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• ASP.NET MVC – Unit Testing JsonResult Returning Anonymous Types

  - by HeartattacK

  In this article, Ashic shows a few approaches to unit testing JsonResults that wrap anonymous types in ASP.NET MVC. Note: Crossposted from http://www.heartysoft.com/post/2010/05/25/ASPNET-MVC-Unit-Testing-JsonResult-Returning-Anonymous-Types.aspx

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• NoSQL with RavenDB and ASP.NET MVC - Part 2

  - by shiju

  In my previous post, we have discussed on how to work with RavenDB document database in an ASP.NET MVC application. We have setup RavenDB for our ASP.NET MVC application and did basic CRUD operations against a simple domain entity. In this post, let’s discuss on domain entity with deep object graph and how to query against RavenDB documents using Indexes.Let's create two domain entities for our demo ASP.NET MVC appplication  public class Category {       public string Id { get; set; }     [Required(ErrorMessage = "Name Required")]     [StringLength(25, ErrorMessage = "Must be less than 25 characters")]     public string Name { get; set;}     public string Description { get; set; }     public List<Expense> Expenses { get; set; }       public Category()     {         Expenses = new List<Expense>();     } }    public class Expense {       public string Id { get; set; }     public Category Category { get; set; }     public string  Transaction { get; set; }     public DateTime Date { get; set; }     public double Amount { get; set; }   }  We have two domain entities - Category and Expense. A single category contains a list of expense transactions and every expense transaction should have a Category.Let's create  ASP.NET MVC view model  for Expense transaction public class ExpenseViewModel {     public string Id { get; set; }       public string CategoryId { get; set; }       [Required(ErrorMessage = "Transaction Required")]            public string Transaction { get; set; }       [Required(ErrorMessage = "Date Required")]            public DateTime Date { get; set; }       [Required(ErrorMessage = "Amount Required")]     public double Amount { get; set; }       public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> Category { get; set; } } Let's create a contract type for Expense Repository  public interface IExpenseRepository {     Expense Load(string id);     IEnumerable<Expense> GetExpenseTransactions(DateTime startDate,DateTime endDate);     void Save(Expense expense,string categoryId);     void Delete(string id);  } Let's create a concrete type for Expense Repository for handling CRUD operations. public class ExpenseRepository : IExpenseRepository {   private IDocumentSession session; public ExpenseRepository() {         session = MvcApplication.CurrentSession; } public Expense Load(string id) {     return session.Load<Expense>(id); } public IEnumerable<Expense> GetExpenseTransactions(DateTime startDate, DateTime endDate) {             //Querying using the Index name "ExpenseTransactions"     //filtering with dates     var expenses = session.LuceneQuery<Expense>("ExpenseTransactions")         .WaitForNonStaleResults()         .Where(exp => exp.Date >= startDate && exp.Date <= endDate)         .ToArray();     return expenses; } public void Save(Expense expense,string categoryId) {     var category = session.Load<Category>(categoryId);     if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(expense.Id))     {         //new expense transaction         expense.Category = category;         session.Store(expense);     }     else     {         //modifying an existing expense transaction         var expenseToEdit = Load(expense.Id);         //Copy values to  expenseToEdit         ModelCopier.CopyModel(expense, expenseToEdit);         //set category object         expenseToEdit.Category = category;       }     //save changes     session.SaveChanges(); } public void Delete(string id) {     var expense = Load(id);     session.Delete<Expense>(expense);     session.SaveChanges(); }   }  Insert/Update Expense Transaction The Save method is used for both insert a new expense record and modifying an existing expense transaction. For a new expense transaction, we store the expense object with associated category into document session object and load the existing expense object and assign values to it for editing a existing record.  public void Save(Expense expense,string categoryId) {     var category = session.Load<Category>(categoryId);     if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(expense.Id))     {         //new expense transaction         expense.Category = category;         session.Store(expense);     }     else     {         //modifying an existing expense transaction         var expenseToEdit = Load(expense.Id);         //Copy values to  expenseToEdit         ModelCopier.CopyModel(expense, expenseToEdit);         //set category object         expenseToEdit.Category = category;       }     //save changes     session.SaveChanges(); } Querying Expense transactions   public IEnumerable<Expense> GetExpenseTransactions(DateTime startDate, DateTime endDate) {             //Querying using the Index name "ExpenseTransactions"     //filtering with dates     var expenses = session.LuceneQuery<Expense>("ExpenseTransactions")         .WaitForNonStaleResults()         .Where(exp => exp.Date >= startDate && exp.Date <= endDate)         .ToArray();     return expenses; }  The GetExpenseTransactions method returns expense transactions using a LINQ query expression with a Date comparison filter. The Lucene Query is using a index named "ExpenseTransactions" for getting the result set. In RavenDB, Indexes are LINQ queries stored in the RavenDB server and would be  executed on the background and will perform query against the JSON documents. Indexes will be working with a lucene query expression or a set operation. Indexes are composed using a Map and Reduce function. Check out Ayende's blog post on Map/Reduce We can create index using RavenDB web admin tool as well as programmitically using its Client API. The below shows the screen shot of creating index using web admin tool. We can also create Indexes using Raven Cleint API as shown in the following code documentStore.DatabaseCommands.PutIndex("ExpenseTransactions",     new IndexDefinition<Expense,Expense>() {     Map = Expenses => from exp in Expenses                     select new { exp.Date } });  In the Map function, we used a Linq expression as shown in the following from exp in docs.Expensesselect new { exp.Date };We have not used a Reduce function for the above index. A Reduce function is useful while performing aggregate functions based on the results from the Map function. Indexes can be use with set operations of RavenDB.SET OperationsUnlike other document databases, RavenDB supports set based operations that lets you to perform updates, deletes and inserts to the bulk_docs endpoint of RavenDB. For doing this, you just pass a query to a Index as shown in the following commandDELETE http://localhost:8080/bulk_docs/ExpenseTransactions?query=Date:20100531The above command using the Index named "ExpenseTransactions" for querying the documents with Date filter and  will delete all the documents that match the query criteria. The above command is equivalent of the following queryDELETE FROM ExpensesWHERE Date='2010-05-31' Controller & ActionsWe have created Expense Repository class for performing CRUD operations for the Expense transactions. Let's create a controller class for handling expense transactions.   public class ExpenseController : Controller { private ICategoryRepository categoyRepository; private IExpenseRepository expenseRepository; public ExpenseController(ICategoryRepository categoyRepository, IExpenseRepository expenseRepository) {     this.categoyRepository = categoyRepository;     this.expenseRepository = expenseRepository; } //Get Expense transactions based on dates public ActionResult Index(DateTime? StartDate, DateTime? EndDate) {     //If date is not passed, take current month's first and last dte     DateTime dtNow;     dtNow = DateTime.Today;     if (!StartDate.HasValue)     {         StartDate = new DateTime(dtNow.Year, dtNow.Month, 1);         EndDate = StartDate.Value.AddMonths(1).AddDays(-1);     }     //take last date of startdate's month, if endate is not passed     if (StartDate.HasValue && !EndDate.HasValue)     {         EndDate = (new DateTime(StartDate.Value.Year, StartDate.Value.Month, 1)).AddMonths(1).AddDays(-1);     }       var expenses = expenseRepository.GetExpenseTransactions(StartDate.Value, EndDate.Value);     if (Request.IsAjaxRequest())     {           return PartialView("ExpenseList", expenses);     }     ViewData.Add("StartDate", StartDate.Value.ToShortDateString());     ViewData.Add("EndDate", EndDate.Value.ToShortDateString());             return View(expenses);            }   // GET: /Expense/Edit public ActionResult Edit(string id) {       var expenseModel = new ExpenseViewModel();     var expense = expenseRepository.Load(id);     ModelCopier.CopyModel(expense, expenseModel);     var categories = categoyRepository.GetCategories();     expenseModel.Category = categories.ToSelectListItems(expense.Category.Id.ToString());                    return View("Save", expenseModel);          }   // // GET: /Expense/Create   public ActionResult Create() {     var expenseModel = new ExpenseViewModel();               var categories = categoyRepository.GetCategories();     expenseModel.Category = categories.ToSelectListItems("-1");     expenseModel.Date = DateTime.Today;     return View("Save", expenseModel); }   // // POST: /Expense/Save // Insert/Update Expense Tansaction [HttpPost] public ActionResult Save(ExpenseViewModel expenseViewModel) {     try     {         if (!ModelState.IsValid)         {               var categories = categoyRepository.GetCategories();                 expenseViewModel.Category = categories.ToSelectListItems(expenseViewModel.CategoryId);                               return View("Save", expenseViewModel);         }           var expense=new Expense();         ModelCopier.CopyModel(expenseViewModel, expense);          expenseRepository.Save(expense, expenseViewModel.CategoryId);                       return RedirectToAction("Index");     }     catch     {         return View();     } } //Delete a Expense Transaction public ActionResult Delete(string id) {     expenseRepository.Delete(id);     return RedirectToAction("Index");     }     }     Download the Source - You can download the source code from http://ravenmvc.codeplex.com

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• ASP.NET in Moscow!

