Development In ASP.NET by Tanzim Saqib

Development in ASP.NETWebForms, LINQ, Dynamic Data
TanzimSaqib
www.TanzimSaqib.com
SaaS Developer
Software as-a Service (SaaS) Platform
British Telecom

Session Summary
WebForms
LINQ
Dynamic Data
Futures – ASP.NET 4

What is ASP.NET
Technology for web application development
Provides you with rich APIs and services
Robust, scalable, fast development experience
Great flexibility, less coding
Seamless integration with Microsoft stack tools
Not an upgrade from ASP
the next generation ASP

WebForms
UI elements that make up the Look & Feel of your application
Also known as just Page.
Code behind brings UI and code separation
Default.aspx
Default.aspx.cs
Advanced features reduce code
i.e. Data binding
Rich Drag & Drop design experience

WebForms (contd.)
Support for multiple languages
C#, VB, C++ and so on
Similar to Windows Forms programming model
Events, Properties, Methods
Extensibility
Third party assemblies and controls
runat=“server”
Compiled at server-side
Accessible by server code

ASP.NET Controls or Web Controls

Most Commonly Used WebControls

ASP.NET Ecosystem

Page Life Cycle Events
Events in green are the most frequently used

Page Life Cycle Events (contd.)
For more information: http://bit.ly/aspnetevents

WebForms Feature Highlights
Themes and skins
Master pages
Membership, Profile and Role Manager API
Application Services for AJAX applications
Website administration
Wide range choices for caching
Levels: Application, Session, Cache, Cookie, Page, Portion of Page
Handling errors

WebForms Feature Highlights (contd.)
ViewState
Technique to persist changes to state of a WebForm across postbacks
Stores in a hidden input field __VIEWSTATE
Encrypted
Increase length of the page, hence slows down
You can turn on/off

Cozying up with ASP.NET Development
demo
Building a complete data driven site

Groundbreaking innovation
LINQ
Language INtegrated Query

Language INtegrated Query - LINQ
Pronouced as “Link”
A language construct
Strongly typed query against objects
Full intellisense support
Can be used with any collection of objects that implements IEnumerable<T>
Highly extensible
LINQ to XML
LINQ to SQL
LINQ to Flickr! etc.

LINQ Benefits
Simply put - avoiding having to learn and master many different domain languages, development or debugging environments in order to retrieve and manipulate data from different sources
One language to query all.
Deferred Execution
Process queries only when foreach/ToList() is being called.
Parallel Extensions help LINQ queries run in multiple processor cores in ASP.NET 4

Querying objects
demo

Obtaining data source
Query Expression Syntax:
varallProducts = from p in products select p;
Extension Method:
No representation. productsis the collection of objects

Filtering
varlowOnProducts = from p in products
where p.UnitsInStock < 10 select p;
Extension Method:
products.Where(p => p.UnitsInStock < 10);

Ordering
where p.UnitsInStock < 10
orderbyp.Name ascending
select p;
Extension Method:
products.Where(p => p.UnitsInStock < 10)
.OrderBy(p => p.Name);

Ordering (contd.)
Other helpful Extension Methods:
OrderBy
OrderByDescending
ThenBy
ThenByDescending

Grouping
string[] partNumbers = new string[] { "SCW10", "SCW1", "SCW2", "SCW11", "NUT10", "NUT1", "NUT2"};
var query = from pN in partNumbers
group pN by pN.Substring(0,3);
Extension Method:
var query = partNumbers
.GroupBy(pN => pN.Substring(0,3));
foreach (var group in q) {
Console.WriteLine("Group key: {0}", group.Key);
foreach (var part in group) {
Console.WriteLine(" - {0}", part);
}
}
where p.UnitsInStock < 10
orderbyp.Name ascending
select p;
products.Where(p => p.UnitsInStock < 10)
.OrderBy(p => p.Name);

Grouping (contd.)
Iterating through grouped data:
foreach (var group in query) {
Console.WriteLine("Group key: {0}", group.Key);
foreach (var part in group) {
Console.WriteLine(" - {0}", part);
}
}

Standard Query Operators

Standard Query Operators (contd.)

Querying and modifying data
demo
LINQ DataContext

LINQ Query Provider
Roll your own provider:
YouTubeContextcontext = new YouTubeContext();
var query = (from v in context.Videos
where v.Location == " Moghbazar " && v.SearchText == “Rail Crash"
select v).IfNotViewedBy(“TanzimSaqib”);
Building LINQ Provider series: http://bit.ly/LINQSeries

Life easier with
Dynamic Data

Dynamic Data Overview
Build powerful data driven sites in a minute!
Automatic creation of
WebForms
Controls and data binding
Validation logic in place
Metadata inferred from schema
Easy and highly customizable
Time saver and reusable

Building a website in less than a minute!
demo

Field Templates
Fields are User Controls
Dynamically chosen by datatype
Responsible for
Data binding
Validation and
Rendering
Reusable

Customizing Fields
demo

Customizing Pages
Page Templates
Changes affect all pages
Custom pages for individual tables
Custom columns and rendering

Customizing Pages
demo

Routing
Standard URL:
http://yourcompany.com/Products/Edit.aspx
Extensionless clean URL:
http://yourcompany.com/Products/Edit
No necessity to move files around
Routing engine is being used by
Dynamic Data
ASP.NET MVC
Attend the next session for deep dive into Routing and ASP.NET MVC

Routing
demo

Future is now
ASP.NET 4
Beta 1

Futures - ASP.NET 4
Support for meta tags
Page.Keywords, Page.Description
Enabling ViewState for individual controls
ViewStateMode property of the control
Reading route values at Page level:
Page.RouteData.Values[“param_name_here"]
Reading route values from markup:
<%$ RouteValue:param_name_here %>
More precise and predictable ClientIDs

Futures - ASP.NET 4 (contd.)
QueryExtender
New server control
Works with LinqDataSource and EntityDataSource
More control over what is coming from Database
Controls for nested use with QueryExtender
SearchExpression
RangeExpression
PropertyExpression
CustomExpression

Web.config transformation:
Development settings: web.debug.config
Production settings: web.release.config
Dynamic Data
New field template for URL, Email addresses
Client Template and Live data binding
Enables binding data source to HTML elements
Implemented with Observer pattern
Data changes from/to UI to/from Database notified

Example
<script type="text/javascript">
vardataContext = new Sys.Data.DataContext();
dataContext.set_serviceUri("emplyeeService.svc");
dataContext.initialize();
</script>
<ul sys:attach="dataview" class="sys-template "
    dataview:autofetch="true"
    dataview:dataprovider="{{ dataContext }}"
    dataview:fetchoperation="GetEmployeeList">
    <li>
        <h3>{binding Name}</h3>
        <div>{binding Address}</div>
    </li>
</ul>

Many more. For more information: http://bit.ly/aspnet4

Links and downloads: http://www.TanzimSaqib.com
Q & A

Thank you