DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by Marwan

Asp.Net vs php : Speed Comparison

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 13:00:00 GMT

Why is the myth that php is faster than Asp.Net so prevalent? Asp.Net is faster than php, here are the facts. So many times I have heard php pushers claim that php is so much faster than Asp.Net and that Asp.Net is clunky and slow. The most annoying part is that everything I have read (that is not factless opinion), and I mean everything, says that this is wrong; but for some reason, this myth is widely accepted. It has become a religious argument that ignores the facts...

Integration Testing Your ASP.NET MVC Application

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:15:00 GMT

Unit tests are great for proving the correctness of a single component. But how can you prove that you whole ASP.NET MVC application hangs together properly - including its view templates, configuration settings, and database schema? Integration tests cover what unit tests can't - Steven Sanderson shows one way to approach it with ASP.NET MVC.

Opinionated Input Builders for ASP.Net MVC using partials

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:00:00 GMT

The goal of these control helpers is to reward you for developing MVC with the Model first. Yeah there is a reason that Model View Controller starts with the Model. Using the strongly typed views in the aspx view engine we can carry the type down to the control helpers with intellisense and then build html input control based on conventions for rendering specific CLR types to specific HTML output.

Saying Hello to the Spark View Engine

Wed, 27 May 2009 21:15:00 GMT

Taking a introductory look at the Spark View engine. The Spark is a view engine for Asp.Net Mvc and Castle Project MonoRail frameworks. The idea is to allow the html to dominate the flow and the code to fit seamlessly.

ASP.NET MVC Domain Routing

Wed, 20 May 2009 20:09:52 GMT

Ever since the release of ASP.NET MVC and its routing engine (System.Web.Routing), Microsoft has been trying to convince us that you have full control over your URL and routing. This is true to a certain extent: as long as it's related to your application path, everything works out nicely. If you need to take care of data tokens in your (sub)domain, you're screwed by default.

Five Reasons for using an ORM Tool

Sat, 16 May 2009 01:46:03 GMT

Gud intro of as what orm tools do...

Creating Your First MVC ViewEngine

Tue, 12 May 2009 01:46:02 GMT

A question that I have been hearing a lot lately is: How do I change the view location in MVC? But what they really mean to say is: How do I create a new ViewEngine that uses the view locations of my choosing? It is actually very simple to do, and once you see it, I think you will agree with my assessment. The first thing we are going to do to create our custom ViewEngine, is define the paths that we want to use for our master pages, view pages, and shared pages. I have taken the liberty to define the following paths, you can customize them however you wish:

Open Source or Die - The Real Future of Graffiti?

Tue, 12 May 2009 12:16:02 GMT

Telligent's Graffiti hasn't quite flatlined yet, but the signs aren't looking too good. Could OSS be the way to breathe life back into this once-promising CMS platform?

Custom Controller Factory in ASP.NET MVC

Sat, 09 May 2009 14:11:38 GMT

Introducing Controller Factory in ASP.NET MVC

More ASP.NET MVC Best Practices

Wed, 06 May 2009 21:16:02 GMT

In this post, I'll share some of the best practices and guidelines which I have come across while developing ASP.NET MVC web applications. I will not cover all best practices that are available, instead add some specific things that have not been mentioned in any blog post out there. Existing best practices can be found on Kazi Manzur Rashid's blog and Simone Chiaretta's blog.

ASP.NET MVC: Using Custom ViewModels with POST action methods

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:16:02 GMT

One of the top good practices for ASP.NET MVC is not to use the ViewData Dictionary, but to put your data in a strongly typed ViewModel instead. Many people seem to be using Linq to SQL entities as a ViewModel, because it's a very comfortable approach. But what do you do if your view should contain data that is not included in any of your linq entities? This posting describes how to use custom shaped ViewModel classes for these cases.

Adaptive Rendering in ASP.NET MVC - Kazi Manzur Rashid's Blog

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 23:31:02 GMT

ASP.NET MVC comes with different action results for various purpose, but some times, you will find those are not adequate for your scenario, lets consider the following screenshot: When user navigates to a different tab or change the sort order or moves to a different page number, it will load the content as an ajax call, but if the user has JavaScript turned off, it will redirect to a regular url. One solution would be to create separate sets of controller actions that will return either the complete view (in case JavaScript is turned off) or the partial view and use the jQuery load to show the content. But the problem of this approach is that we will be duplicating the same logic for both the actions, moreover we will be returning the unnecessary html tags rather than pure json object that is sufficient for rendering the view. A better solution would be adaptive rendering. If you are not familiar with adaptive rendering then let me clarify it a bit, it is a process where the server responds differently depending upon the browser capability. So it has a broader scope(e.g. mobile devices, text only browsers etc) comparing to our above JavaScript on/off scenario. But for the time being let us only focus on the above, so instead of creating pure html/ajax only version we would like to take the advantage of the browser capability and for this we will create a new action result, the beauty of the new action result is, the controller remains completely unaware of what kind of request it is serving. Lets take a look of the controller action that is serving both:

How to choose between ASP.NET MVC and Web Forms

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 09:16:02 GMT

Introducing a worksheet from the upcoming book "ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Programming" to help developers make a decision to choose between MVC and Web Forms in ASP.NET.