  - by Latest Microsoft Blogs

  I’m traveling to Russia and speaking in Moscow next week at the DevConf. This will be the first time that I have visited Russia, and I know that there is a strong ASP.NET community in Russia, so I am very excited about the trip. I’m speaking at the DevConf Read More......(read more)

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• Create PDF document using iTextSharp in ASP.Net 4.0 and MemoryMappedFile

  - by sreejukg

  In this article I am going to demonstrate how ASP.Net developers can programmatically create PDF documents using iTextSharp. iTextSharp is a software component, that allows developers to programmatically create or manipulate PDF documents. Also this article discusses the process of creating in-memory file, read/write data from/to the in-memory file utilizing the new feature MemoryMappedFile. I have a database of users, where I need to send a notice to all my users as a PDF document. The sending mail part of it is not covered in this article. The PDF document will contain the company letter head, to make it more official. I have a list of users stored in a database table named “tblusers”. For each user I need to send customized message addressed to them personally. The database structure for the users is give below. id Title Full Name 1 Mr. Sreeju Nair K. G. 2 Dr. Alberto Mathews 3 Prof. Venketachalam Now I am going to generate the pdf document that contains some message to the user, in the following format. Dear <Title> <FullName>, The message for the user. Regards, Administrator Also I have an image, bg.jpg that contains the background for the document generated. I have created .Net 4.0 empty web application project named “iTextSharpSample”. First thing I need to do is to download the iTextSharp dll from the source forge. You can find the url for the download here. http://sourceforge.net/projects/itextsharp/files/ I have extracted the Zip file and added the itextsharp.dll as a reference to my project. Also I have added a web form named default.aspx to my project. After doing all this, the solution explorer have the following view. In the default.aspx page, I inserted one grid view and associated it with a SQL Data source control that bind data from tblusers. I have added a button column in the grid view with text “generate pdf”. The output of the page in the browser is as follows. Now I am going to create a pdf document when the user clicking on the Generate PDF button. As I mentioned before, I am going to work with the file in memory, I am not going to create a file in the disk. I added an event handler for button by specifying onrowcommand event handler. My gridview source looks like <asp:GridView ID="GridView1" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="False" DataSourceID="SqlDataSource1" Width="481px" CellPadding="4" ForeColor="#333333" GridLines="None" onrowcommand="Generate_PDF" > ………………………………………………………………………….. ………………………………………………………………………….. </asp:GridView> In the code behind, I wrote the corresponding event handler. protected void Generate_PDF(object sender, GridViewCommandEventArgs e) { // The button click event handler code. // I am going to explain the code for this section in the remaining part of the article } The Generate_PDF method is straight forward, It get the title, fullname and message to some variables, then create the pdf using these variables. The code for getting data from the grid view is as follows // get the row index stored in the CommandArgument property int index = Convert.ToInt32(e.CommandArgument); // get the GridViewRow where the command is raised GridViewRow selectedRow = ((GridView)e.CommandSource).Rows[index]; string title = selectedRow.Cells[1].Text; string fullname = selectedRow.Cells[2].Text; string msg = @"There are some changes in the company policy, due to this matter you need to submit your latest address to us. Please update your contact details / personnal details by visiting the member area of the website. ................................... "; since I don’t want to save the file in the disk, I am going the new feature introduced in .Net framework 4, called Memory-Mapped Files. Using Memory-Mapped mapped file, you can created non-persisted memory mapped files, that are not associated with a file in a disk. So I am going to create a temporary file in memory, add the pdf content to it, then write it to the output stream. To read more about MemoryMappedFile, read this msdn article http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd997372.aspx The below portion of the code using MemoryMappedFile object to create a test pdf document in memory and perform read/write operation on file. The CreateViewStream() object will give you a stream that can be used to read or write data to/from file. The code is very straight forward and I included comment so that you can understand the code. using (MemoryMappedFile mmf = MemoryMappedFile.CreateNew("test1.pdf", 1000000)) { // Create a new pdf document object using the constructor. The parameters passed are document size, left margin, right margin, top margin and bottom margin. iTextSharp.text.Document d = new iTextSharp.text.Document(PageSize.A4, 72,72,172,72); //get an instance of the memory mapped file to stream object so that user can write to this using (MemoryMappedViewStream stream = mmf.CreateViewStream()) { // associate the document to the stream. PdfWriter.GetInstance(d, stream); /* add an image as bg*/ iTextSharp.text.Image jpg = iTextSharp.text.Image.GetInstance(Server.MapPath("Image/bg.png")); jpg.Alignment = iTextSharp.text.Image.UNDERLYING; jpg.SetAbsolutePosition(0, 0); //this is the size of my background letter head image. the size is in points. this will fit to A4 size document. jpg.ScaleToFit(595, 842); d.Open(); d.Add(jpg); d.Add(new Paragraph(String.Format("Dear {0} {1},", title, fullname))); d.Add(new Paragraph("\n")); d.Add(new Paragraph(msg)); d.Add(new Paragraph("\n")); d.Add(new Paragraph(String.Format("Administrator"))); d.Close(); } //read the file data byte[] b; using (MemoryMappedViewStream stream = mmf.CreateViewStream()) { BinaryReader rdr = new BinaryReader(stream); b = new byte[mmf.CreateViewStream().Length]; rdr.Read(b, 0, (int)mmf.CreateViewStream().Length); } Response.Clear(); Response.ContentType = "Application/pdf"; Response.BinaryWrite(b); Response.End(); } Press ctrl + f5 to run the application. First I got the user list. Click on the generate pdf icon. The created looks as follows. Summary: Creating pdf document using iTextSharp is easy. You will get lot of information while surfing the www. Some useful resources and references are mentioned below http://itextsharp.com/ http://www.mikesdotnetting.com/Article/82/iTextSharp-Adding-Text-with-Chunks-Phrases-and-Paragraphs http://somewebguy.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/itextsharp-simplify-your-html-to-pdf-creation/ Hope you enjoyed the article.

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• Extending NerdDinner: Adding MEF and plugins to ASP.NET MVC

  - by Latest Microsoft Blogs

  The original NerdDinner Sample was very simple. Two samples, simple, in fact. Perhaps it's the new Northwind, as it's a good way to start working with ASP.NET MVC. However, it's not a perfect sample or an idealized example on how to do many Read More......(read more)

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• ASP.NET MVC: ModelBinding Multiple File Uploads to an Array

  - by HeartattacK

  Note: Cross posted from Heartysoft.com. Permalink In this article, Ashic Mahtab shows how to model bind multiple file uploads to a single array action parameter in ASP.NET MVC.

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• Membership in ASP.Net applications - part 3

  - by nikolaosk

  This is the third post in a series of posts regarding ASP.Net built in membership functionality,providers,controls. You can read the first one post one here . You can read the second post here . In this post I would like to investigate how to use the Membership class methods to achieve the same functionality we have with the login web server controls.The login web server controls live inside the .aspx pages and access the underlying abstract membership classes to perform the desired functionality...(read more)

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• Creating Wizard in ASP.NET MVC (Part 3 - jQuery)

  - by bipinjoshi

  In Part 1 and Part 2 of this article series you developed a wizard in an ASP.NET MVC application using full page postback and Ajax helper respectively. In this final part of this series you will develop a client side wizard using jQuery. The navigation between various wizard steps (Next, Previous) happens without any postback (neither full nor partial). The only step that causes form submission to the server is clicking on the Finish wizard button.http://www.binaryintellect.net/articles/d278e8aa-3f37-40c5-92a2-74e65b1b5653.aspx 

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• How do i return integers from a string ?

