DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by AlexCuse

Using AutoMapper to map view models in ASP.NET MVC

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:46:03 GMT

Mapping code between Domain Models and Data Transfer Objects/Presentation Models is often boring and tedious to write, so when I first read about AutoMapper it triggered my interest. This post takes a first look at AutoMapper, and show how it can be used to map a complex domain model to a view model in an ASP.NET MVC application.

Keep Your IQueryable In Check

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:16:02 GMT

There is a good chance that you have seen Oren's recent "Repository Is The New Singleton" post. I wanted to have a quick discussion of his approach, and discuss why I don't 100% agree with it. Let me first say that I don't have a problem with the repository pattern. I do have some issue with the way that it is implemented sometimes, but overall I think it provides a good layer in which to encapsulate the queries of your application.

A Closable jQuery Plug-in

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 03:16:03 GMT

I've found it very useful to have a closeable plug-in that hide the content of an HTML element providing a visual close image cue. Almost every UI I build these days requires either closing pop up windows or even more commonly requires that items are removed and visually hidden which usually implies 'close' behavior. In addition to removing a bunch of HTML markup, having a plug-in is also quite useful for server controls especially if multiple behaviors (plug-ins) need to be applied.

The State of ALT.NET

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 03:16:02 GMT

Over the past 6 months I have been trying to really quantify what it means to be using ALT.NET practices. And I can honestly say that I still honestly don't know what it means to be an ALT.NETer. But I have come to a number of conclusions about the state of the ALT.NET community, that I wanted to share. (1) The ALT.NET Community is fractured among itself. (2) Take the religious zealotry out of ALT.NET (3) Craftsmanship with out Engineering is no way to program software.

An Interview With Kevin Kline About SQL In A Nutshell Third Edition

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 03:16:03 GMT

An Interview With Kevin Kline About SQL In A Nutshell Third Edition. SQL In A Nutshell covers MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle and SQL server

Learning to use Fluent NHibernate: Getting started w/ your 1st Mapping

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 23:31:14 GMT

Learning to use Fluent NHibernate: Getting started w/ your first mappings

A Challenge to the VB.Net Community at Large on OSS

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 01:46:03 GMT

Title pretty much says it...

Html.ActionLink for images in ASP.NET MVC Beta

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 17:38:20 GMT

In the future versions of ASP.NET MVC there will be some methods to get the same raw URL that is generated by Html.ActionLink helper method so you can wrap an image (or whatever) with a link, but in the current release (Beta) there's no such thing. Here's a simple workaround.

Top Ten Worst Things About SQL Server

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 08:26:26 GMT

I suppose they really apply to any database though ;)

Is F# faster than C#

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 06:16:11 GMT

I had a bet with a co-worker that C# would out perform F# for a simple counting exercise. This turned out to be quite a surprise for many reasons. In this blog post I will try to explain why.

Netflix to Lay Off 50. Blames Silverlight.

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:31:17 GMT

In a corporate blog post today, Netflix (NFLX) said 50 of its technical specialists in its customer service group will be let go at the start of next year. The reason? The company isn't blaming the economy, it's blaming Microsoft's (MSFT) Silverlight

SQL Server Precision And Scale Problems

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 20:31:04 GMT

Many people are confused about SQL Server's precision and scale. This is unfortunate because choosing the correct values for precision and scale is critically important when you perform math operations using the decimal/numeric data type

SQL Find last week date range

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 17:31:04 GMT

The other day we needed to write a report on online sales for the last week. SQL doesn't offer developers many predefined functions to work with date ranges unlike the C# programming language. Here is a little example how to query SQL for some data between the dates for the last week.

Pair Programming - Marketing FAIL

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:01:05 GMT

When people talk about lack of adoption of "XP" (aka Extreme Programming) practices, one of the chief problems people have with it is the idea of "Pair Programming"

XNA Game Studio 3.0

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:01:20 GMT

The good folks who put together our gaming tools have released XNA Game Studio 3.0.

Suspicious DNK Accounts

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:31:29 GMT

Conclusion There is an incentive for publishers that use DNK to setup phony accounts that will help get stories from certain domains on the front page. So guess what happens ... it would appear that a certain number of people are doing this.

Grouping Controllers with ASP.NET MVC

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 07:01:02 GMT

question that often comes up is how do you group controllers when building a large application with ASP.NET MVC. Often, the question is phrased as whether or not ASP.NET MVC supports "Areas", a feature of Monorail. According to the Monorail documentation, MonoRail supports the concept of areas, which are logical groups of controllers. All controllers belong to an area. The default area is an empty (unnamed) one

Using Active Directory to authenticate users to your ASP.NET Web Site

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 15:16:02 GMT

ASP.NET membership provides the ability to authenticate users to your web application using forms based authentication against a database of users or directory services. This article explains the steps required to provide authentication against Active Directory, either for new sites with no authentication, or for existing sites using database authentication.

LINQ To SQL is Dead - Read Between the Lines

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 01:46:13 GMT

David Hayden with some great points on the Linq to SQL announcement and some ideas on how the project could be saved.

Caliburn Alpha for WPF and Silverlight is here!

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 10:58:54 GMT

Caliburn is a framework designed to aid in the development of WPF and Silverlight applications. It implements a variety of UI patterns that are geared towards solving problems encountered in real-world scenarios.

An interview with Roy Osherove author of "The Art of Unit Testing"

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 01:46:02 GMT

A short interview with Roy Osherove, author of a new book "The Art of Unit Testing" and known blogger, who works on Typemock Isolator.

Blisteringly fast Integration Tests with NHibernate and SQLite

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 04:46:02 GMT

Intergration tests can be slow and can be painful to run often. In this post I cover using SQLite with NHibernate, and automatically switching between SQLite and SQL Server

Google Chrome, The New Kid On The Block

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 05:04:32 GMT

So when Google announced they had a new browser that was going to break down all the barriers of the internet and the desktop I got excited at the prospects of what they were going to do and what this new user interaction would be. Well today they finally announced the release of the browser and made it public at: http://www.google.com/chrome

Creating a Content Management System for your ASP.NET Web Site

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:01:03 GMT

This article will show you how to integrate the popular FCKeditor HTML Text editor into an ASP.NET site to provide your users with the ability to edit their web site without them having to access the underlying HTML or source files.

Dear Alt.Net Developers: Stop blaming Microsoft and WebForms for crea

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 22:46:02 GMT

I am responsible for every website I create. If I create a site or application that is unmaintainable or that has poorly formed HTML or doesn't render well in all browsers, that is my fault. I chose my development tools/framework, or my employer, who I choose to work for, chose the development tools/framework. Either way, it is my responsibility, as a professional, to do my utmost to create the best possible application that is within my capability to create.