Most Recent Posts
In ASP.NET MVC, you can use a collection of SelectListItems to help build an HTML <select>. Just watch out for the HTML helper overloads. The question is – what is the prettiest code that can change a list of Products into a collection of SelectListItems?...
It’s possible to do a lot of work with ASP.NET and not know anything about IIS,
particularly if you work with a large team where IT specialists keep the riff-raff
away from production web applications. Ever since Visual...
The July issue of MSDN Magazine is available online with my article “Guiding Principles For Your ASP.NET MVC Applications”. Another MVC article in this issue is Justin Etheredge’s “Building Testable ASP.NET MVC Applications”. Justin’s article is a good...
Steve Wellens had a recent blog post arguing for the use of a goto in C# (see: Why goto Still Exists in C#). Steve had a series of methods he wants to execute, but he wants to stop if any given method returns false. At the end of the post, Steve decided...
Øredev is putting together an exciting lineup of topics and speakers for Progressive .NET Days. The event is August 27-28 in Stockholm Sweden. Progressive software development understands that tomorrow's better ideas for software development are likely...
“Program to an interface, not an implementation” is a well-known mantra from the GoF book. Take this guidance to an extreme, though, and you generate POO instead of OOP. How do know if you crossed the line? I think it’s useful to take a step back and...
Let’s say you wanted to select the parts for a Lenovo X60 laptop from the following XML. <Root>
<Manufacturer Name="Lenovo=">
<Model Name="X60=" >
<Parts>
<!-- ... -->
</Parts>
</Model>...
I now have a number of lean software development books queued up. It started when I saw this single bullet point in a presentation: Overproduction == Extra Features I’m enjoying the thinking behind lean, and I believe the techniques and vocabulary of...
Years ago, ex-Googler Doug Edwards wrote a blog post to explain the meaning behind a few favorite words in the software developer’s vocabulary: orthogonal, cruft, canonical, and the big one - non-trivial. Non-trivialIt means impossible. Since no engineer...
After my last post on model binding tips I’ve had a number of questions about the nuances of model binding. Let’s work through a sample. Imagine you have a Recipe class that can hold all the information you need to make Love Mussels, and now you've decided...
Model binding in the ASP.NET MVC framework is simple. Your action methods need data, and the incoming HTTP request carries the data you need. The catch is that the data is embedded into POST-ed form values, and possibly the URL itself. Enter the DefaultModelBinder,...
The May issue of MSDN Magazine is now on-line with my article “The Life and Times of an ASP.NET MVC Controller”. In this article, I will dissect the ASP.NET MVC framework and look at how controllers work. I'll explain how the framework interacts with...
Luis and David recently posted about the controls that appear in the ASP.NET MVC Futures 1.0 release. Luis Abreu: The MVC framework: the Repeater control David Hayden: ASP.NET MVC Controls in ASP.NET MVC Futures - Repeater Control Example I’ve seen...
Just a quick note to let you know that the first three modules of my ASP.NET MVC course are ready for consumption at Pluralsight! On-Demand. Pluralsight is building a fantastic library of online content you can view as a subscriber, or see in person...
In the last post we talked about using entities as the models in an MVC application. This approach works well until an application reaches a certain level of complexity, at which point entities as the M in MVC can become painful. I believe entities exist...
Rob just put the M into MVC using Subsonic and a Subsonic MVC Template. The template allows you to go from 0 to functioning application in less time than it takes to listen to a Rob Zombie song. Fantastic work by Rob C, and it leads nicely into the actual...
Microsoft has discovered, after several well-funded studies, that the names they use for exceptions in the .NET framework create pathological levels of anxiety and stress in programmers. Thus, for .NET 4.0 they decided to create a “kinder and gentler”...
Model is one of those overloaded words in software. Just saying the word model can produce a wide range of expectations depending on the context of the conversation. There are software process models, business process models, maturity models, domain models,...
The ASP.NET Connection show in Orlando was a fantastic event. Thanks to everyone who came to a session. Here are the slides and demos for everyone who asked for them. What ASP.NET Developers Should Know About JavaScript Download. In the last half of...
JavaScript has made some improvements in its “state of the art” over the last several years, despite your best attempts to ignore the language. Yes, you. The language hasn’t changed, but the tools, practices, runtimes, and general body of knowledge...
A friend recently had to replace some electrical outlets in her house because they stopped functioning. There was so much corrosion built up between the aluminum wiring and the outlet contacts that the outlets quit working (which is much better than the...
When my jQuery code doesn’t work, it usually means I’ve done something terribly wrong with my selectors. Thus, my first rule of debugging code that uses jQuery: Make sure the selector is actually selecting what you want selected. I can liberally apply...
Spark is a view engine for the ASP.NET MVC and Castle Monorail frameworks. I’ve been wanting to try this creation by Louis DeJardin for some time, but ScottW pushed me over the edge with “If you are using ASP.Net MVC, you owe yourself to spend some time...
Phil and Scott (and the other Scott) announced the open source Nerddinner.com project and their free ASP.NET MVC eBook today. Actually, the free eBook is a single chapter of 185 pages, which is at least 50 pages longer than any chapter in Tolstoy’s...
Recent talk centered on software quality got me thinking of “never events”. The “never events” in health care are defined by the National Quality Forum to identity serious problems in the quality of a health care facility. A “never event” has to...