5 Blogs ASP.NET MVC Developers Should Be Following

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:46:07 GMT

Everyone knows that Phil Haack, Rob Conery, Scott Hanselman, and Scott Guthrie all provide good ASP.NET MVC content on their blogs. I wanted to provide a list of excellent resources on ASP.NET MVC that are a little less well known.

C# Design Patterns - The Visitor Pattern

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:31:02 GMT

One principle that I really like is the Open/Closed principle which says that an object should be open to new functionality but closed to structural changes. The visitor pattern helps facilitate this principle by giving us the means to perform operations against an object without changing the objects structure. Looking back at a previous pattern we wanted to adjust the registration cost for a dog if they had been picked up by the dog catcher.

5 blogs every asp.net programmer should know analyzed with 31-DBBB day

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:01:12 GMT

31-DBBB day 4 task is to analyze leader blogs in your niche. I do so here with some recommendation I hope you'll enjoy

jQuery Search box and Asp.net MVC

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:16:03 GMT

This is a simple tutorial on how to create a fancy search box, that has suggestions underneath the input box, and that also can do autocomplete.

Web 2.0 AJAX Portal using ASP.NET 3.5,jQuery,Silverlight,Linq,Unity

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:16:04 GMT

Learn how to build a Web 2.0 AJAX portal just like Google IG using jQuery, ASP.NET, Silverlight, Linq to SQL, Workflow Foundation and Unity

Announcing BlogEngine.NET 1.5 Release Candidate

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 17:31:15 GMT

We are very happy to make available a release candidate for BlogEngine.NET 1.5 today. Version 1.5 has been in the works for a long time and we decided to make a release candidate available before me make the final release this time around.

5 reasons why you should use ASP.NET MVC

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 22:01:03 GMT

I'll be fair with you readers. I've only toyed with the ASP.NET MVC framework. It looks great as of now but it's the first full blown MVC framework that we have that is backed by Microsoft. However, there is a lot of opposition nowadays that tend to be formulated like this: Why should I use ASP.NET MVC? WebForms works well. Other problems come from the lack of server controls. When a developer look at that and he then wonder why he should have to write HTML and Javascript when before he could have retrieved all that beautiful information with a simple postback.

Designing .NET Class Libraries

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 09:16:02 GMT

The Designing .NET Class Libraries series presents design guidelines for developing classes and components that extend the .NET Framework. The goal of the Designing .NET Class Libraries series is to encourage consistency and predictability in public APIs while enabling Web and cross-language integration. The guidelines presented in Designing .NET Class Libraries are intended to help class library designers understand the trade-offs between different solutions. There might be situations where good library design requires that you violate these design guidelines. Such cases should be rare, however it is important that you provide a solid justification for your decision.

Crazy Wheels - Funny BlogEngine.NET theme

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 09:16:13 GMT

Crazy Wheels is another free BlogEngine.NET theme by jankoatwarpspeed.com. It is a simple, colorful, three column theme. Is has been published under Creative Commons License which means that you can use it for personal and commercial use as long as you keep the credits.

Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 1.0 is now Open Source MS-PL

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 10:07:18 GMT

Today, ASP.NET MVC is now Open Source and licensed under MS-PL. That means you can change it, redistribute your changes, even fork it if you want. MS-PL is an OSI-Approved Open Source License and you can read the legalese on their site.

Do You Really Need a College Degree to Get a Programming Job?

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 03:16:04 GMT

There's plenty of articles about the shortage of skilled IT workers and the difficulty experienced by companies in finding qualified software developers. The whining would be far more credible if the Want Ads didn't have a silly, arbitrary qualification: a college degree.

Using Windows Live Writer with BlogEngine.net

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 23:31:02 GMT

Using the built-in blog entry tools in BlogEngine.net works just fine, but I have come to like Windows Live Writer better. It just seems to make things just a little bit easier. Here are some very simple instructions on how to get Windows Live Writer working for BlogEngine.net