  - by kannan.ambadi

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; 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-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Suppose you are passing a string(for e.g.: “My name has 1 K, 2 A and 3 N”)  which may contain integers, letters or special characters. I want to retrieve only numbers from the input string. We can implement it in many ways such as splitting the string into an array or by using TryParse method. I would like to share another idea, that’s by using Regular expressions. All you have to do is, create an instance of Regular Expression with a specified pattern for integer. Regular expression class defines a method called Split, which splits the specified input string based on the pattern provided during object initialization.     We can write the code as given below:   public static int[] SplitIdSeqenceValues(object combinedArgs)         {             var _argsSeperator = new Regex(@"\D+", RegexOptions.Compiled);               string[] splitedIntegers = _argsSeperator.Split(combinedArgs.ToString());               var args = new int[splitedIntegers.Length];               for (int i = 0; i < splitedIntegers.Length; i++)                 args[i] = MakeSafe.ToSafeInt32(splitedIntegers[i]);                           return args;         }    It would be better, if we set to RegexOptions.Compiled so that the regular expression will have performance boost by faster compilation.   Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; 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-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Happy Programming  :))   

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• Video Trip Report: If this is Tuesday, this must be Cairo

  - by Latest Microsoft Blogs

  This last week over a 7 day period, I went to Munich, Cairo and Dubai. I presented in three keynotes and did a total of 10 sessions. I crossed 12 time zones and missed my kids. I talked to/with/at about 3000 people. I'm utterly shattered. I took some Read More......(read more)

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• AdvancedFormatProvider: Making string.format do more

  - by plblum

  When I have an integer that I want to format within the String.Format() and ToString(format) methods, I’m always forgetting the format symbol to use with it. That’s probably because its not very intuitive. Use {0:N0} if you want it with group (thousands) separators. text = String.Format("{0:N0}", 1000); // returns "1,000"   int value1 = 1000; text = value1.ToString("N0"); Use {0:D} or {0:G} if you want it without group separators. text = String.Format("{0:D}", 1000); // returns "1000"   int value2 = 1000; text2 = value2.ToString("D"); The {0:D} is especially confusing because Microsoft gives the token the name “Decimal”. I thought it reasonable to have a new format symbol for String.Format, "I" for integer, and the ability to tell it whether it shows the group separators. Along the same lines, why not expand the format symbols for currency ({0:C}) and percent ({0:P}) to let you omit the currency or percent symbol, omit the group separator, and even to drop the decimal part when the value is equal to the whole number? My solution is an open source project called AdvancedFormatProvider, a group of classes that provide the new format symbols, continue to support the rest of the native symbols and makes it easy to plug in additional format symbols. Please visit https://github.com/plblum/AdvancedFormatProvider to learn about it in detail and explore how its implemented. The rest of this post will explore some of the concepts it takes to expand String.Format() and ToString(format). AdvancedFormatProvider benefits: Supports {0:I} token for integers. It offers the {0:I-,} option to omit the group separator. Supports {0:C} token with several options. {0:C-$} omits the currency symbol. {0:C-,} omits group separators, and {0:C-0} hides the decimal part when the value would show “.00”. For example, 1000.0 becomes “$1000” while 1000.12 becomes “$1000.12”. Supports {0:P} token with several options. {0:P-%} omits the percent symbol. {0:P-,} omits group separators, and {0:P-0} hides the decimal part when the value would show “.00”. For example, 1 becomes “100 %” while 1.1223 becomes “112.23 %”. Provides a plug in framework that lets you create new formatters to handle specific format symbols. You register them globally so you can just pass the AdvancedFormatProvider object into String.Format and ToString(format) without having to figure out which plug ins to add. text = String.Format(AdvancedFormatProvider.Current, "{0:I}", 1000); // returns "1,000" text2 = String.Format(AdvancedFormatProvider.Current, "{0:I-,}", 1000); // returns "1000" text3 = String.Format(AdvancedFormatProvider.Current, "{0:C-$-,}", 1000.0); // returns "1000.00" The IFormatProvider parameter Microsoft has made String.Format() and ToString(format) format expandable. They each take an additional parameter that takes an object that implements System.IFormatProvider. This interface has a single member, the GetFormat() method, which returns an object that knows how to convert the format symbol and value into the desired string. There are already a number of web-based resources to teach you about IFormatProvider and the companion interface ICustomFormatter. I’ll defer to them if you want to dig more into the topic. The only thing I want to point out is what I think are implementation considerations. Why GetFormat() always tests for ICustomFormatter When you see examples of implementing IFormatProviders, the GetFormat() method always tests the parameter against the ICustomFormatter type. Why is that? public object GetFormat(Type formatType) { if (formatType == typeof(ICustomFormatter)) return this; else return null; } The value of formatType is already predetermined by the .net framework. String.Format() uses the StringBuilder.AppendFormat() method to parse the string, extracting the tokens and calling GetFormat() with the ICustomFormatter type. (The .net framework also calls GetFormat() with the types of System.Globalization.NumberFormatInfo and System.Globalization.DateTimeFormatInfo but these are exclusive to how the System.Globalization.CultureInfo class handles its implementation of IFormatProvider.) Your code replaces instead of expands I would have expected the caller to pass in the format string to GetFormat() to allow your code to determine if it handles the request. My vision would be to return null when the format string is not supported. The caller would iterate through IFormatProviders until it finds one that handles the format string. Unfortunatley that is not the case. The reason you write GetFormat() as above is because the caller is expecting an object that handles all formatting cases. You are effectively supposed to write enough code in your formatter to handle your new cases and call .net functions (like String.Format() and ToString(format)) to handle the original cases. Its not hard to support the native functions from within your ICustomFormatter.Format function. Just test the format string to see if it applies to you. If not, call String.Format() with a token using the format passed in. public string Format(string format, object arg, IFormatProvider formatProvider) { if (format.StartsWith("I")) { // handle "I" formatter } else return String.Format(formatProvider, "{0:" + format + "}", arg); } Formatters are only used by explicit request Each time you write a custom formatter (implementer of ICustomFormatter), it is not used unless you explicitly passed an IFormatProvider object that supports your formatter into String.Format() or ToString(). This has several disadvantages: Suppose you have several ICustomFormatters. In order to have all available to String.Format() and ToString(format), you have to merge their code and create an IFormatProvider to return an instance of your new class. You have to remember to utilize the IFormatProvider parameter. Its easy to overlook, especially when you have existing code that calls String.Format() without using it. Some APIs may call String.Format() themselves. If those APIs do not offer an IFormatProvider parameter, your ICustomFormatter will not be available to them. The AdvancedFormatProvider solves the first two of these problems by providing a plug-in architecture.

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• ASP.NET 4.0- Menu control enhancement.

