I am looking at building the login/registration part of a website (ASP.NET) and would like to see some example code or instructions on how to do this properly. For example, how to correctly use cookies and how to encrypt what is stored in the cookie to ensure the session persists until they logout/timeout.
I do not want to use the builtin ASP.NET Membership/Provider stuff as it looks painful to use and not very flexible. Please do not answer with 'This is how easy the ASP.NET Membership/Providre stuff is to use, just check this out and you will use it!' as I don't want to use it!
Don't get me wrong, I'm just wondering what exactly do you find painful and not flexible about the ASP.NET providers? I've used them a lot and I find them very flexible. I've even written some custom providers which is a straight forward process.
If you don't want to use ASP.NET providers, what are your exact requirements? I might help you out if I understand a bit better what you are trying to achieve.
Michael
Related
I have an Administrator that needs a dynamic form generator with layout capabilities on an ASP.NET page so that they can add, edit and change layout of questions that will be filled out by users whose responses will be saved into the database dynamically. The format is very important as there will be an offline piece that will be generated using Adobe Acrobat and both forms need to be very similar in format. The online portion also needs to be fully printable so that the end user can keep a copy for there personal records. Does anyone know of any ASP.NET controls, free or otherwise, that I could use to complete this functionality? Or what would be the best technology to solve this problem?
Not sure I see a question. This is more of my opinion of what you should do:
Im working on something similar. My form generator had a LOT of complicated fields and data to handle and I decided to go with silverlight. I very happy now, despite the learning curve, and the madness async api, because it would have just been hairy to do it with asp.net, pure asp.net with postbacks would just be bad UX and then putting ajax in between would've just been scary.
If you have great Ajax/asp.net experience go with it, but if not, Id suggest silverlight. I got up to speed pretty quick.
Hi I have to do a small CMS application in MS ASP.NET using WebForms.
I do everything on my own: front-end and back-end and Data Base schema.
Now that I want to develop the site, I wonder if I should start from front-end first, or back-end.
Considering this is a small project, could you guys give me a list of steps I do better following to help to determinate what is the best order for developing my application?
Thanks once again for your time.
You'll develop all tiers as you go most of the time
For some page you may first create database schema and fill it up with some dummy data and than work your way up.
For others you may start with a page itself and then write functionality that's needed to get it working. Especially when this page hasn't been envisioned enough. This is not bad nor good. It's just the way development tends to be.
Some considerations
Follow agile development
Write down some requirements in a form of user stories (and keep track of them), that don't give any info about page, data etc. Just something like As a user I would like to have primary navigation on my page. This kind of a story will permit later changes to code/pages without the story becoming invalid.
Don't haste into something fully functional at first. Don't over-engineer your code. Because you'll end up doing changes later = follow YAGNI. For instance don't fully design your DB at first. Do just as much as you need per story being developed. But do think of future things that you'll have to integrate into existing codebase.
Refactor existing code right away when you see something should be changed.
If you have someone to test your code, let them do it. Don't develop next stories before existing bugs have been fully resolved. You'll be grateful for this later.
If your code is semi-complex I suggest you write unit tests, so future code changes won't break existing functionality.
Most of all: learn as you go and change existing code while doing so. Since you're learning these technologies I suggest you stick to simplicity at first. You'll add more complex things when needed. Some of them won't get done at all. So in the end youl realise YIDNI (yep, I didn't need it).
I usually write out what my requirements are first, if I need to use a database, I create that first, always. After my database I start working on front end that connects and uses my already created database.
I worry about the front-end last, can you can always change that pretty easily
I would say that in many systems, the back-end is there to support what is needed for the front-end to work. If you don't know what the front-end needs, there is little chance of successfully designing the back-end. So I'd start off with putting at least a rough front-end in place first (if even just a paper prototype).
I tend to approach all of my projects with a back-to-front approach for one simple reason - testability. Writing solid tests against a back-end early will will make it easier to work on the other tiers progressively. It also, as "bonus" helps to keep business logic out of places it does not belong.
I find it easier to develop the logic and back-end first, so that I get that right, then apply the interface to it. This way you avoid writing functionality based on what you think you need from the front end.
It is important to get a good scope of what you want to do/tackle, and try to implement that in the back-end first. Then wrap it in a nice interface!
please introduce some form maker(page maker) for asp.net.
like Iron speed.
that enable us to generate form or user control from database tables.
thanks all.
I suggest also this one
http://www.hkvstore.com/aspnetmaker/
Try Asp.Net Dynamic Data
There are tutorial videos at the link provided.
It's quick, simple, powerful, and easy to customize once you learn how it works. (And provided you understand ASP.NET in general.
And it's free.
i know vb.net, but have had no experience at all with web programming. i need to make a web app that can run in a browser where there is a board game and pieces that you can move around. can someone help me get started? are there any examples in asp.net?
i need something like this:
http://www.hallofbrightcarvings.com/game/grid
i don't know what language this is built in, but i would much prefer vb.net. i would like the pieces to be pictures instead of text. please help get started.
I have a very basic example of moving pieces around a grid written in javascript.
You can see it in action here and if you take a look at the source you can see it's done with jquery mostly. Feel free to take a prod around, I haven't updated that version in a long time but hopefully you might find it useful.
I think ASP.NET can do very little for you according to what you described. What you need is either Flash or Javascript skills.
Let's decompose this, you need two things if you want to make the whole thing yourself
Client Side: Flash, SilverLight, JAVA
Server Side:PHP, ASP.net, Java
As you know vb.net and want to work with asp.net, so I recommand to use Silverlight.
How complex can this be?
