Guys i am looking for some awesome tips for developing a page which allows users to search for stuff from the db with the view restricted to only certain columns and the data grouped by and sorted by certain columns..
the source in this case is pretty easy to figure out which is a class which retrieves the search results...kapish..
the view in this case is giving me nightmares as i do not want to write that disgusting piece of code which many asp guys are seemingly used to...overriding row created and data bound of gridview etc etc.... i am thinking of simply rendering a html table itself with the necessary preprocessing applied at the datatable level(group by, sortby etc etc on the in memory object retrieved from the paged results)
i need to know if my thought process so far is right or is there a cleaner way of doing the whole thing in asp.net/asp.net mvc etc etc
Congratulations for not wanting to write "disgusting piece of code"... I spent a few years doing just that and the whole overriding row created / bound / etc. thing is a nightmare.
Your source is a class - great. My preferred method would be to go down the jQuery route, use the jqGrid and write an MVC controller that uses your custom class. Or you could dynamically generate your own HTML table but if you have a lot of data I would save yourself the time and explore jqGrid instead. It doesn't have to be MVC - you could embed it into a standard asp.net website, it's just that the MVC approach makes life easier if you have to expand your application to do more things.
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I am trying to figure out if it is possible to create ASP.Net web pages dynamically. Here is my scenario: I am dynamically creating a huge amount of controls to track data entry that are split up into sections. These sections will play off one another in the sense that if I say I have 5 sections it will create subsections each with the same number of controls and options but divided into groups. This is for tracking the law so it needs to be diverse, dynamic and it obviously has alot of options as the law does. How might one handle something where you have a ton of controls on a page but you want to easily walk the user through the data entry process without confusing them? Our thoughts at this point are as you create the subsections it creates a dynamic webpage that has the subsection controls within it. Or do we need to look to alternative methods - We also thought about hiding the section information doing a display: none with the CSS for each section as you go through the data entry process hiding the controls you are no longer using. how is this possible using ASP.Net with VB? Thanks!
If i understand you want to use client language to manage your controls. May be it's easier to create controls in post back function using vb with viewstate enabled.
I am currently evaluating ASP.NET MVC as a possible technology for a web project. As I am a beginner to ASP.NET MVC I need a bit of advice.
We currently have an ASP.NET system that renders grids from data that is retrieved from a database using OLE DB and data tables. The data is rendered on a web page using a grid view that uses the columns from the database. The system is built in a generic way and driven from the database so that we do not have to write a custom page to display and render each table in the database. We effectively have one ASP.NET page that is used to render and edit different tables in the database.
We are looking at rewriting the system using ASP.NET MVC. Is it possible to have generic models, controllers and viewers in ASP.NET MVC that use dictionaries or lists instead of having separate classes for each table in a database?
On the controller side I have seen the following article to convert a data table to an IEnumerable:
Convert DataTable to IEnumerable
However, I am not sure whether the same can be achieved on the model and viewer side.
Is the whole idea of generic models, controllers and views perhaps contrary to the idea of ASP.NET MVC?
Regards
Lucas
First, you don't need custom models for views or controllers if you know you will be using something generic.
Second, you can write editor/display templates that can work on generic data and you can use them in your views.
We are looking at rewriting the system using ASP.NET MVC. Is it possible to have generic models, controllers and viewers in ASP.NET MVC that use dictionaries or lists instead of having separate classes for each table in a database
Generic solutions are very often a excellent recipe for maintenance nightmare. They work well until you have to extend the application. In my experience you do not switch from the generic solution when you want something extra, but do a small workaround. Next time you'll add another small workaround. And after a year you do not want to touch that application again.
If that's not the case for you, congratulations! You can just use a DataTable as your model in the view.
At the moment we have a solution which is Web forms ASP.Net 4.0. We do a number of things such as using web methods and services either calling them using the standard web forms way or sometimes to reduce the footprint directly calling them with jQuery ajax posts and gets.
We are looking to improve the way we work but we have heavy constricts regarding how the solution is at the moment and not being able to completely rewrite it.
Updating the page using Ajaxs for data, forms and for example pulling "the next 20" items and displaying them on the page it what I would like to heavily stream line.
Using template's due as PURE and jQuery Templates is fantastic way to produce fast calls back and forth between the servers but results in having two copies of the html. (the template for the jQuery and the code in the actual first render of the page)
We have thought about possible producing a empty template and then always populating it via json data we post down to the server but I feel this isn't how things should be done...
can anyone reckoned the best way we can do this without having two copies of our 'template' (e.g. a row of a table)
You mean you have a template in asp and the same template in javascript, but you'd rather just have 1 or the other?
