my own. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks, - Lee

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  • (Symfony) How can i change the templating of a form in sfDoctrineGuardPlugin ?

    - by ruic
    How can i change the templating of a form in sfDoctrineGuardPlugin? That is, I need to change the html (class, id) of the input elements (username, password) of a login form provided by sfDoctrineGuardPlugin. I've changed apps/app_name/modules/sfGuardAuth/templates/singinSuccess.php, but it then just echoes $form (I need to change contents of that part - $form): <form action="<?php echo url_for('@sf_guard_signin') ?>" method="post"> <table> <?php echo $form ?> </table> <input type="submit" class="go_button" value="ir" /> <a href="<?php echo url_for('@sf_guard_password') ?>"><?php echo __('Forgot your password?') ?></a> </form> (It really should be something like changing a _form.php = I cant find this, though :S) Thank you all for any answers provided =)

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  • Syntax Error with John Resig's Micro Templating after changing template tags <# {% {{ etc..

    - by optician
    I'm having a bit of trouble with John Resig's Micro templating. Can anyone help me with why it isn't working? This is the template <script type="text/html" id="row_tmpl"> test content {%=id%} {%=name%} </script> And the modified section of the engine str .replace(/[\r\t\n]/g, " ") .split("{%").join("\t") .replace(/((^|%>)[^\t]*)'/g, "$1\r") .replace(/\t=(.*?)%>/g, "',$1,'") .split("\t").join("');") .split("%}").join("p.push('") .split("\r").join("\\'") + "');}return p.join('');"); and the javascript var dataObject = { "id": "27", "name": "some more content" }; var html = tmpl("row_tmpl", dataObject); and the result, as you can see =id and =name seem to be in the wrong place? Apart from changing the template syntax blocks from <% % to {% %} I haven't changed anything. This is from Firefox. Error: syntax error Line: 30, Column: 89 Source Code: var p=[],print=function(){p.push.apply(p,arguments);};with(obj){p.push(' test content ');=idp.push(' ');=namep.push(' ');}return p.join('');

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  • What's a good way to format AJAX responses? Or, using Django templating with AJAX

    - by synic
    In some of the code I'm working on, the author max AJAX calls to a Django view that returns JSON. Once the JSON is retrieved, it'll be injected into the page with a function that looks like this (note, this is a simplification, but I'm sure you know what I'm getting at here): function build_event_listing(events) { var html = ''; for(int i = 0; i < events.length; i++) { event = events[i]; html += "<h2>" + event.title + "</h2>\n"; html += "<p>" + event.description + "</p>"; html += "Click <a href='/event/view/" + event.id + "'>here<a> for more info."; } events_div.html(html); } I really don't like this approach. To change the look of each event listing, the designer would have to modify that ugly JS. I'd much rather make use of Django's templating system, but I'm wondering how I can do this? I had the idea of writing the view like this: def view_listings(req): events = models.Event.objects.all() html = [] for event in events: html.append( render_to_string('event/single_event.html', { 'event': event, }, context_instance=RequestContext(req)) return HttpResponse(''.join(html), mimetype='text/html') ... but it just seems like there should be a better way. Any ideas?

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  • jQuery Templates, Data Link