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  Till asp.net 3.5 asp.net menu control was rendered through table. And we all know that it is very hard to have CSS applied to table. For a professional look of our website a CSS is must required thing. But in asp.net 4.0 Menu control is table less it will loaded with UL and LI tags which is easier to manage through CSS. Another problem with table is it will create a large html which will increase your asp.net page KB and decrease your performance. While with UL and LI Tags its very easy very short. So You page KB Size will also be down. Let’s take a simple example. Let’s Create a menu control in asp.net with four menu item like following. <asp:Menu ID="myCustomMenu" runat="server" > <Items> <asp:MenuItem Text="Menu1" Value="Menu1"></asp:MenuItem> <asp:MenuItem Text="Menu2" Value="Menu2"></asp:MenuItem> <asp:MenuItem Text="Menu3" Value="Menu3"></asp:MenuItem> <asp:MenuItem Text="Menu4" Value="Menu4"></asp:MenuItem> </Items></asp:Menu> It will render menu in browser like following. Now If we render this menu control with tables then HTML as you can see via view page source like following.   Now If in asp.net 4.0 It will be loaded with UL and LI tags and if you now see page source then it will look like following. Which will have must lesser HTML then it was earlier like following. So isn’t that great performance enhancement?.. It’s very cool. If you still like old way doing with tables then in asp.net 4.0 there is property called ‘RenderingMode’ is given. So you can set RenderingMode=Table then it will load menu control with table otherwise it will load menu control with UL and LI Tags. That’s it..Stay tuned for more..Happy programming.. Technorati Tags: Menu,Asp.NET 4.0

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• jQuery Templates with ASP.NET MVC

  - by hajan

  In my three previous blogs, I’ve shown how to use Templates in your ASPX website. Introduction to jQuery TemplatesjQuery Templates - tmpl(), template() and tmplItem()jQuery Templates - {Supported Tags}Now, I will show one real-world example which you may use it in your daily work of developing applications with ASP.NET MVC and jQuery. In the following example I will use Pubs database so that I will retrieve values from the authors table. To access the data, I’m using Entity Framework. Let’s pass throughout each step of the scenario: 1. Create new ASP.NET MVC Web application 2. Add new View inside Home folder but do not select a master page, and add Controller for your View 3. BODY code in the HTML <body>     <div>         <h1>Pubs Authors</h1>         <div id="authorsList"></div>     </div> </body> As you can see  in the body we have only one H1 tag and a div with id authorsList where we will append the data from database.   4. Now, I’ve created Pubs model which is connected to the Pub database and I’ve selected only the authors table in my EDMX model. You can use your own database. 5. Next, lets create one method of JsonResult type which will get the data from database and serialize it into JSON string. public JsonResult GetAuthors() {     pubsEntities pubs = new pubsEntities();     var authors = pubs.authors.ToList();     return Json(authors, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet); } So, I’m creating object instance of pubsEntities and get all authors in authors list. Then returning the authors list by serializing it to JSON using Json method. The JsonRequestBehaviour.AllowGet parameter is used to make the GET requests from the client become allowed. By default in ASP.NET MVC 2 the GET is not allowed because of security issue with JSON hijacking.   6. Next, lets create jQuery AJAX function which will call the GetAuthors method. We will use $.getJSON jQuery method. <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">     $(function () {         $.getJSON("GetAuthors", "", function (data) {             $("#authorsTemplate").tmpl(data).appendTo("#authorsList");         });     }); </script>   Once the web page is downloaded, the method will be called. The first parameter of $.getJSON() is url string in our case the method name. The second parameter (which in the example is empty string) is the key value pairs that will be send to the server, and the third function is the callback function or the result which is going to be returned from the server. Inside the callback function we have code that renders data with template which has id #authorsTemplate and appends it to element which has #authorsList ID.   7. The jQuery Template <script id="authorsTemplate" type="text/html">     <div id="author">         ${au_lname} ${au_fname}         <div id="address">${address}, ${city}</div>         <div id="contractType">                     {{if contract}}             <font color="green">Has contract with the publishing house</font>         {{else}}             <font color="red">Without contract</font>         {{/if}}         <br />         <em> ${printMessage(state)} </em>         <br />                     </div>     </div> </script> As you can see, I have tags containing fields (au_lname, au_fname… etc.) that corresponds to the table in the EDMX model which is the same as in the database. One more thing to note here is that I have printMessage(state) function which is called inside ${ expression/function/field } tag. The printMessage function <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">     function printMessage(s) {         if (s=="CA") return "The author is from California";         else return "The author is not from California";     } </script> So, if state is “CA” print “The author is from California” else “The author is not from California”   HERE IS THE COMPLETE ASPX CODE <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" > <head runat="server">     <title>Database Example :: jQuery Templates</title>     <style type="text/css">         body           {             font-family:Verdana,Arial,Courier New, Sans-Serif;             color:Black;             padding:2px, 2px, 2px, 2px;             background-color:#FF9640;         }         #author         {             display:block;             float:left;             text-decoration:none;             border:1px solid black;             background-color:White;             padding:20px 20px 20px 20px;             margin-top:2px;             margin-right:2px;             font-family:Verdana;             font-size:12px;             width:200px;             height:70px;}         #address           {             font-style:italic;             color:Blue;             font-size:12px;             font-family:Verdana;         }         .author_hover {background-color:Yellow;}     </style>     <script src="http://ajax.aspnetcdn.com/ajax/jQuery/jquery-1.4.4.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>     <script src="http://ajax.aspnetcdn.com/ajax/jquery.templates/beta1/jquery.tmpl.js" type="text/javascript"></script>     <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">         function printMessage(s) {             if (s=="CA") return "The author is from California";             else return "The author is not from California";         }     </script>     <script id="authorsTemplate" type="text/html">         <div id="author">             ${au_lname} ${au_fname}             <div id="address">${address}, ${city}</div>             <div id="contractType">                         {{if contract}}                 <font color="green">Has contract with the publishing house</font>             {{else}}                 <font color="red">Without contract</font>             {{/if}}             <br />             <em> ${printMessage(state)} </em>             <br />                         </div>         </div>     </script>     <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">         $(function () {             $.getJSON("GetAuthors", "", function (data) {                 $("#authorsTemplate").tmpl(data).appendTo("#authorsList");             });         });     </script> </head>     <body>     <div id="title">Pubs Authors</div>     <div id="authorsList"></div> </body> </html> So, in the complete example you also have the CSS style I’m using to stylize the output of my page. Here is print screen of the end result displayed on the web page: You can download the complete source code including examples shown in my previous blog posts about jQuery templates and PPT presentation from my last session I had in the local .NET UG meeting in the following DOWNLOAD LINK. Do let me know your feedback. Regards, Hajan

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• ASP.NET MVC for the php/asp noob

  - by dotjosh

  I was talking to a friend today, who's foremost a php developer, about his thoughts on Umbraco and he said "Well they're apparently working feverishly on the new version of Umbraco, which will be MVC... which i still don't know what that means, but I know you like it." I ended up giving him a ground up explanation of ASP.NET MVC, so I'm posting this so he can link this to his friends and for anyone else who finds it useful.  The whole goal was to be as simple as possible, not being focused on proper syntax. Model-View-Controller (or MVC) is just a pattern that is used for handling UI interaction with your backend.  In a typical web app, you can imagine the *M*odel as your database model, the *V*iew as your HTML page, and the *C*ontroller as the class inbetween.  MVC handles your web request different than your typical php/asp app.In your php/asp app, your url maps directly to a php/asp file that contains html, mixed with database access code and redirects.In an MVC app, your url route is mapped to a method on a class (the controller).  The body of this method can do some database access and THEN decide which *V*iew (html/aspx page) should be displayed;  putting the controller in charge and not the view... a clear seperation of concerns that provides better reusibility and generally promotes cleaner code. Mysite.com, a quick example:Let's say you hit the following url in your application: http://www.mysite.com/Product/ShowItem?Id=4 To avoid tedious configuration, MVC uses a lot of conventions by default. For instance, the above url in your app would automatically make MVC search for a .net class with the name "Product" and a method named "ShowItem" based on the pattern of the url.  So if you name things properly, your method would automatically be called when you entered the above url.  Additionally, it would automatically map/hydrate the "int id" parameter that was in your querystring, matched by name.Product.cspublic class Product : Controller{    public ViewResult ShowItem(int id)    {        return View();    }} From this point you can write the code in the body of this method to do some database access and then pass a "bag" (also known as the ViewData) of data to your chosen *V*iew (html page) to use for display.  The view(html) ONLY needs to be worried about displaying the flattened data that it's been given in the best way it can;  this allows the view to be reused throughout your application as *just* a view, and not be coupled to HOW the data for that view get's loaded.. Product.cspublic class Product : Controller{    public ViewResult ShowItem(int id)    {        var database = new Database();        var item = database.GetItem(id);        ViewData["TheItem"] = item;        return View();    }} Again by convention, since the class' method name is "ShowItem", it'll search for a view named "ShowItem.aspx" by default, and pass the ViewData bag to it to use. ShowItem.aspx<html>     <body>      <%        var item =(Item)ViewData["TheItem"]       %>       <h1><%= item.FullProductName %></h1>     </body></html> BUT WAIT! WHY DOES MICROSOFT HAVE TO DO THINGS SO DIFFERENTLY!?They aren't... here are some other frameworks you may have heard of that use the same pattern in a their own way: Ruby On Rails Grails Spring MVC Struts Django    

