DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by rodiniz

Use specific return types in your ASP.NET MVC action methods

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:30:00 GMT

When looking at ASP.NET MVC examples on the web almost all action methods return ActionResult, even methods that could return a specific subclass...

Application-wide action filters in ASP.NET MVC

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:30:02 GMT

Ever had a team of developers using your ASP.NET MVC framework? Chances are you have implemented some action filters (i.e. for logging) which should be applied on all controllers in the application. Two ways to do this: kindly ask your developers to add a [Logging] attribute to the controllers they write, or kindly ask to inherit from SomeCustomControllerWithActionsInPlace. If you have been in this situation, monday mornings, afternoons, tuesdays and other weekdays are in fact days where some developers will forget to do one of the above. This means no logging! Or any other action filters that are executed due to a developer that has not been fed with enough coffee. Wouldn't it be nice to have a central repository where you can register application-wide action filters? That's exactly what we are going to do in this blog post.

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.

Life After Loops

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:15:00 GMT

Eliminating cumbersome looping code using Linq

22 Visual Studio Short Keys and 6 Short-cut Ways to Custom Jobs

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:15:00 GMT

Efficient programmers use short keys in IDE like Visual Studio. This saves time and in many cases makes the work run faster also. I also love short keys. They are smart! And there also go some tricks that help make your visual studio days a party! I have listed here some short cuts and some tips with the hope that this will be helpful to you all.

A view from the cloud (or: locate your ASP.NET MVC views on Azure)

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:30:00 GMT

Hosting and deploying ASP.NET MVC applications on Windows Azure works like a charm. However, if you have been reading my blog for a while, you might have seen that I don't like the fact that my ASP.NET MVC views are stored in the deployed package as well. Why? If I want to change some text or I made a typo, I would have to re-deploy my entire application for this. Takes a while, application is down during deployment, . And all of that for a typo. Luckily, Windows Azure also provides blob storage, on which you can host any blob of data (or any file, if you don't like saying "blob"). These blobs can easily be managed with a tool like Azure Blob Storage Explorer. Now let's see if we can abuse blob storage for storing the views of an ASP.NET MVC web application, making it easier to modify the text and stuff. We'll do this by creating a new VirtualPathProvider.

15 Books You Must Have If You Are Doing ASP.NET Web Development

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 10:00:00 GMT

Good books give you a quick and handy insight into a technology. You should choose books that are usually written by professionals who recommend best practices and different methods of solving a business problem using the technology. In this post, I will share some books I recommend for ASP.NET and other related Web Development technologies

June 7th Links: ASP.NET, AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, Visual Studio - ScottGu's

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:00:08 GMT

Scott's latest links post.

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!!

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

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.

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:

ASP.NET MVC Tip: Turn on compile-time View Checking

Mon, 04 May 2009 22:01:05 GMT

I like the compiler to catch as many errors as possible before I start debugging or release my application. This also applies to code nuggets in ASP.NET MVC views, especially since these are not unit-testable. This article shows how to enable compile-time View checking for ASP.NET MVC projects.

ASP.NET MVC and the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF)

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 22:46:14 GMT

Microsoft's Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) is a .NET library (released on CodePlex) that enables greater re-use of application components. You can do this by dynamically composing your application based on a set of classes and methods that can be combined at runtime. Think of it like building an appliation that can host plugins, which in turn can also be composed of different plugins. Since examples say a thousand times more than text, let's go ahead with a sample leveraging MEF in an ASP.NET MVC web application.

How to improve the performances of ASP.NET MVC web applications

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 22:46:04 GMT

Today I stumbled upon a nice presentation that Rudi Benkovic gave last week at the Slovenian DotNet User Group, about ASP.NET MVC Performances. It is an in depth analysis of a Digg-like site and how it went from serving (on a test machine) 6 req/sec to 390 req/sec. The analysis prove the usual rule of performance optimization: no matter what you do to optimize your code, the biggest performance hit is data retrieval, and the first thing you have to optimize is always this. But apart from this obvious outcome, I just want to take out from this presentation the 3 point that are really specific to ASP.NET MVC

5 Useful Visual Studio C# Snippets - Part 2

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:01:04 GMT

I initially published 5 Visual Studio c# Snippets yesterday and it got a lot of attention and had some positive feedback, so this is a follow up that I hope would be as helpful as the first one.

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# 4.0: What's next

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:31:07 GMT

An overview on C# versions and a discussion on latest features in C# 4.0

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

Bug Tracker App in ASP.NET MVC - Part 1

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:40:16 GMT

Learning ASP.NET MVC framework by developing bug tracker application from scratch.

13 ASP.NET MVC extensibility points you have to know

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 22:46:06 GMT

One of the main design principles ASP.NET MVC has been designed with is extensibility. Everything (or most of) in the processing pipeline is replaceable so, if you don't like the conventions (or lack of them) that ASP.NET MVC uses, you can create your own services to support your conventions and inject them into the main pipeline. This post shows 13 extensibility points that every ASP.NET MVC developer should know, starting from the beginning of the pipeline and going forward till the rendering of the view.

5 Most Common Asked Questions When Using .Net RIA Services

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 19:01:03 GMT

From the comments on my previous articles on .Net RIA Services and from the search queries that lead to those articles, a pattern of a recurring set of questions showed up and I am sure that most .Net RIA Services enthusiasts face the same issues. This post address a few of these issues

Using the ASP.NET MVC Futures AsyncController

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 17:31:04 GMT

Last week, I blogged about all stuff that is included in the ASP.NET MVC Futures assembly, which is an assembly available on CodePlex and contains possible future features (tonguetwister!) for the ASP.NET MVC framework. One of the comments asked for more information on the AsyncController that is introduced in the MVC Futures. So here goes!

WorkGrabber.com - Sweet ASP.NET MVC 1.0 + jQuery Application

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 22:01:24 GMT

Mike Bosch shows us his latest creation using ASP.Net MVC: WorkGrabber.com is a social marketplace for local contractors and customers to interact and get projects done.

Glass Behavior for WPF

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:46:03 GMT

A new custom behavior for WPF that allows for a glass like effect. Essentially you can place this behavior on any Visual, point to to a target visual and give it an effect and it will create an effect that looks like a piece of glass was placed over the screen. You pretty much can make your own Aero effects within your application. . .