    - by Renso
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Query Templates, Data Link, and Globalization I am sure you must have read Scott Guthrie’s blog post about jQuery support and officially supporting jQuery's templating, data linking and globalization, if not here it is: jQuery Templating Since we are an open source shop and use jQuery and jQuery plugins extensively to say the least, decided to look into the templating a bit and see what data linking is all about. For those not familiar with those terms here is the summary, plenty of material out there on what it is, but here is what in my experience it means: jQuery Templating: A templating engine that allows you to specify a client-side template where you indicate which properties/tags you want dynamically updated. You in a sense specify which parts of the html is dynamic and since it is pluggable you are able to use tools data jQuery data linking and others to let it sync up your template with data. What makes it more powerful is that you can easily work with rows of data, adding and removing rows. Once the template has been generated, which you do dynamically on a client-side event, you then append/inject the resulting template somewhere in your DOM, like for example you would get a JSON object from the database, map it to your template, it populates the template with your data in the indicated places, and then let’s say for example append it to a row in a table. I have not found it that useful for lets say a single record of data since you could easily just get a partial view from the server via an html type ajax call. It really shines when you dynamically add/remove rows from a list in the DOM. I have not found an alternative that meets the functionality of the jQuery template and helps of course that Microsoft officially supports it. In future versions of the jQuery plug-in it may even ship as part of the standard jQuery library and with future versions of Visual Studio. jQuery Data Linking: In short I was fascinated by it initially by how with one line of code I can sync up my JSON object with my form elements. That's where my enthusiasm stopped. It was one-line to let is deal with syncing up your form with your JSON object, but it is not bidirectional as they state and I tried all the work arounds they suggested and none of them work. The problem is that when you update your JSON object it DOES NOT sync it up with your form. In an example, accounts are being edited client side by selecting the account from a list by clicking on the row, it then fetches the entire account JSON object via ajax json-type call and then refreshes the form with the account’s details from the new JSON object. What is the use of syncing up my JSON with the form if I still have to programmatically sync up my new JSON object with each DOM property?! So you may ask: “what is the alternative”? Good question and the same one I was pondering, maybe I can just use it for keeping my from n sync with my JSON object so I can post that JSON object back to the server and update my database. That’s when I discovered Knockout: Knockout It addresses the issues mentioned above and also supports event handling through the observer pattern. Not wanting to go into detail here, Steve Sanderson, the creator of Knockout, has already done a terrific job of that, thanks Steve for a great plug-in! Best of all it integrates perfectly with the jQuery Templating engine as well. I have not found an alternative to this plugin that supports the depth and width of functionality and would recommend it to anyone. The only drawback is the embedded html attributes (data-bind=””) tags that you have to add to the HTML, in my opinion tying your behavior to your HTML, where I like to separate behavior from HTML as well as CSS, so the HTML is purely to define content, not styling or behavior. But there are plusses to this as well and also a nifty work around to this that I will just shortly mention here with an example. Instead of data binding an html tag with knockout event handling like so:  <%=Html.TextBox("PrepayDiscount", String.Empty, new { @class = "number" })%>   Do: <%=Html.DataBoundTextBox("PrepayDiscount", String.Empty, new { @class = "number" })%>   The html extension above then takes care of the internals and you could then swap Knockout for something else if you want to inside the extension and keep the HTML plugin agnostic. Here is what the extension looks like, you can easily build a whole library to support all kinds of data binding options from this:      public static class HtmlExtensions       {         public static MvcHtmlString DataBoundTextBox(this HtmlHelper helper, string name, object value, object htmlAttributes)         {             var dic = new RouteValueDictionary(htmlAttributes);             dic.Add("data-bind", String.Format("value: {0}", name));             return helper.TextBox(name, value, dic);         }       }   Hope this helps in making a decision when and where to consider jQuery templating, data linking and Knockout.

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  • What software do you use for letter templating and printing?

    - by Pratik
    In our LOB application there is a very important use case of printing letters, which are then printed and posted out from a mail house (thousands per day). The current situation is that the letter templates are created in Word 97 and fields are mail merged from values in database using a VB.Net application that basically uses word automation. But depending on Word 97 is not a good idea today. We only have a couple of PCs that have Word 97 installed as rest of the company has moved to Office 2007. What software or technology (compatible with .Net) is available today that best suits this scenario. Is it better to do the same thing but move to Word 2007 or PDF or something else. Price may not be a factor. The important thing is that the letter templates must be designed by business users and data to fill placeholders come from DB. A bonus would be to import the hundreds of existing Word 97 letter templates without rewriting them from scratch.

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  • Looking for an email/report templating engine with database backend - for end-users ...