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• Include weather information in ASP.Net site from weather.com services

  - by sreejukg

  In this article, I am going to demonstrate how you can use the XMLOAP services (referred as XOAP from here onwards) provided by weather.com to display the weather information in your website. The XOAP services are available to be used for free of charge, provided you are comply with requirements from weather.com. I am writing this article from a technical point of view. If you are planning to use weather.com XOAP services in your application, please refer to the terms and conditions from weather.com website. In order to start using the XOAP services, you need to sign up the XOAP datafeed. The signing process is simple, you simply browse the url http://www.weather.com/services/xmloap.html. The URL looks similar to the following. Click on the sign up button, you will reach the registration page. Here you need to specify the site name you need to use this feed for. The form looks similar to the following. Once you fill all the mandatory information, click on save and continue button. That’s it. The registration is over. You will receive an email that contains your partner id, license key and SDK. The SDK available in a zipped format, contains the terms of use and documentation about the services available. Other than this the SDK includes the logos and icons required to display the weather information. As per the SDK, currently there are 2 types of information available through XOAP. These services are Current Conditions for over 30,000 U.S. and over 7,900 international Location IDs Updated at least Hourly Five-Day Forecast (today + 4 additional forecast days in consecutive order beginning with tomorrow) for over 30,000 U.S. and over 7,900 international Location IDs Updated at least Three Times Daily The SDK provides detailed information about the fields included in response of each service. Additionally there is a refresh rate that you need to comply with. As per the SDK, the refresh rate means the following “Refresh Rate” shall mean the maximum frequency with which you may call the XML Feed for a given LocID requesting a data set for that LocID. During the time period in between refresh periods the data must be cached by you either in the memory on your servers or in Your Desktop Application. About the Services Weather.com will provide you with access to the XML Feed over the Internet through the hostname xoap.weather.com. The weather data from the XML feed must be requested for a specific location. So you need a location ID (LOC ID). The XML feed work with 2 types of location IDs. First one is with City Identifiers and second one is using 5 Digit US postal codes. If you do not know your location ID, don’t worry, there is a location id search service available for you to retrieve the location id from city name. Since I am a resident in the Kingdom of Bahrain, I am going to retrieve the weather information for Manama(the capital of Bahrain) . In order to get the location ID for Manama, type the following URL in your address bar. http://xoap.weather.com/search/search?where=manama I got the following XML output. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!-- This document is intended only for use by authorized licensees of The –> <!-- Weather Channel. Unauthorized use is prohibited. Copyright 1995-2011, –> <!-- The Weather Channel Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved. –> <search ver="3.0">       <loc id="BAXX0001" type="1">Al Manama, Bahrain</loc> </search> You can try this with any city name, if the city is available, it will return the location id, and otherwise, it will return nothing. In order to get the weather information, from XOAP,  you need to pass certain parameters to the XOAP service. A brief about the parameters are as follows. Please refer SDK for more details. Parameter name Possible Value cc Optional, if you include this, the current condition will be returned. Value can be anything, as it will be ignored e.g. cc=* dayf If you want the forecast for 5 days, specify dayf=5 This is optional iink Value should be XOAP par Your partner id. You can find this in your registration email from weather.com prod Value should be XOAP key The license key assigned to you. This will be available in the registration email unit s or m (standard or matric or you can think of Celsius/Fahrenheit) this is optional field, if not specified the unit will be standard(s) The URL host for the XOAP service is http://xoap.weather.com. So for my purpose, I need the following request to be made to access the XOAP services. http://xoap.weather.com/weather/local/BAXX0001?cc=*&link=xoap&prod=xoap&par=*********&key=************** (The ***** to be replaced with the corresponding alternatives) The response XML have a root element “weather”. Under the root element, it has the following sections <head> - the meta data information about the weather results returned. <loc> - the location data block that provides, the information about the location for which the wheather data is retrieved. <lnks> - the 4 promotional links you need to place along with the weather display. Additional to these 4 links, there should be another link with weather channel logo to the home page of weather.com. <cc> - the current condition data. This element will be there only if you specify the cc element in the request. <dayf> - the forcast data as you specified. This element will be there only if you specify the dayf in the request. In this walkthrough, I am going to capture the weather information for Manama (Location ID: BAXX0001). You need 2 applications to display weather information in your website. A Console application that retrieves data from the XMLOAP and store in the SQL Server database (or any data store as you prefer).This application will be scheduled to execute in every 25 minutes using windows task scheduler, so that we can comply with the refresh rate. A web application that display data from the SQL Server database Retrieve the Weather from XOAP I have created a console application named, Weather Service. I created a SQL server database, with the following columns. I named the table as tblweather. You are free to choose any name. Column name Description lastUpdated Datetime, this is the last time when the weather data is updated. This is the time of the service running TemparatureDateTime The date and time returned by XML feed Temparature The temperature returned by the XML feed. TemparatureUnit The unit of the temperature returned by the XML feed iconId The id of the icon to be used. Currently 48 icons from 0 to 47 are available. WeatherDescription The Weather Description Phrase returned by the feed. Link1url The url to the first promo link Link1Text The text for the first promo link Link2url The url to the second promo link Link2Text The text for the second promo link Link3url The url to the third promo link Link3Text The text for the third promo link Link4url The url to the fourth promo link Link4Text The text for the fourth promo link Every time when the service runs, the application will update the database columns from the XOAP data feed. When the application starts, It is going to get the data as XML from the url. This demonstration uses LINQ to extract the necessary data from the fetched XML. The following are the code segment for extracting data from the weather XML using LINQ. // first, create an instance of the XDocument class with the XOAP URL. replace **** with the corresponding values. XDocument weather = XDocument.Load("http://xoap.weather.com/weather/local/BAXX0001?cc=*&link=xoap&prod=xoap&par=***********&key=c*********"); // construct a query using LINQ var feedResult = from item in weather.Descendants() select new { unit = item.Element("head").Element("ut").Value, temp = item.Element("cc").Element("tmp").Value, tempDate = item.Element("cc").Element("lsup").Value, iconId = item.Element("cc").Element("icon").Value, description = item.Element("cc").Element("t").Value, links = from link in item.Elements("lnks").Elements("link") select new { url = link.Element("l").Value, text = link.Element("t").Value } }; // Load the root node to a variable, you may use foreach construct instead. var item1 = feedResult.First(); *If you want to learn more about LINQ and XML, read this nice blog from Scott GU. http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/08/07/using-linq-to-xml-and-how-to-build-a-custom-rss-feed-reader-with-it.aspx Now you have all the required values in item1. For e.g. if you want to get the temperature, use item1.temp; Now I just need to execute an SQL query against the database. See the connection part. using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(@"Data Source=sreeju\sqlexpress;Initial Catalog=Sample;Integrated Security=True")) { string strSql = @"update tblweather set lastupdated=getdate(), temparatureDateTime = @temparatureDateTime, temparature=@temparature, temparatureUnit=@temparatureUnit, iconId = @iconId, description=@description, link1url=@link1url, link1text=@link1text, link2url=@link2url, link2text=@link2text,link3url=@link3url, link3text=@link3text,link4url=@link4url, link4text=@link4text"; SqlCommand comm = new SqlCommand(strSql, conn); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("temparatureDateTime", item1.tempDate); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("temparature", item1.temp); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("temparatureUnit", item1.unit); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("description", item1.description); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("iconId", item1.iconId); var lstLinks = item1.links; comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("link1url", lstLinks.ElementAt(0).url); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("link1text", lstLinks.ElementAt(0).text); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("link2url", lstLinks.ElementAt(1).url); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("link2text", lstLinks.ElementAt(1).text); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("link3url", lstLinks.ElementAt(2).url); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("link3text", lstLinks.ElementAt(2).text); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("link4url", lstLinks.ElementAt(3).url); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("link4text", lstLinks.ElementAt(3).text); conn.Open(); comm.ExecuteNonQuery(); conn.Close(); Console.WriteLine("database updated"); } Now click ctrl + f5 to run the service. I got the following output Check your database and make sure, the data is updated with the latest information from the service. (Make sure you inserted one row in the database by entering some values before executing the service. Otherwise you need to modify your application code to count the rows and conditionally perform insert/update query) Display the Weather information in ASP.Net page Now you got all the data in the database. You just need to create a web application and display the data from the database. I created a new ASP.Net web application with a default.aspx page. In order to comply with the terms of weather.com, You need to use Weather.com logo along with the weather display. You can find the necessary logos to use under the folder “logos” in the SDK. Additionally copy any of the icon set from the folder “icons” to your web application. I used the 93x93 icon set. You are free to use any other sizes available. The design view of the page in VS2010 looks similar to the following. The page contains a heading, an image control (for displaying the weather icon), 2 label controls (for displaying temperature and weather description), 4 hyperlinks (for displaying the 4 promo links returned by the XOAP service) and weather.com logo with hyperlink to the weather.com home page. I am going to write code that will update the values of these controls from the values stored in the database by the service application as mentioned in the previous step. Go to the code behind file for the webpage, enter the following code under Page_Load event handler. using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(@"Data Source=sreeju\sqlexpress;Initial Catalog=Sample;Integrated Security=True")) { SqlCommand comm = new SqlCommand("select top 1 * from tblweather", conn); conn.Open(); SqlDataReader reader = comm.ExecuteReader(); if (reader.Read()) { lblTemparature.Text = reader["temparature"].ToString() + "&deg;" + reader["temparatureUnit"].ToString(); lblWeatherDescription.Text = reader["description"].ToString(); imgWeather.ImageUrl = "icons/" + reader["iconId"].ToString() + ".png"; lnk1.Text = reader["link1text"].ToString(); lnk1.NavigateUrl = reader["link1url"].ToString(); lnk2.Text = reader["link2text"].ToString(); lnk2.NavigateUrl = reader["link2url"].ToString(); lnk3.Text = reader["link3text"].ToString(); lnk3.NavigateUrl = reader["link3url"].ToString(); lnk4.Text = reader["link4text"].ToString(); lnk4.NavigateUrl = reader["link4url"].ToString(); } conn.Close(); } Press ctrl + f5 to run the page. You will see the following output. That’s it. You need to configure the console application to run every 25 minutes so that the database is updated. Also you can fetch the forecast information and store those in the database, and then retrieve it later in your web page. Since the data resides in your database, you have the full control over your display. You need to make sure your website comply with weather.com license requirements. If you want to get the source code of this walkthrough through the application, post your email address below. Hope you enjoy the reading.

