ASP.NET MVC 2 Cookbook

ASP.NET MVC 2 Cookbook

Overview of this book

ASP.NET MVC, one of the latest web development platforms from Microsoft, brings the power of MVC programming to ASP.NET development. It simplifies the task of application development and maintenance for developers. However, ASP.NET MVC is filled with so many features that developers end up looking for solutions to the many problems that are encountered in their routine development tasks.ASP.NET MVC 2 Cookbook will provide solutions for the very specific problems that are encountered while developing applications with the ASP.NET MVC platform. It consists of many recipes containing step-by-step instructions that guide developers to effectively use the wide array of tools and features of ASP.NET MVC platform for web development ASP.NET MVC Cookbook is a collection of recipes that will help you to perform your routine development tasks with ease using the ASP.NET MVC platform. In this book you will be walked through the solution to several specific web application development problems. Each recipe will walk you through the creation of a web application, setting up any Visual Studio project requirements, adding in any external tools, and finally the programming steps needed to solve the problem. The focus of the book is to describe the solution from start to finish. The book starts off with recipes that demonstrate how to work effectively with views and controllers – two of the most important ingredients of the ASP.NET MVC framework. It then gradually moves on to cover many advanced routing techniques. Considering the importance of having a consistent structure to the site, the book contains recipes to show how to build a consistent UI and control its look with master pages. It also contains a chapter that is packed with many recipes that demonstrate how to gain control of data within a view. As the book progresses through some exciting recipes on performing complex tasks with forms, you will discover how easy it is to work with forms to jazz up the look of your web site. Building large applications with ease is one of the prime features of the MVC model. Therefore, this book also focuses on tools and features that make building large applications easier to manage. As data plays an important role in the MVC architecture, there are ample recipes dedicated to cover data validation, access, and storage techniques. Finally, the book demonstrates how to enhance the user experience of your visitors by controlling the data at the application, session, caching, and cookie level. By the end of this book, you will have explored a wide array of tools and features available with the ASP.NET MVC platform

ASP.NET MVC 2 Cookbook

Credits

About the Authors

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

Working with the View

Introduction

Using magic strings and the ViewData dictionary

Creating a strongly typed view

Decoupling a strongly typed view with a View model

Centralizing display logic with templated helpers

Using a partial view to segment view code

Rendering a child view with Html.RenderAction

Loading a view template from a database with NVelocity

Consuming a JSON with jQuery

Taking Action in Your Controllers

Introduction

Exposing JSON using a JsonResult with Json.NET

A custom ActionResult to return an image

Specifying the size of an ImageResult

Creating a CAPTCHA system

Generating a PDF order summary

Implementing a controller factory for use with StructureMap

Routing

Introduction

Creating a route to support a reporting engine

Making hackable URLs for a product catalog

Filter your matches with routing constraints

Using wildcard parameters to support slug URLs

Creating a 404 page via routing

Moving routes out of Global.asax

Supporting pagination in your URLs

Supporting content hierarchies with a custom RouteHandler

Creating a blacklist route constraint

Master Pages

Introduction

How to create a master page

Determining the master page in the ActionResult

Controlling which master page is used with a view base class

Setting the master page from a controller base class

Passing data to the master page

Rendering data in a master page from another view

Creating nested master pages

Working with Data in the View

Introduction

Reintroducing for and foreach

Handling an array of checkboxes

Handling an array of radio buttons

Working with a pageable set of data

How to navigate sortable data

Deleting a record with an intermediary "Are you sure?" page

Adding a jQuery delete link with confirmation

Master/detail page with inline details via jQuery and a partial view

Creating a master/detail page with modal pop-up and JSON

Working with Forms

Introduction

Using HTML helpers to create forms

Building a custom HTML helper to display a WYSIWYG

Centralizing create and edit forms for reuse

Adding custom attributes to form elements

Defining a default button with jQuery

Hijaxing a form with jQuery

Performing an auto post-back with a select list

Autocomplete with jQuery UI

Simplifying Complex Applications

Introduction

Centralized formatting of common types with templated helpers

Making templated helpers for custom types

Using areas to separate application components

Creating a "portable area" to use across multiple applications

Using input builders of MvcContrib

Generating forms with Html.InputForm()

Leaving breadcrumbs for your users with MvcSiteMap

Displaying tabular data in a grid

Validating MVC

Introduction

Basic input validation

Data annotations

Client-side validation with jQuery

Custom validators

Remote validation with jQuery

Data Access and Storage

Introduction

Mocking your data layer with NBuilder

Adding support for LINQ to SQL

Going old school with ADO.NET

XML documents as a data store

Application, Session, Cookies, and Caching

Introduction

Keeping track of anonymous visitors versus logged-in users

Maintaining a user's information while at your site

Remembering a previous visitor

Caching your product catalog for faster response times

Using output caching to cache an entire page

Using partial views to cache pieces of a page individually

Exposing an application API to your presentation layer

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Introduction

In this chapter, we will take a look at the easiest part of the whole ASP.NET MVC framework—the View. We will get started by looking at how data is passed out to the view in the simplest of ways using the ViewData dictionary and magic strings. From there, we will work towards better ways of getting data in and out of the view. Then we will take a look at some of the other view engines that you have at your disposal, which can easily be plugged into the ASP.NET MVC framework. Finally, we will take a look at other things that you can do with the view.

In our examples, we will be working with the basic concept of products and categories as though we were building a simple e-commerce site. We will be using an open source product called NBuilder to fake our data access layer. NBuilder will be used to quickly generate some product and category data for us to use in our views.

Note

NBuilder is a great open source product that can be used to quickly generate test instances of a particular .NET class. This works great when knocking together your views such as we are doing in this chapter. You can find more data about NBuilder at NBuilder.org. I also wrote a tutorial on how to get NBuilder running on DotNetSlackers.com at dotnetslackers.com/articles/aspnet/Using-NBuilder-to-mock-up-a-data-driven-UI-Part1.aspx.

ASP.NET MVC 2 Cookbook

ASP.NET MVC 2 Cookbook

Overview of this book

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ASP.NET MVC 2 Cookbook

Introduction

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