    - by RizwanK
    We have a number of customers that we have to send monthly invoices too. Right now, I'm managing a codebase that does SQL queries against our customer database and billing database and places that data into emails - and sends it. I grow weary of maintaining this every time we want to include a new promotion or change our customer service phone numbers. So, I'm looking for a replacement to move more of this into the hands of those requesting the changes. In my ideal world, I need : A WYSIWYG (man, does anyone even say that anymore?) email editor that generates templates based upon the output from a Database Query. The ability to drag and drop various fields from the database query into the email template. Display of sample email results with the database query. Web application, preferably not requiring IIS. Involve as little code as possible for the end-user, but allow basic functionality (i.e. arrays/for loops) Either comes with it's own email delivery engine, or writes output in a way that I can easily write a Python script to deliver the email. Support for generic Database Connectors. (I need MSSQL and MySQL) F/OSS So ... can anyone suggest a project like this, or some tools that'd be useful for rolling my own? (My current alternative idea is using something like ERB or Tenjin, having them write the code, but not having live-preview for the editor would suck...)

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  • Microsoft and jQuery

    - by Rick Strahl
    The jQuery JavaScript library has been steadily getting more popular and with recent developments from Microsoft, jQuery is also getting ever more exposure on the ASP.NET platform including now directly from Microsoft. jQuery is a light weight, open source DOM manipulation library for JavaScript that has changed how many developers think about JavaScript. You can download it and find more information on jQuery on www.jquery.com. For me jQuery has had a huge impact on how I develop Web applications and was probably the main reason I went from dreading to do JavaScript development to actually looking forward to implementing client side JavaScript functionality. It has also had a profound impact on my JavaScript skill level for me by seeing how the library accomplishes things (and often reviewing the terse but excellent source code). jQuery made an uncomfortable development platform (JavaScript + DOM) a joy to work on. Although jQuery is by no means the only JavaScript library out there, its ease of use, small size, huge community of plug-ins and pure usefulness has made it easily the most popular JavaScript library available today. As a long time jQuery user, I’ve been excited to see the developments from Microsoft that are bringing jQuery to more ASP.NET developers and providing more integration with jQuery for ASP.NET’s core features rather than relying on the ASP.NET AJAX library. Microsoft and jQuery – making Friends jQuery is an open source project but in the last couple of years Microsoft has really thrown its weight behind supporting this open source library as a supported component on the Microsoft platform. When I say supported I literally mean supported: Microsoft now offers actual tech support for jQuery as part of their Product Support Services (PSS) as jQuery integration has become part of several of the ASP.NET toolkits and ships in several of the default Web project templates in Visual Studio 2010. The ASP.NET MVC 3 framework (still in Beta) also uses jQuery for a variety of client side support features including client side validation and we can look forward toward more integration of client side functionality via jQuery in both MVC and WebForms in the future. In other words jQuery is becoming an optional but included component of the ASP.NET platform. PSS support means that support staff will answer jQuery related support questions as part of any support incidents related to ASP.NET which provides some piece of mind to some corporate development shops that require end to end support from Microsoft. In addition to including jQuery and supporting it, Microsoft has also been getting involved in providing development resources for extending jQuery’s functionality via plug-ins. Microsoft’s last version of the Microsoft Ajax Library – which is the successor to the native ASP.NET AJAX Library – included some really cool functionality for client templates, databinding and localization. As it turns out Microsoft has rebuilt most of that functionality using jQuery as the base API and provided jQuery plug-ins of these components. Very recently these three plug-ins were submitted and have been approved for inclusion in the official jQuery plug-in repository and been taken over by the jQuery team for further improvements and maintenance. Even more surprising: The jQuery-templates component has actually been approved for inclusion in the next major update of the jQuery core in jQuery V1.5, which means it will become a native feature that doesn’t require additional script files to be loaded. Imagine this – an open source contribution from Microsoft that has been accepted into a major open source project for a core feature improvement. Microsoft has come a long way indeed! What the Microsoft Involvement with jQuery means to you For Microsoft jQuery