We will now look at what is involved in downloading the Ext.NET framework.
The first thing to note is that Ext.NET is dual licensed and you can choose between the following:
The differences between the two are very minimal. In the Ext.NET Pro release there is an option to render resources (JavaScript, CSS, and images) from a global Content Delivery Network. The Community version does not have this option. The Pro version also does some license checking. Other than that, the code is the same.
If your own project is licensed with the AGPL license, then you can use the Community license. If you are producing a closed source project, then you should purchase an Ext.NET Pro license. The Pro license includes a license to the underlying Ext JS framework so you do not have to purchase both. The Pro license also comes with a license key that can be added to Web.config
or Global.asax
without which you would see a message appearing on any web pages that are not running locally. This message warns about the software being unlicensed. The FAQs at Ext.NET's download page, http://ext.net/download/, has further details and can help you decide which license is suitable for your project.
There are a number of ways you can download Ext.NET:
From the Ext.NET download site: http://ext.net/download/
From GitHub: https://github.com/extnet/
From SVN, if you have a Premium Support Subscription: http://ext.net/store/
As a NuGet Package: http://nuget.org/packages/Ext.NET
All these options, except the NuGet option, include the full source code so you can choose whether to build the solution yourself or use the supplied assemblies. Downloading the source code is useful to at least explore how Ext.NET has been put together. The SVN option will include a pre-release source code if you want bug fixes more quickly than official releases.
NuGet is a popular Visual Studio extension to manage packages for you and will install the Ext.NET binaries to your web project's bin
folder. The download from Ext.NET is a ZIP file. The DLLs that you will find are as follows:
Json.NET is itself a popular open source .NET library for working with JSON. It is extremely effective at serializing .NET into JSON and deserialization from JSON to .NET. So much so that Microsoft itself has started using it instead of some of its own JSON serializers. More information about Json.NET can be found at its website: http://james.newtonking.com/pages/json-net.aspx.
In addition to the DLLs, the following text files are also available and worth reading:
README.txt
CHANGELOG.txt
LICENSE.txt
If you have opted for the Ext.NET Premium Support Subscription service, amongst other benefits, you get access to their latest source code. So, for example, any bug fixes or feature requests reported by you or others in the community that have recently been implemented are available immediately for you to compile and use.
If you go for this option, Ext.NET will send you instructions on how to connect to the public SVN code repository to download the latest code. You can then open the Visual Studio solution file and compile the code manually. If you then look in the Ext.Net project's bin\Debug
or bin\Release
directory (depending on which mode you want) you will find the same DLLs as above.
You can then include the output assemblies in your own solution. This means you do not need to compile their source code every time you compile your own solution; only when you update your local Ext.NET code from their SVN repository.