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• NoSQL with MongoDB, NoRM and ASP.NET MVC - Part 2

  - by shiju

   In my last post, I have given an introduction to MongoDB and NoRM using an ASP.NET MVC demo app. I have updated the demo ASP.NET MVC app and a created a new drop at codeplex. You can download the demo at http://mongomvc.codeplex.com/In my last post, we have discussed to doing basic CRUD operations against a simple domain entity. In this post, let’s discuss on domain entity with deep object graph.The below is our domain entities  public class Category {       [MongoIdentifier]     public ObjectId Id { get; set; }       [Required(ErrorMessage = "Name Required")]     [StringLength(25, ErrorMessage = "Must be less than 25 characters")]     public string Name { get; set;}     public string Description { get; set; }     public List<Expense> Expenses { get; set; }       public Category()     {         Expenses = new List<Expense>();     } }    public class Expense {     [MongoIdentifier]     public ObjectId Id { get; set; }     public Category Category { get; set; }     public string  Transaction { get; set; }     public DateTime Date { get; set; }     public double Amount { get; set; }   }   We have two domain entities - Category and Expense. A single category contains a list of expense transactions and every expense transaction should have a Category.The MongoSession class  internal class MongoSession : IDisposable {     private readonly MongoQueryProvider provider;       public MongoSession()     {         this.provider = new MongoQueryProvider("Expense");     }       public IQueryable<Category> Categories     {         get { return new MongoQuery<Category>(this.provider); }     }     public IQueryable<Expense> Expenses     {         get { return new MongoQuery<Expense>(this.provider); }     }     public MongoQueryProvider Provider     {         get { return this.provider; }     }       public void Add<T>(T item) where T : class, new()     {         this.provider.DB.GetCollection<T>().Insert(item);     }       public void Dispose()     {         this.provider.Server.Dispose();     }     public void Delete<T>(T item) where T : class, new()     {         this.provider.DB.GetCollection<T>().Delete(item);     }       public void Drop<T>()     {         this.provider.DB.DropCollection(typeof(T).Name);     }       public void Save<T>(T item) where T : class,new()     {         this.provider.DB.GetCollection<T>().Save(item);                }     }     ASP.NET MVC view model  for Expense transaction  public class ExpenseViewModel {     public ObjectId Id { get; set; }       public ObjectId CategoryId { get; set; }       [Required(ErrorMessage = "Transaction Required")]            public string Transaction { get; set; }       [Required(ErrorMessage = "Date Required")]            public DateTime Date { get; set; }       [Required(ErrorMessage = "Amount Required")]        public double Amount { get; set; }       public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> Category { get; set; } }  Let's create action method for Insert and Update a expense transaction   [HttpPost] public ActionResult Save(ExpenseViewModel expenseViewModel) {     try     {         if (!ModelState.IsValid)         {             using (var session = new MongoSession())             {                 var categories = session.Categories.AsEnumerable<Category>();                 expenseViewModel.Category = categories.ToSelectListItems(expenseViewModel.CategoryId);                }             return View("Save", expenseViewModel);         }           var expense=new Expense();         ModelCopier.CopyModel(expenseViewModel, expense);           using (var session = new MongoSession())         {             ObjectId Id = expenseViewModel.CategoryId;             var category = session.Categories                 .Where(c => c.Id ==Id  )                 .FirstOrDefault();             expense.Category = category;             session.Save(expense);         }         return RedirectToAction("Index");     }     catch     {         return View();     } } Query with Expenses  using (var session = new MongoSession()) {     var expenses = session.Expenses.         Where(exp => exp.Date >= StartDate && exp.Date <= EndDate)         .AsEnumerable<Expense>(); }  We are doing a LINQ query expression with a Date filter. We can easily work with MongoDB using NoRM driver and can managing object graph of domain entities are pretty cool. Download the Source - You can download the source code form http://mongomvc.codeplex.com

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• When to favor ASP.NET WebForms over MVC

  - by P.Brian.Mackey

  I know Microsoft has said "ASP.NET MVC is not a replacement for WebForms". Some developers say WebForms is faster to develop than MVC, but I believe this all comes down to comfort level with the technology; so I don't want any answers in this direction. Given that ASP.NET MVC gives a developer more control over our application, why is WebForms not considered obsolete? When should I favor WebForms over MVC for new development?

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• Guarding against CSRF Attacks in ASP.NET MVC2