Depends on what you want to build, if you want to build a Mafia war games, then you'll need to work the user interface and it'll be very hard. Also the server side will be important as you need to handle registration and relation between different players.
If you specify more your question, you could get better answers.
The example you cited above is fully client-side, which means the code all sits on the browser and the server doesn't do anything to enable the grid. So if you did a "Save As" of that page on your computer, you could run it offline.
You should use the view source functionality of your browser on the page you cited, and look at how it's built. It's done using HTML, CSS and javascript. Use w3schools to get yourself started on those three matters.
If you really need to code it using vb.net, I don't know of any way that allows drag-and-drop for web forms. I'd be interested to know though. Ajax and .net drag-and-drop should be keywords for you to look into.
To do this on the web, you'd probably want to divide the project into two components: Client-side and server-side.
On the server-side, you'll want to use language like PHP, Python or ASP.NET. I think ASP.NET has some way to use VB.NET, so that would be a good choice for you to minimize the number of new things you need to learn.
Client-side is going to be the big hurdle. There's basically two different approaches to take here:
HTML+CSS+Javascript, using HTTP callbacks (ie, AJAX) to communicate with the server.
Flash using Flex (I think HTTP calls is probably the easiest way to talk to your server here as well.)
For a game like that, I would think that Flash is probably the best way to go. It will be easier to do graphics and sounds, and it'll run the same in every browser that has Flash support.
I’m new to .net, though I’ve been writing in classic asp for years. I know it’s time to make the change, but I can’t stand how bloated the HTML becomes.
For example, a simple menu using a web.sitemap and adds over 100 lines of JavaScript and HTML. A simple form with server-side validation adds in masses of ugly JavaScript. And a basic table of data using GridView adds in a ViewState that makes my eyes water.
Call me a purest, though I don’t like sending data to the browser unless it’s needed. And I don’t need a form-riddled menu when a simple unordered list of links will suffice.
So, set in my ways, am I destined to forgo the benefits of the Framework entirely by insisting on writing my own, cleaner code for everything? Or am I missing the point?
As a brief aside I’m a big fan of Campaign Monitor, a newsletter distribution company. They’ve written an elegant and comprehensive user-interface in .net without a single ViewState or bizarre .net-mangeled ID reference. Even the Sign Up form on their website (/signup.aspx) is as clean as a whistle. What’s their secret?
I hope I not the only one. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Try ASP.NET MVC or one of the other MVC web frameworks for .NET
If your GridView doesn't need it, then turn ViewState off for it.
Also, please edit your question to say what version of .NET you're using. Some of this gets better, and some does not. You might also want to try VS2010 beta 1, and complain about anything it doesn't fix.
Another idea would be to go on treating ASP.NET like it's classic ASP. Do it exactly the way you're used to, but do it with the idea in mind that there's about 10 years of development work that's gone into solving some of the problems of classic ASP. Once you actually hit one of those problems, find out if ASP.NET has solved it, and how.
For instance, I have a hard time believing you enjoy writing FOR loops to generate table rows. If you get tired of that, learn to use a Repeater control, or a DataList control, or even the old DataGrid control. If you turn ViewState off on those, I think you may find the generated HTML to be acceptable, and you'll find it a lot easier to generate tables and other structures that repeat based on repeating data.
You can opt-out of much of that bloat by not using all the out-of-the-box controls that come with it but I prefer the MVC route that activa suggested
Here is my list:
Keep the use of asp controls to minimum
Turn off Viewstate when it's not need
If you don't want the JavaScript associated with Client Side Validation (with ASP.NET Validation) set the EnableClientScript to False
Use asp:literal instead of asp:Label
Yeah it seems to be that everyone is bashing webforms at the minute for the reasons you have outlined above. HTML heavy Controls, ViewState, no control over ClientIDs all seem to cause an issue with people.
However let is be said that you can use asp.net (webforms) and produce some decent applications.
Control of html is yours through httpModules and httpHandlers and some of the issues mentioned above are fixed in asp.net 4.0
I just listened to a great podcast comparing MVC and webforms. Its in the area you are asking about. Also check out this blogpost by a dotNetNuke regarding the good asp.net code and why people should take a breath before converting everything to mvc.
Having said that I've tried Asp.net MVC and it is awesome. I'd probably look at dotNetNukes code to as its a mature asp.net product.
Also, when you do want to use these newfangled server controls, check out the css friendly control adapters. They clean up much of the bloat.
For client IDs the key thing to remember is to let the framework handle them. If you need to get an element on the client side, remember to emit the control's ClientID property into your script.
I've been using a template system and am very happy with it. Basically write an http handler for .html files and put tokens in the html files that regex could find in one sweep and inject any stuff. (google template c# for more info).
I tried some of the supposedly cool new features of ASP.NET for a little while. I also didn't like most of them. I felt constrained to work within the limitations of the common paradigms Microsoft had dreamed, even though I new how easy it would be to produce the HTML and JavaScript myself to do specifically what I wanted to do without having to learn how to jump through the hoops of so many new Microsoft-specific idiosyncrasies.
Anyway, I stopped using the parts of ASP.NET I didn't like on new code I've been writing lately. When I first started using ASP.NET, nothing in the MSDN documentation jumped out at me about how to avoid such complications, so I posted a couple "Hello, World" at http://www.agalltyr.com/rawaspdotnet.html to help spread the heretical word. I couldn't care less if it's the latest cool technology or the recommended technique. It's a reliable and reasonably efficient tool I can use to do my work.
Oh, and I'm not in the mood to learn ASP.NET MVC either. That's just more idiosyncrasies. Give me a language (C#) and a framework (.NET), and I'll design my own abstraction, thank you.