support is a strategic decision that affects their direction in client side development, but nothing stopped you from using jQuery in your applications prior to Microsoft’s official backing and in fact a large chunk of developers did so readily prior to Microsoft’s announcement. Official support from Microsoft brings a few benefits to developers however. jQuery support in Visual Studio 2010 means built-in support for jQuery IntelliSense, automatically added jQuery scripts in many projects types and a common base for client side functionality that actually uses what most developers are already using. If you have already been using jQuery and were worried about straying from the Microsoft line and their internal Microsoft Ajax Library – worry no more. With official support and the change in direction towards jQuery Microsoft is now following along what most in the ASP.NET community had already been doing by using jQuery, which is likely the reason for Microsoft’s shift in direction in the first place. ASP.NET AJAX and the Microsoft AJAX Library weren’t bad technology – there was tons of useful functionality buried in these libraries. However, these libraries never got off the ground, mainly because early incarnations were squarely aimed at control/component developers rather than application developers. For all the functionality that these controls provided for control developers they lacked in useful and easily usable application developer functionality that was easily accessible in day to day client side development. The result was that even though Microsoft shipped support for these tools in the box (in .NET 3.5 and 4.0), other than for the internal support in ASP.NET for things like the UpdatePanel and the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit as well as some third party vendors, the Microsoft client libraries were largely ignored by the developer community opening the door for other client side solutions. Microsoft seems to be acknowledging developer choice in this case: Many more developers were going down the jQuery path rather than using the Microsoft built libraries and there seems to be little sense in continuing development of a technology that largely goes unused by the majority of developers. Kudos for Microsoft for recognizing this and gracefully changing directions. Note that even though there will be no further development in the Microsoft client libraries they will continue to be supported so if you’re using them in your applications there’s no reason to start running for the exit in a panic and start re-writing everything with jQuery. Although that might be a reasonable choice in some cases, jQuery and the Microsoft libraries work well side by side so that you can leave existing solutions untouched even as you enhance them with jQuery. The Microsoft jQuery Plug-ins – Solid Core Features One of the most interesting developments in Microsoft’s embracing of jQuery is that Microsoft has started contributing to jQuery via standard mechanism set for jQuery developers: By submitting plug-ins. Microsoft took some of the nicest new features of the unpublished Microsoft Ajax Client Library and re-wrote these components for jQuery and then submitted them as plug-ins to the jQuery plug-in repository. Accepted plug-ins get taken over by the jQuery team and that’s exactly what happened with the three plug-ins submitted by Microsoft with the templating plug-in even getting slated to be published as part of the jQuery core in the next major release (1.5). The following plug-ins are provided by Microsoft: jQuery Templates – a client side template rendering engine jQuery Data Link – a client side databinder that can synchronize changes without code jQuery Globalization – provides formatting and conversion features for dates and numbers The first two are ports of functionality that was slated for the Microsoft Ajax Library while functionality for the globalization library provides functionality that was already found in the original ASP.NET AJAX library. To me all three plug-ins address a pressing need in client side applications and provide functionality I’ve previously used in other incarnations, but with more complete implementations. Let’s take a close look at these plug-ins. jQuery Templates http://api.jquery.com/category/plugins/templates/ Client side templating is a key component for building rich JavaScript applications in the browser. Templating on the client lets you avoid from manually creating markup by creating DOM nodes and injecting them individually into the document via code. Rather you can create markup templates – similar to the way you create classic ASP server markup – and merge data into these templates to render HTML which you can then inject into the document or replace existing content with. Output from templates are rendered as a jQuery matched set and can then be easily inserted into the document as needed. Templating is key to minimize client side code and reduce repeated code for rendering logic. Instead a single template can be used in many places for updating and adding content to existing pages. Further if you build pure AJAX interfaces that rely entirely on client rendering of the initial page content, templates allow you to a use a single markup template to handle all rendering of