  - by srkirkland

  Alongside XSS (Cross Site Scripting) and SQL Injection, Cross-site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks represent the three most common and dangerous vulnerabilities to common web applications today. CSRF attacks are probably the least well known but they are relatively easy to exploit and extremely and increasingly dangerous. For more information on CSRF attacks, see these posts by Phil Haack and Steve Sanderson. The recognized solution for preventing CSRF attacks is to put a user-specific token as a hidden field inside your forms, then check that the right value was submitted. It's best to use a random value which you’ve stored in the visitor’s Session collection or into a Cookie (so an attacker can't guess the value). ASP.NET MVC to the rescue ASP.NET MVC provides an HTMLHelper called AntiForgeryToken(). When you call <%= Html.AntiForgeryToken() %> in a form on your page you will get a hidden input and a Cookie with a random string assigned. Next, on your target Action you need to include [ValidateAntiForgeryToken], which handles the verification that the correct token was supplied. Good, but we can do better Using the AntiForgeryToken is actually quite an elegant solution, but adding [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] on all of your POST methods is not very DRY, and worse can be easily forgotten. Let's see if we can make this easier on the program but moving from an "Opt-In" model of protection to an "Opt-Out" model. Using AntiForgeryToken by default In order to mandate the use of the AntiForgeryToken, we're going to create an ActionFilterAttribute which will do the anti-forgery validation on every POST request. First, we need to create a way to Opt-Out of this behavior, so let's create a quick action filter called BypassAntiForgeryToken: [AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Method, AllowMultiple=false)] public class BypassAntiForgeryTokenAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute { } Now we are ready to implement the main action filter which will force anti forgery validation on all post actions within any class it is defined on: [AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Class, AllowMultiple = false)] public class UseAntiForgeryTokenOnPostByDefault : ActionFilterAttribute { public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext) { if (ShouldValidateAntiForgeryTokenManually(filterContext)) { var authorizationContext = new AuthorizationContext(filterContext.Controller.ControllerContext);   //Use the authorization of the anti forgery token, //which can't be inhereted from because it is sealed new ValidateAntiForgeryTokenAttribute().OnAuthorization(authorizationContext); }   base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext); }   /// <summary> /// We should validate the anti forgery token manually if the following criteria are met: /// 1. The http method must be POST /// 2. There is not an existing [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] attribute on the action /// 3. There is no [BypassAntiForgeryToken] attribute on the action /// </summary> private static bool ShouldValidateAntiForgeryTokenManually(ActionExecutingContext filterContext) { var httpMethod = filterContext.HttpContext.Request.HttpMethod;   //1. The http method must be POST if (httpMethod != "POST") return false;   // 2. There is not an existing anti forgery token attribute on the action var antiForgeryAttributes = filterContext.ActionDescriptor.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(ValidateAntiForgeryTokenAttribute), false);   if (antiForgeryAttributes.Length > 0) return false;   // 3. There is no [BypassAntiForgeryToken] attribute on the action var ignoreAntiForgeryAttributes = filterContext.ActionDescriptor.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(BypassAntiForgeryTokenAttribute), false);   if (ignoreAntiForgeryAttributes.Length > 0) return false;   return true; } } The code above is pretty straight forward -- first we check to make sure this is a POST request, then we make sure there aren't any overriding *AntiForgeryTokenAttributes on the action being executed. If we have a candidate then we call the ValidateAntiForgeryTokenAttribute class directly and execute OnAuthorization() on the current authorization context. Now on our base controller, you could use this new attribute to start protecting your site from CSRF vulnerabilities. [UseAntiForgeryTokenOnPostByDefault] public class ApplicationController : System.Web.Mvc.Controller { }   //Then for all of your controllers public class HomeController : ApplicationController {} What we accomplished If your base controller has the new default anti-forgery token attribute on it, when you don't use <%= Html.AntiForgeryToken() %> in a form (or of course when an attacker doesn't supply one), the POST action will throw the descriptive error message "A required anti-forgery token was not supplied or was invalid". Attack foiled! In summary, I think having an anti-CSRF policy by default is an effective way to protect your websites, and it turns out it is pretty easy to accomplish as well. Enjoy!

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• Creating Wizard in ASP.NET MVC (Part 2)

  - by bipinjoshi

  In Part 1 of this article series you developed a wizard in an ASP.NET MVC application. Although the wizard developed in Part 1 works as expected it has one shortcoming. It causes full page postback whenever you click on Previous or Next button. This behavior may not pose much problem if a wizard has only a few steps. However, if a wizard has many steps and each step accepts many entries then full page postback can deteriorate the user experience. To overcome this shortcoming you can add Ajax to the wizard so that only the form is posted to the server. In this part of the series you will convert the application developed in Part 1 to use Ajax.http://www.binaryintellect.net/articles/8e278bfa-7244-4e3e-b5aa-2954a91331da.aspx 

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• Membership in ASP.Net applications - part 4

  - by nikolaosk

  This is the fourth post in a series of posts regarding ASP.Net built in membership functionality,providers,controls. You can read the first one here . You can read the second post here . You can read the third post here . In this post I will show you how to add users programmatically to a role. In the third post we saw how to get users in a specific role.I will also show you how to delete a user and a role programmatically. 1) Launch Visual Studio 2005,2008/2010. Express editions will work fine....(read more)

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• ASP.NET MVC Custom Profile Provider

  - by Ben Griswold

  It’s been a long while since I last used the ASP.NET Profile provider. It’s a shame, too, because it just works with very little development effort: Membership tables installed? Check. Profile enabled in web.config? Check. SqlProfileProvider connection string set? Check.  Profile properties defined in said web.config file? Check. Write code to set value, read value, build and test. Check. Check. Check.  Yep, I thought the built-in Profile stuff was pure gold until I noticed how the user-based information is persisted to the database. It’s stored as xml and, well, that was going to be trouble if I ever wanted to query the profile data.  So, I have avoided the super-easy-to-use ASP.NET Profile provider ever since, until this week, when I decided I could use it to store user-specific properties which I am 99% positive I’ll never need to query against ever.  I opened up my ASP.NET MVC application, completed steps 1-4 (above) in about 3 minutes, started writing my profile get/set code and that’s where the plan broke down.  Oh yeah. That’s right.  Visual Studio auto-generates a strongly-type Profile reference for web site projects but not for ASP.NET MVC or Web Applications.  Bummer. So, I went through the steps of getting a customer profile provider working in my ASP.NET MVC application: First, I defined a CurrentUser routine and my profile properties in a custom Profile class like so: using System.Web.Profile; using System.Web.Security; using Project.Core;   namespace Project.Web.Context {     public class MemberPreferencesProfile : ProfileBase     {         static public MemberPreferencesProfile CurrentUser         {             get             {                 return (MemberPreferencesProfile)                     Create(Membership.GetUser().UserName);             }         }           public Enums.PresenceViewModes? ViewMode         {             get { return ((Enums.PresenceViewModes)                     ( base["ViewMode"] ?? Enums.PresenceViewModes.Category)); }             set { base["ViewMode"] = value; Save(); }         }     } } And then I replaced the existing profile configuration web.config with the following: <profile enabled="true" defaultProvider="MvcSqlProfileProvider"          inherits="Project.Web.Context.MemberPreferencesProfile">        <providers>     <clear/>     <add name="MvcSqlProfileProvider"          type="System.Web.Profile.SqlProfileProvider, System.Web,          Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"          connectionStringName="ApplicationServices" applicationName="/"/>   </providers> </profile> Notice that profile is enabled, I’ve defined the defaultProvider and profile is now inheriting from my custom MemberPreferencesProfile class.  Finally, I am now able to set and get profile property values nearly the same way as I did with website projects: viewMode = MemberPreferencesProfile.CurrentUser.ViewMode; MemberPreferencesProfile.CurrentUser.ViewMode = viewMode;

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• Mulit-tenant ASP.NET MVC – Controllers

