DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by johnrummell

Send a Completed Form Email Without a StringBuilder

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 03:20:04 GMT

Have you ever had to create a large web form for users to fill out and then receive an email copy after its submitted? That can be tedious work. The first few times I did it, I used a StringBuilder to build the email HTML one control at a time. Later, I viewed the HTML output of the page and replaced all input controls with spans, and then put that HTML in a StringBuilder. Either of these methods work, but it gets real annoying when I later have to add a field or two to the form and therefore to the email HTML. This article uses a different, reusable approach.

Never worry about ASP.NET AJAX's "d" again

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:30:00 GMT

Since a lot of people are having trouble with it, I want to share one method you can use to completely isolate your code from the ".d" problem. In this post, I will show you how to detect the ".d" and how you can completely isolate your $.ajax success handler from it.

JavaScript Shortcuts

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Write more compact JavaScript with these two tips.

Testing E-Mail Functionality

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:30:00 GMT

If you are looking for a very robust testing utility for e-mailing applications, you need to get Neptune. This is a quick introduction to how Neptune works. Every software developer who has ever written software that sends e-mail of any kind will appreciate the features this little testing utility.

If At First You Don't Succeed - Retrying Mail Operations in .NET

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:45:01 GMT

Mail sent from your application didn't go through? Don't give up so easily! The majority of mail server interruptions are very temporary in nature, lasting only a few seconds. Instead of failing right away, why not give your SMTP client another shot?

Ajax survey 2009: jQuery and MS Ajax are almost tied

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:45:00 GMT

Simone posts the results of the survey about ajax adoption among .NET developers. jQuery gained 58% since 2007 and now is almost tied to the MS Ajax stack (Control toolkit and ajax core)

ASP.NET MVC Tip 3: Implementing remote client-side form validation

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:45:00 GMT

Client-side form validation has become a de-facto standard for modern web applications. However, there are some validation rules which cannot be checked completely on the client side, for example because the validation depends on information stored in the server database. For those rules you need to implement remote client-side form validation. This article describes how to implement this so that you don't have to write any custom javascript for new validation rules.

Microsoft deprecating Oracle client in Dot Net 4

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:30:00 GMT

Microsoft has announced through a blog that the ADO.NET 4 spec will mark the Oracle client as deprecated with plans for removal. They are also recommending that users go to a third party Oracle provider. Stop Helping the Competition? Wow, this will mark the first time an ADO.NET provider has been removed from the .Net framework. Is this a case of Microsoft trimming the fat, or pushing Oracle? I always thought it a bit of a free ride that Microsoft was helping Oracle by building their provider for them...

Life After Loops

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:15:00 GMT

Eliminating cumbersome looping code using Linq

The "Sim City" effect

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:30:00 GMT

What happens when you turn your back on a software development project.

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...

SubSonic 3.0: ActiveRecord

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:45:00 GMT

Google's project site is down for a while and I have some perf tests running in the background so I thought it might be time to crank out a few more "preview" posts of SubSonic 3.0. This one's about ActiveRecord - one of my favorite patterns for its ease of use and versatility.

SubSonic 3.0: The SimpleRepository « Rob Conery

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 10:45:01 GMT

Rob is adding a very nice simple repository to SubSonic 3.0 that will give SubSonic top-notch POCO support and very slick migrations. Mapping files be damned!

11 keystrokes that made my jQuery selector run 10x faster

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:15:00 GMT

An in-depth analysis of the performance concerns when using a popular jQuery selector and a couple ways to dramatically speed it up, including benchmarks.

LINQ to SQL is NOT dead!

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 19:00:03 GMT

Ever since Microsoft announced that the Entity Framework was their ORM of choice, people everywhere have been saying, "LINQ to SQL is dead!" A lot of people feel like they're not allowed to use LINQ to SQL anymore and that they have to use Entity Framework instead. In fact, LINQ to SQL is not only alive and well, Microsoft has even announced LINQ to SQL improvements in .NET 4.0, including finally adding using ITable<T> for tables instead of Table<T>, which makes it much easier to test. Combine that with this open source tool that will create an IDataContext interface for you and you're on your way to testable LINQ to SQL. So no, LINQ to SQL is not dead!!

Should We Return Null From Our Methods?

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 18:15:06 GMT

I read a interesting article recently about the potential perils of Null Check Hell. The author's suggestion? Stop allowing any of your methods to return nulls, ever . No nulls returned, no null checks necessary. Problem solved, right?

IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit (ScottGu)

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:45:05 GMT

"Today we are shipping the first beta of a new free tool - the IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit - that makes it easy to perform SEO analysis on your site and identify and fix issues within it."

LINQ to SQL changes in .NET 4.0

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:15:00 GMT

What's fixed and breaking changes for LINQ to SQL in .NET 4.0

SubMain acquires GhostDoc

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:45:03 GMT

An agreement between SubMain and Roland Weigelt, author of GhostDoc, will place future development of GhostDoc in the hands of SubMain. GhostDoc ( http://submain.com/ghostdoc ) is the popular XML Comments and documentation helper tool which SubMain will continue to maintain as a free product.

A Degradable jQuery AJAX Email Form for ASP.NET MVC

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 07:45:10 GMT

Pretty much every web site on the Internet features a form for users to provide feedback via email to site owners. Migrating to ASP.NET MVC requires a slightly different approach to that used by Web Forms development, so this article looks at one way to implement a web site contact form using the MVC framework and jQuery that degrades nicely. AJAX functionality is said to be "degradable" if a way is provided for the process to work, even though users don't have Javascript available to them.

The Greatest Exception Handling WTF?!? of All Time

Thu, 28 May 2009 10:00:00 GMT

The Exception object has ONE purpose and ONE purpose only - to represent a runtime error, nothing more. Exceptions should never be used for purposes for which they were not intended -- or you could end up with this monstrosity...

Live Twitter stream of notable people in the .NET community

Tue, 26 May 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Built with ASP.NET MVC, jQuery and TweetSharp

My Dot Net Developer's tools list, and more.

Wed, 27 May 2009 04:00:01 GMT

I gave a brownbag presentation at my current client recently about the common tools (in addition to Visual Studio), that I use on a regular basis for working with .NET or web development in general. I also threw in some non-development tools that are a part of my day to day life and make things easier. Here's the complete list:

Creating a quick and dirty jQuery contentEditable Plugin

Tue, 26 May 2009 06:57:42 GMT

Inline editing content is a feature that's novel and highly useful at the same time. I've been using it in a number of admin interfaces to provide very easy and quick text updates to existing content. There are a number of ways to accomplish this but in this post I'll discuss a contentEditable jQuery plugin that makes any content inline editable using the DOM's contentEditable attribute that maintains text formatting in the editable text.

Solution to Famous Error 40 of SQL Server - A Must Bookmark

Fri, 22 May 2009 19:46:14 GMT

Everybody who has ever used SQL Server might have encountered this error one time or another time. This is absolutely must bookmark link.