each specific HTML section/element. I’ve used a number of different client rendering template engines with jQuery in the past including jTemplates (a PHP style templating engine) and a modified version of John Resig’s MicroTemplating engine which I built into my own set of libraries because it’s such a commonly used feature in my client side applications. jQuery templates adds a much richer templating model that allows for sub-templates and access to the data items. Like John Resig’s original Micro Template engine, the core basics of the templating engine create JavaScript code which means that templates can include JavaScript code. To give you a basic idea of how templates work imagine I have an application that downloads a set of stock quotes based on a symbol list then displays them in the document. To do this you can create an ‘item’ template that describes how each of the quotes is renderd as a template inside of the document: <script id="stockTemplate" type="text/x-jquery-tmpl"> <div id="divStockQuote" class="errordisplay" style="width: 500px;"> <div class="label">Company:</div><div><b>${Company}(${Symbol})</b></div> <div class="label">Last Price:</div><div>${LastPrice}</div> <div class="label">Net Change:</div><div> {{if NetChange > 0}} <b style="color:green" >${NetChange}</b> {{else}} <b style="color:red" >${NetChange}</b> {{/if}} </div> <div class="label">Last Update:</div><div>${LastQuoteTimeString}</div> </div> </script> The ‘template’ is little more than HTML with some markup expressions inside of it that define the template language. Notice the embedded ${} expressions which reference data from the quote objects returned from an AJAX call on the server. You can embed any JavaScript or value expression in these template expressions. There are also a number of structural commands like {{if}} and {{each}} that provide for rudimentary logic inside of your templates as well as commands ({{tmpl}} and {{wrap}}) for nesting templates. You can find more about the full set of markup expressions available in the documentation. To load up this data you can use code like the following: <script type="text/javascript"> //var Proxy = new ServiceProxy("../PageMethods/PageMethodsService.asmx/"); $(document).ready(function () { $("#btnGetQuotes").click(GetQuotes); }); function GetQuotes() { var symbols = $("#txtSymbols").val().split(","); $.ajax({ url: "../PageMethods/PageMethodsService.asmx/GetStockQuotes", data: JSON.stringify({ symbols: symbols }), // parameter map type: "POST", // data has to be POSTed contentType: "application/json", timeout: 10000, dataType: "json", success: function (result) { var quotes = result.d; var jEl = $("#stockTemplate").tmpl(quotes); $("#quoteDisplay").empty().append(jEl); }, error: function (xhr, status) { alert(status + "\r\n" + xhr.responseText); } }); }; </script> In this case an ASMX AJAX service is called to retrieve the stock quotes. The service returns an array of quote objects. The result is returned as an object with the .d property (in Microsoft service style) that returns the actual array of quotes. The template is applied with: var jEl = $("#stockTemplate").tmpl(quotes); which selects the template script tag and uses the .tmpl() function to apply the data to it. The result is a jQuery matched set of elements that can then be appended to the quote display element in the page. The template is merged against an array in this example. When the result is an array the template is automatically applied to each each array item. If you pass a single data item – like say a stock quote – the template works exactly the same way but is applied only once. Templates also have access to a $data item which provides the current data item and information about the tempalte that is currently executing. This makes it possible to keep context within the context of the template itself and also to pass context from a parent template to a child template which is very powerful. Templates can be evaluated by using the template selector and calling the .tmpl() function on the jQuery matched set as shown above or you can use the static $.tmpl() function to provide a template as a string. This allows you to dynamically create templates in code or – more likely – to load templates from the server via AJAX calls. In short there are options The above shows off some of the basics, but there’s much for functionality available in the template engine. Check the documentation link for more information and links to additional examples. The plug-in download also comes with a number of examples that demonstrate functionality. jQuery templates will become a native component in jQuery Core 1.5, so it’s definitely worthwhile checking out the engine today and get familiar with this interface. As much as I’m stoked about templating becoming part of the jQuery core because it’s such an integral part of many applications, there are also a couple shortcomings in the current incarnation: Lack of Error Handling Currently if you embed an expression that is invalid it’s simply not rendered. There’s no error rendered into the template nor do the various  template functions throw errors which leaves finding of bugs as a runtime exercise. I would like some mechanism – optional if possible – to be able to get error info of what is failing in a template