  - by zowens

  Part I – Introduction Part II – Foundation   The time has come to talk about controllers in a multi-tenant ASP.NET MVC architecture. This is actually the most critical design decision you will make when dealing with multi-tenancy with MVC. In my design, I took into account the design goals I mentioned in the introduction about inversion of control and what a tenant is to my design. Be aware that this is only one way to achieve multi-tenant controllers.   The Premise MvcEx (which is a sample written by Rob Ashton) utilizes dynamic controllers. Essentially a controller is “dynamic” in that multiple action results can be placed in different “controllers” with the same name. This approach is a bit too complicated for my design. I wanted to stick with plain old inheritance when dealing with controllers. The basic premise of my controller design is that my main host defines a set of universal controllers. It is the responsibility of the tenant to decide if the tenant would like to utilize these core controllers. This can be done either by straight usage of the controller or inheritance for extension of the functionality defined by the controller. The controller is resolved by a StructureMap container that is attached to the tenant, as discussed in Part II.   Controller Resolution I have been thinking about two different ways to resolve controllers with StructureMap. One way is to use named instances. This is a really easy way to simply pull the controller right out of the container without a lot of fuss. I ultimately chose not to use this approach. The reason for this decision is to ensure that the controllers are named properly. If a controller has a different named instance that the controller type, then the resolution has a significant disconnect and there are no guarantees. The final approach, the one utilized by the sample, is to simply pull all controller types and correlate the type with a controller name. This has a bit of a application start performance disadvantage, but is significantly more approachable for maintainability. For example, if I wanted to go back and add a “ControllerName” attribute, I would just have to change the ControllerFactory to suit my needs.   The Code The container factory that I have built is actually pretty simple. That’s really all we need. The most significant method is the GetControllersFor method. This method makes the model from the Container and determines all the concrete types for IController.  The thing you might notice is that this doesn’t depend on tenants, but rather containers. You could easily use this controller factory for an application that doesn’t utilize multi-tenancy. public class ContainerControllerFactory : IControllerFactory { private readonly ThreadSafeDictionary<IContainer, IDictionary<string, Type>> typeCache; public ContainerControllerFactory(IContainerResolver resolver) { Ensure.Argument.NotNull(resolver, "resolver"); this.ContainerResolver = resolver; this.typeCache = new ThreadSafeDictionary<IContainer, IDictionary<string, Type>>(); } public IContainerResolver ContainerResolver { get; private set; } public virtual IController CreateController(RequestContext requestContext, string controllerName) { var controllerType = this.GetControllerType(requestContext, controllerName); if (controllerType == null) return null; var controller = this.ContainerResolver.Resolve(requestContext).GetInstance(controllerType) as IController; // ensure the action invoker is a ContainerControllerActionInvoker if (controller != null && controller is Controller && !((controller as Controller).ActionInvoker is ContainerControllerActionInvoker)) (controller as Controller).ActionInvoker = new ContainerControllerActionInvoker(this.ContainerResolver); return controller; } public void ReleaseController(IController controller) { if (controller != null && controller is IDisposable) ((IDisposable)controller).Dispose(); } internal static IEnumerable<Type> GetControllersFor(IContainer container) { Ensure.Argument.NotNull(container); return container.Model.InstancesOf<IController>().Select(x => x.ConcreteType).Distinct(); } protected virtual Type GetControllerType(RequestContext requestContext, string controllerName) { Ensure.Argument.NotNull(requestContext, "requestContext"); Ensure.Argument.NotNullOrEmpty(controllerName, "controllerName"); var container = this.ContainerResolver.Resolve(requestContext); var typeDictionary = this.typeCache.GetOrAdd(container, () => GetControllersFor(container).ToDictionary(x => ControllerFriendlyName(x.Name))); Type found = null; if (typeDictionary.TryGetValue(ControllerFriendlyName(controllerName), out found)) return found; return null; } private static string ControllerFriendlyName(string value) { return (value ?? string.Empty).ToLowerInvariant().Without("controller"); } } One thing to note about my implementation is that we do not use namespaces that can be utilized in the default ASP.NET MVC controller factory. This is something that I don’t use and have no desire to implement and test. The reason I am not using namespaces in this situation is because each tenant has its own namespaces and the routing would not make sense in this case.   Because we are using IoC, dependencies are automatically injected into the constructor. For example, a tenant container could implement it’s own IRepository and a controller could be defined in the “main” project. The IRepository from the tenant would be injected into the main project’s controller. This is quite a useful feature.   Again, the source code is on GitHub here.   Up Next Up next is the view resolution. This is a complicated issue, so be prepared. I hope that you have found this series useful. If you have any questions about my implementation so far, send me an email or DM me on Twitter. I have had a lot of great conversations about multi-tenancy so far and I greatly appreciate the feedback!

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• Functions inside page using Razor View Engine – ASP.NET MVC

  - by hajan

  As we already know, Razor is probably the best view engine for ASP.NET MVC so far. It keeps your code fluid and very expressive. Besides the other functionalities Razor has, it also supports writing local functions. If you want to write a function, you can’t just open new @{ } razor block and write it there… it won’t work. Instead, you should specify @functions { } so that inside the brackets you will write your own C#/VB.NET functions/methods. Lets see an example: 1. I have the following loop that prints data using Razor <ul> @{     int N = 10;     for (int i = 1; i<=N; i++)     {         <li>Number @i</li>     }     } </ul> This code will print the numbers from 1 to 10: Number 1 Number 2 Number 3 Number 4 Number 5 Number 6 Number 7 Number 8 Number 9 Number 10 So, now lets write a function that will check if current number is even, if yes… add Even before Number word. Function in Razor @functions{     public bool isEven(int number)     {         return number % 2 == 0 ? true : false;     } } The modified code which creates unordered list is: <ul> @{     int N = 10;     for (int i = 1; i<=N; i++)     {         if (isEven(@i)) {             <li>Even number @i</li>         }         else {             <li>Number @i</li>         }                 }             } </ul> As you can see, in the modified code we use the isEven(@i) function to check if the current number is even or not… The result is: Number 1 Even number 2 Number 3 Even number 4 Number 5 Even number 6 Number 7 Even number 8 Number 9 Even number 10 So, the main point of this blog was to show how you can define your own functions inside page using Razor View Engine. Of course you can define multiple functions inside the same @functions { } defined razor statement. The complete code: @{     Layout = null; } <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head>     <title>ASP.NET MVC - Razor View Engine :: Functions</title> </head> <body>     <div>         <ul>         @{             int N = 10;             for (int i = 1; i<=N; i++)             {                 if (isEven(@i)) {                     <li>Even number @i</li>                 }                 else {                     <li>Number @i</li>                 }                         }                     }         </ul>         @functions{             public bool isEven(int number)             {                 return number % 2 == 0 ? true : false;             }         }     </div> </body> </html> Hope you like it. Regards, Hajan

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• Persisting model state in ASP.NET MVC using Serialize HTMLHelper

  - by shiju

  ASP.NET MVC 2 futures assembly provides a HTML helper method Serialize that can be use for persisting your model object. The Serialize  helper method will serialize the model object and will persist it in a hidden field in the HTML form. The Serialize  helper is very useful when situations like you are making multi-step wizard where a single model class is using for all steps in the wizard. For each step you want to retain the model object's whole state.The below is serializing our model object. The model object should be a Serializable class in order to work with Serialize helper method. <% using (Html.BeginForm("Register","User")) {%><%= Html.Serialize("User",Model) %> This will generate hidden field with name "user" and the value will the serialized format of our model object.In the controller action, you can place the DeserializeAttribute in the action method parameter. [HttpPost]               public ActionResult Register([DeserializeAttribute] User user, FormCollection userForm) {     TryUpdateModel(user, userForm.ToValueProvider());     //To Do } In the above action method you will get the same model object that you serialized in your view template. We are updating the User model object with the form field values.

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• PDC and Tech-Ed Europe Slides and Code

  - by Stephen Walther

  I spent close to three weeks on the road giving talks at Tech-Ed Europe (Berlin), PDC (Los Angeles), and the Los Angeles Code Camp (Los Angeles). I got to talk about two topics that I am very passionate about: ASP.NET MVC and Ajax. Thanks everyone for coming to all my talks! At PDC, I announced all of the new features of our ASP.NET Ajax Library. In particular, I made five big announcements: ASP.NET Ajax Library Beta Released – You can download the beta from Ajax.CodePlex.com ASP.NET Ajax Library includes the AJAX Control Toolkit – You can use the Ajax Control Toolkit with ASP.NET MVC. ASP.NET Ajax Library being contributed to the CodePlex Foundation – ASP.NET Ajax is the founding project for the CodePlex Foundation (see CodePlex.org) ASP.NET Ajax Library is receiving full product support – Complain to Microsoft Customer Service at midnight on Christmas ASP.NET Ajax Library supports jQuery integration – Use (almost) all of the Ajax Control Toolkit controls in jQuery For more details on the Ajax announcements, see James Senior’s blog entry on the Ajax announcements at: http://jamessenior.com/post/News-on-the-ASPNET-Ajax-Library.aspx In my MVC talks, I discussed the new features being introduced with ASP.NET MVC 2. Here are three of my favorite new features: Client Validation – Client validation done the right way. Do your validation in your model and let the validation bubble up to JavaScript code automatically. Areas – Divide your ASP.NET MVC application into sub-applications. Great for managing both medium and large projects. RenderAction() – Finally, a way to add content to master pages and multiple pages without doing anything strange or twisted. There are demos of all of these features in the MVC downloads below. Here are the power point and code from all of the talks: PDC – Introducing the New ASP.NET Ajax Library PDC – ASP.NET MVC: The New Stuff Tech-Ed Europe - What's New in Microsoft ASP.NET Model-View-Controller Tech-Ed Europe - Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX: Taking AJAX to the Next Level

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