I think that is really subjective. It is always different based on use case. That being said I'd do it by modifying my views and templates. My views (non-js) would simply have containers for that dynamic content. In other words I'd never load the dynamic portions of content into the views initially. Rather, on page load I would simply load up the template and the json that fills it in.
If you think about it that's 2 more requests, but it makes your life easier. The user also is able to see something on the page sooner.
This is one of those questions that really depends on what you are doing. There are trade-offs to be analyzed with every solution.
Let's say I'm on a list page and I
page to, say, page 10. Then I select
a record on that page and redirect to detail
page. After that, I click on the edit
to redirect to the edit page.
After I update the record I'm redirected back to
the detail page. I, then, press back
to go back list to continue my browsing from
where I left off. The key here is
where I left off in the list which is
page 10.
What is the best way to handle this?
Initially, I put a hidden field called page number in each of the webforms and pass it along with the querystring back and forth. Seemed like a lot or a bit redundant checking the querystring on each page and passing it.
I was wondering if there are some other ways. for instance, I've been reading about a separation between the UI and the presentation layer is a good idea (for larger scale apps). To me I understand it as all click handler events will yield control over to the presentation layer which is just a plain class?
Is this correct? Also, is the presentation layer suppose to implement something particular? I know this could probably be saved in session but could someone humor me and show me how to use a presentation layer to handle this (I know it would be overkill but is it possible?)
I don't think there is THE best way. Everything depends of what you achieve to do, ie. the requirements of the whole project.
After all, according to the description, I don't even understand why are you having three pages to do a single thing. By the way, ASP.NET data controls handle mostly everything for you, so you don't even have to ask yourself how to do this (except if you have serious reasons to avoid ASP.NET controls).
For example, a simple <asp:ListView /> will let you list items page per page and show details when a single item is selected. Edition of an element is also quite easy.
What you are asking for is well... large and could span multiple blog posts to give a complete understanding of UI Design Patterns.
I have a small example of MVP with Asp.Net here: What is the best way to reuse pages from one website in another?
However, it is not exhaustive. If you really want information on this you should do some looking into a framework such as WebForms MVP, or ASP.Net MVC.
Check out ASP.NET MVC. It is a framework which goes on top of ASP.NET to do the separation between the presentation layer and business layer.
For simplicity, what you are describing is a very good example of the perfect place to use Asp.Net Dynamic Data.
It's incredibly easy and powerful, and easy to modify once you dig into it a bit. I'd start with the videos here: http://www.asp.net/dynamicdata
I've been using this more and more on every project, for at least the simple CRUD portion of it. I really can't express how much I love this tool now that I'm used to it.
Coming from a desktop client background, with no real data-driven web design experience, I am studying ASP.NET UI design to determine the best UI pattern for Parent/Children data.
I always tend to experiment with Parent/Child presentation when learning a new UI platform, so that is where I have started here. Thinking I should use ASP.NET 2.0, I am studying the various ways of architecting a UI form which contains a master list of Parent records, and then showing the related children records in a second grid on the page when you click on a parent. Eventually, even the child records are parents to other children, so I'll need to deal with that also.
Think: Customers with Open Orders / Open Orders for Selected Customer / Line Items on Selected Open Order... like this screen where I built the same thing in WPF: http://www.twitpic.com/26w26
Some of techniques I've seen simply creates a plain old-shcool table of href links for the parents, with some method call to query the children based on the selected parent, while some techniques I've seen use the ASP.NET 2.0 data controls to work all this out. Are the ASP.NET 2.0 data controls cheating? Do real developers use these out-of-the box controls, or do they output their own HTML so they can have more control?
Also, it seems like ASP.NET MVC is all the rage right now, so I though I should consider that. When I looked at a few intro's about it, it seems to take a step back in time as it looks like you have to manually create much the HTML to present lists and datagrids, rather than being able to use the ASP.NET 2.0 controls.
I'm kinda lost as to where to spend my energy.
I won't comment on the Parent/Child portion of what you're asking, but rather on the WebForms vs ASP.NET MVC you asked about at the end.
I found developing using WebForms highly annoying. Every time I wanted to do something out of the "norm" I had to fight with the framework to get it to work the way I wanted.
ASP.NET MVC relieves you of these burdens greatly. However, it does so at the expense of having all kinds of cool components you can use out of the box. So yes, there is more hand-coding of the HTML, but ultimately that's what's going to make developing your pages a lot more pleasant.
Coming back to this question 6 months after I asked it, now that I've gained some experience with ASP.Net webforms, I'm going to answer my own question. Using the actual Asp.net controls like ListView and GridView is not really all that hard, and I can see that it is indeed a common practice to use them on forms and not feel like you a cheating. Sure MVC forces you to lower level html coding, but using Asp.Net controls on WebForms app is fine and actually not nearly as hard as I was affraid it would be.