when it’s rendered. No String Output Templates are always rendered into a jQuery matched set and there’s no way that I can see to directly render to a string. String output can be useful for debugging as well as opening up templating for creating non-HTML string output. Limited JavaScript Access Unlike John Resig’s original MicroTemplating Engine which was entirely based on JavaScript code generation these templates are limited to a few structured commands that can ‘execute’. There’s no code execution inside of script code which means you’re limited to calling expressions available in global objects or the data item passed in. This may or may not be a big deal depending on the complexity of your template logic. Error handling has been discussed quite a bit and it’s likely there will be some solution to that particualar issue by the time jQuery templates ship. The others are relatively minor issues but something to think about anyway. jQuery Data Link http://api.jquery.com/category/plugins/data-link/ jQuery Data Link provides the ability to do two-way data binding between input controls and an underlying object’s properties. The typical scenario is linking a textbox to a property of an object and have the object updated when the text in the textbox is changed and have the textbox change when the value in the object or the entire object changes. The plug-in also supports converter functions that can be applied to provide the conversion logic from string to some other value typically necessary for mapping things like textbox string input to say a number property and potentially applying additional formatting and calculations. In theory this sounds great, however in reality this plug-in has some serious usability issues. Using the plug-in you can do things like the following to bind data: person = { firstName: "rick", lastName: "strahl"}; $(document).ready( function() { // provide for two-way linking of inputs $("form").link(person); // bind to non-input elements explicitly $("#objFirst").link(person, { firstName: { name: "objFirst", convertBack: function (value, source, target) { $(target).text(value); } } }); $("#objLast").link(person, { lastName: { name: "objLast", convertBack: function (value, source, target) { $(target).text(value); } } }); }); This code hooks up two-way linking between a couple of textboxes on the page and the person object. The first line in the .ready() handler provides mapping of object to form field with the same field names as properties on the object. Note that .link() does NOT bind items into the textboxes when you call .link() – changes are mapped only when values change and you move out of the field. Strike one. The two following commands allow manual binding of values to specific DOM elements which is effectively a one-way bind. You specify the object and a then an explicit mapping where name is an ID in the document. The converter is required to explicitly assign the value to the element. Strike two. You can also detect changes to the underlying object and cause updates to the input elements bound. Unfortunately the syntax to do this is not very natural as you have to rely on the jQuery data object. To update an object’s properties and get change notification looks like this: function updateFirstName() { $(person).data("firstName", person.firstName + " (code updated)"); } This works fine in causing any linked fields to be updated. In the bindings above both the firstName input field and objFirst DOM element gets updated. But the syntax requires you to use a jQuery .data() call for each property change to ensure that the changes are tracked properly. Really? Sure you’re binding through multiple layers of abstraction now but how is that better than just manually assigning values? The code savings (if any) are going to be minimal. As much as I would like to have a WPF/Silverlight/Observable-like binding mechanism in client script, this plug-in doesn’t help much towards that goal in its current incarnation. While you can bind values, the ‘binder’ is too limited to be really useful. If initial values can’t be assigned from the mappings you’re going to end up duplicating work loading the data using some other mechanism. There’s no easy way to re-bind data with a different object altogether since updates trigger only through the .data members. Finally, any non-input elements have to be bound via code that’s fairly verbose and frankly may be more voluminous than what you might write by hand for manual binding and unbinding. Two way binding can be very useful but it has to be easy and most importantly natural. If it’s more work to hook up a binding than writing a couple of lines to do binding/unbinding this sort of thing helps very little in most scenarios. In talking to some of the developers the feature set for Data Link is not complete and they are still soliciting input for features and functionality. If you have ideas on how you want this feature to be more useful get involved and post your recommendations. As it stands, it looks to me like this component needs a lot of love to become useful. For this component to really provide value, bindings need to be able to be refreshed easily and work at the object level, not just the property level. It seems to me we would be much better served by a model binder