I have built several ASP.NET web applications in the past but have always struggled to get the application's basic structure in place. Building a framework using a combination of Silverlight/RIA services (or LightSwitch) is quite easy, but this makes your application not accessible through browsers that do not support Silverlight.
Is there any ASP.NET application framework with an HTML UI that provides the basic services that lightswitch provides?
By basic services I mean:
User Management
Themes
Standard way of displaying/editing basic records and master/detail records
see:
Integrating Visual Studio LightSwitch Application Into An Existing Website using IFrames
Check out http://www.evolutility.org/ or http://www.rapidwebdev.org/, both are opensource.
Related
OrchardCMS, Umbraco and DotNetNuke are CMSes in .Net galaxy. They work as stand alone applications well. Suppose I have a requirement that need CMS features in an another ASP.NET MVC application. I do not like to implement CMS again in the application. Rather I like to use current CMSes as a component of application.
Is it possible at all to use for example OrhcardCMS as a component of my MVC application? It is ideal to have relations between CMS and application itself, for example I can load entities from CMS, update them etc.
I know there are integration techniques in .Net. For example ASP.NET Identity integrates with ASP.NET applications in core level, but view (CSHTMLs) must be copied and customized in most cases. Or Hangfire and ELMAH that integrates with an application without need to copy view (cshtml, html, css) to the target application. Indeed it is good to know that integration methods are available regarding plugging CMSes into ASP.NET applications.
I can tell you more about Umbraco as I don't know other CMS as much as this one. There is a whole course / training for those who want to integrate their apps with Umbraco: https://umbraco.com/products-and-support/training/umbraco-application-integration/. So yes, it's possible and it's even suggested way from my perspective to use already done piece of software rather than building the wheel once again.
Umbraco is an ASP.NET MVC application. You can use Umbraco components, backoffice, membership and everything else CMSish delivered out of box and still you're able to write and use your business logic, controllers and everything else what you've created inside your ASP.NET MVC / C# app. Still, it's an ASP.NET app, so you can use anything what you want from the .NET world. We're using ELMAH.io for example to take care of logging and keeping the errors in the cloud. We're also using a ton of 3rd party, both open-source and commercial tools and softwares to do multiple things around our web components. Umbraco is not blocking us from using them or anything else. I like to consider Umbraco as a framework or library helping us to deal with content editing and giving us a massive number of opportunities to offer for our clients or editors.
Speaking for OrchardCMS, there are some questions touching this subject already, see
Reusing Orchard's Core to build another extensibility framework
Extracting a Module from Orchard
If it's possible for you then try to setup Orchard as the base system and move your MVC application in a module. This will be much easier than trying to cut out peaces of Orchard. In return you get amazing possibilites when running Orchard as the underlying framework, e.g. Localization, Modules, Themes, the whole user / role management etc.
OrchardCMS 2 is currently developed towards single components that can be reused in any application but it's far from finished yet.
When creating a new web project in ASP.NET are you better off to use the "ASP.NET empty web application" or the "asp.net web forms application"
I would recommend against even bothering with ASP.Net Web Forms. It was an interesting idea that proved to be unweildy in practical applications. The entire web development industry is moving towards some kind of MVC framework or another whether you're using PHP, Ruby or ASP.Net so you're best off using that.
Of course there are still a lot of ASP.Net Web Forms applications out there and they're likely to exist for some time into the future so there is some benefit to learning the technology but I would avoid it for any new projects.
As per your question if you should use the empty project or not it doesn't really make a difference. If you're just starting out the populated project can give you a basic idea of how the structure works but if you're comfortable enough building it from scratch then go with the empty project.
It depends on what you want to do.
Generally speaking, there are three kinds of ASP.NET application project:
Web Forms - what ASP.NET was originally back in 2001. Its use is discouraged in modern and greenfield applications because it is built-around outdated ideas about how web applications should work.
MVC - The new hotness. Try to use this. StackOverflow is built using this.
Everything else - too many to list, but this generally requires you create an empty project and do everything from scratch using IHttpHandler.
If you're new to ASP.NET I strongly recommend avoiding the two project types you listed as they're both for Web Forms; consider using the "ASP.NET MVC Application" options instead - if you're using VS2008 then you need to download and install the ASP.NET MVC 2 add-on. VS2010 and later come with the MVC templates preinstalled.
You might want to use the Empty Web Application project template if you want to work from scratch using IHttpHandler, but you sound new to this, so I recommend avoiding it.
I have been building a Web Application (ASP.NET, .NET Framework 4, VB, visual studio 2010). To be very brief the application interacts with a database and performs several actions (Insert Delete Select etc..).
I am using several Gridviews, ListBoxes etc and I am not happy with the presentation outcome and the functionality provided by asp.net. In simple words my application looks bad, outdated and unprofessional.
I figured that using Windows Forms that will be incorporated to the ASP app would be a great improvement and solve all of my problems.
I have created a Windows Form Control Library to use the dll created in my app as a user control. I found out that this is not supported in .NET Framework 4 (is this true? or am i doing something wrong?).
Is there any way to make my application have the 'look and feel' of a windows application?
Please note that it is has to be a web app and the clients should not have to download any other application to interact with the server.
Have you checked out the third party controls from other vendors?
I currently use them for rapid development.
http://www.telerik.com/
http://www.infragistics.com/
http://www.devexpress.com/
Anyhow all controls in .net you can change there look and feel using plain CSS.
Try using Silverlight 4, it has all that you need. What u are trying to do is traditional ASP.NET and that's as good as it can get coz its all server side code, but with Silverlight things are totally different, its all client side with specific server interactions. Have a look at the tutorials about how to use Silverlight and WCF RIA services to do what you are trying to do.
Try this link: WCF RIA services and Silverlight
Edit: Silverlight is designed to create stunning web GUIs. Just in case you were wondering what the heck it is.. :)
In Visual Studio 2010 there is a handy tool for managing users for my Silverlight Business Application. How do I do this with my deployed application?
Good question, I'm surprised there isn't a built-in, pre-canned solution :)
There's an option here: http://mywsat.codeplex.com/
Related questions:
is it possible to use iis 7 to manage users when using forms authentication with asp.net
User management in Silverlight, create custom UI or use ASP.NET website administration tool?
Sorry to say, but you will have to write user management code in your app.
You might find this article interesting.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210306174425/https://www.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/052307-1.aspx
I'm trying to upgrade my existing web forms application to upcoming framework and rewriting couple of workflow as per the new business requirements. I want to introduce TDD based development in this project but after some investigation found that ASP.NET MVC will not help me as my web existing application is using lots of Infragistics UltraWebGrid controls for grouping, paging, column moving etc and there is no good alternative grids in ASP.NET MVC world. I also need to support blackberry in this release. So, am planning to use both MVP for desktop client and MVC for blackberry client in same project.
I would like to know if someone has done something similar in their project and links to any good open source asp.net applicaton using MVP pattern. I dont want to use WCSF as it is too heavy weight. I saw their MVPBundle sample application but it lacks use of modern tools like IoC (Unity or StructureMap), Mocking framework etc.
Regards,
Sunil
The latest incarnation of Nerd Dinner has mobile support in an ASP.NET MVC app.
I'm not sure about the JS support on a black-berry but there are quite a few grid/repeater type controls and mechanisms available using either jQuery or the forthcoming ASP.NET AJAX 4 templating controls.