object that can perform these binding/unbinding tasks in bulk rather than a tool where each link has to be mapped first. I also find the choice of creating a jQuery plug-in questionable – it seems a standalone object – albeit one that relies on the jQuery library – would provide a more intuitive interface than the current forcing of options onto a plug-in style interface. Out of the three Microsoft created components this is by far the least useful and least polished implementation at this point. jQuery Globalization http://github.com/jquery/jquery-global Globalization in JavaScript applications often gets short shrift and part of the reason for this is that natively in JavaScript there’s little support for formatting and parsing of numbers and dates. There are a number of JavaScript libraries out there that provide some support for globalization, but most are limited to a particular portion of globalization. As .NET developers we’re fairly spoiled by the richness of APIs provided in the framework and when dealing with client development one really notices the lack of these features. While you may not necessarily need to localize your application the globalization plug-in also helps with some basic tasks for non-localized applications: Dealing with formatting and parsing of dates and time values. Dates in particular are problematic in JavaScript as there are no formatters whatsoever except the .toString() method which outputs a verbose and next to useless long string. With the globalization plug-in you get a good chunk of the formatting and parsing functionality that the .NET framework provides on the server. You can write code like the following for example to format numbers and dates: var date = new Date(); var output = $.format(date, "MMM. dd, yy") + "\r\n" + $.format(date, "d") + "\r\n" + // 10/25/2010 $.format(1222.32213, "N2") + "\r\n" + $.format(1222.33, "c") + "\r\n"; alert(output); This becomes even more useful if you combine it with templates which can also include any JavaScript expressions. Assuming the globalization plug-in is loaded you can create template expressions that use the $.format function. Here’s the template I used earlier for the stock quote again with a couple of formats applied: <script id="stockTemplate" type="text/x-jquery-tmpl"> <div id="divStockQuote" class="errordisplay" style="width: 500px;"> <div class="label">Company:</div><div><b>${Company}(${Symbol})</b></div> <div class="label">Last Price:</div> <div>${$.format(LastPrice,"N2")}</div> <div class="label">Net Change:</div><div> {{if NetChange > 0}} <b style="color:green" >${NetChange}</b> {{else}} <b style="color:red" >${NetChange}</b> {{/if}} </div> <div class="label">Last Update:</div> <div>${$.format(LastQuoteTime,"MMM dd, yyyy")}</div> </div> </script> There are also parsing methods that can parse dates and numbers from strings into numbers easily: alert($.parseDate("25.10.2010")); alert($.parseInt("12.222")); // de-DE uses . for thousands separators As you can see culture specific options are taken into account when parsing. The globalization plugin provides rich support for a variety of locales: Get a list of all available cultures Query cultures for culture items (like currency symbol, separators etc.) Localized string names for all calendar related items (days of week, months) Generated off of .NET’s supported locales In short you get much of the same functionality that you already might be using in .NET on the server side. The plugin includes a huge number of locales and an Globalization.all.min.js file that contains the text defaults for each of these locales as well as small locale specific script files that define each of the locale specific settings. It’s highly recommended that you NOT use the huge globalization file that includes all locales, but rather add script references to only those languages you explicitly care about. Overall this plug-in is a welcome helper. Even if you use it with a single locale (like en-US) and do no other localization, you’ll gain solid support for number and date formatting which is a vital feature of many applications. Changes for Microsoft It’s good to see Microsoft coming out of its shell and away from the ‘not-built-here’ mentality that has been so pervasive in the past. It’s especially good to see it applied to jQuery – a technology that has stood in drastic contrast to Microsoft’s own internal efforts in terms of design, usage model and… popularity. It’s great to see that Microsoft is paying attention to what customers prefer to use and supporting the customer sentiment – even if it meant drastically changing course of policy and moving into a more open and sharing environment in the process. The additional jQuery support that has been introduced in the last two years certainly has made lives easier for many developers on the ASP.NET platform. It’s also nice to see Microsoft submitting proposals through the standard jQuery process of plug-ins and getting accepted for various very useful projects. Certainly the jQuery Templates plug-in is going to be very useful to many especially since it will be baked into the jQuery core in jQuery 1.5. I hope we see more of this type of involvement from Microsoft in the future. Kudos!© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in jQuery  ASP.NET  

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  • Fluentemail not working locally but working on server

    - by sreginogemoh
    My web app using Fluentemail to send emails. But there is strange thing happening, it is sending emails on server successfully, but locally I am getting such kind of errors: RazorEngine.Templating.TemplateCompilationException: Unable to compile template. Check the Errors list for details. at RazorEngine.Compilation.DirectCompilerServiceBase.CompileType(TypeContext context) at RazorEngine.Templating.TemplateService.CreateTemplate(String template, Type modelType) at RazorEngine.Templating.TemplateService.GetTemplate(String template, Type modelType, String name) at RazorEngine.Templating.TemplateService.Parse[T](String template, T model, String name) at RazorEngine.Razor.Parse[T](String template, T model, String name) at FluentEmail.Email.UsingTemplateFromFile[T](String filename, T model, Boolean isHtml) error CS2001: Source file 'C:\Windows\TEMP\5yn3eqdw.0.cs' could not be found} Is there any way I can fix that?

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  • Minimalist, Tiny Javascript Template System?

    - by Parand
    I'm looking for a minimalist template system for javascript, ala John Resig's Javascript Micro Templating. The smaller the better, and if it's jquery based even better. Recommendations? I tried John's micro-templating but ran into a few issues, wanted to see if there are more baked / better packaged solutions out there. [Update] I tried Resig's Micro Templating again and it's working well for me. Would still like to hear about other alternatives if there are any.

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  • Does RazorEngine require MVC3 to be installed?

    - by tkha007
    I am working on a web project that uses MVC2. I decided to try out RazorEngine to do some e-mail templating. This appeared to work fine when I was protyping using an MVC2 project so I assumed that RazorEngine will work fine for my e-mail templating solution. What I had forgotten at the time was that I actually had MVC3 installed on my local development machine. After deploying the project on a pre-test server I get the following error in the logs when the application attempts to do anything with RazorEngine: Could not load file or assembly 'System.Web.Razor, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. File name: 'System.Web.Razor, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' at RazorEngine.Compilation.DefaultCompilerServiceFactory.CreateCompilerService(Language language) at RazorEngine.Templating.TemplateService.CreateTemplateType(String razorTemplate, Type modelType) at RazorEngine.Templating.TemplateService.CreateTemplate[T](String razorTemplate, T model) at RazorEngine.Templating.TemplateService.Parse[T](String razorTemplate, T model) at RazorEngine.Razor.Parse[T](String razorTemplate, T model) at System.Dynamic.UpdateDelegates.UpdateAndExecute3[T0,T1,T2,TRet](CallSite site, T0 arg0, T1 arg1, T2 arg2) at Persistence.Utility.RazorEngineHelper.Parse(String templateName, Object model) in The fact that it can't find 'System.Web.Razor' means that this DLL does not exist on the deployed server. The only difference I can think of between the deployment server and my local dev machine is that the deployment server does not have MVC3 installed but I may be mistaken because the deployment server is not something I normally control and as such I don't have a lot of information about it. It is meant to host this particular application so there have been previous deployments of this application to this server. This is the first time I'm making a deployment with RazorEngine as a dependency.

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