you must have seen widgets like code which people place inside their HTML and it starts showing a small widget in there, how we can we do it in ASP.net, for example if i want to show some specific data of my site to anywhere some specific code is placed, how can i generate that embeddable code that can start showing my specific block of data to anywhere from any site?
Here are a few methods used by various people to embed a snippet of content on an external website.
1) An iframe!
iframe's can be a right old pest, but are quite good at displaying a bit of external content. They have been added back into the HTML standards in the HTML 5 draft specification, so you should get futureproof support for them in the future.
<iframe src="http://www.widget-address.com/Widgets/SomeWidget/" title="Some Widget"></iframe>
You can style your iframe (give it a width and height) and all that jazz.
2) External Image
This is largely used by advertising engines. You pop an image on the page and the image is dynamically created to display some advert - each time it appears it is different. This isn't great if you want information to be screen-readable (i.e. accessible).
<img src="http://www.widget-addrees.com/Widgets/SomeWidget.jpg" alt="Some Widget">
3) Server Side API
You could make an API available so people can call a "service" on your site that supplies them with the information for the widget. For example, their ASP.NET code or PHP code (or whatever language) calls http://www.widget-address.com/Widgets/WidgetService/ and it returns some data that they can format and display on their page. This would give you the benefit of inline HTML, which is the most accessible and valid way of displaying the data.
There are lots of other methods, so if you don't fancy one of these, I'm sure more suggestions will flood in - including (be careful...) JavaScript / AJAX.
I'm not quite sure I understand the question, so I'm sorry if I'm way off here. But I guess you are using the webforms framework for asp.net? If you are there is something called server controls. Those can be used to create widgets like calenders for example (that is already included in the framework, so no need to build it again).
If you are looking for code block, similar to <?php [[code]] ?> in php (if you have used that), then the answer is <% %>. Those are code blocks in the .net world. If you want to write something out you use Response.Write("string to write"); inside the code block. Or you can use the faster way: <%="string to write"%> that will render the same think (string to write).
If you are using the webforms framework you can also take advantage of the built in server controls in the framework. You can read more about the framework here or simply google asp.net webforms.
Related
I am using a Repeater web part in Kentico to pick out pages from the content tree, to generate nicely repeatable snippets of structured HTML, based on an ASCX transformation. (No surprises here - its been working great!).
However, a new requirement landed whereby alongside the existing HTML structure mentioned above, each repeated item must also have an area where we can add any amount of additional content; based on other web parts.
I have previously written a few "layout" type web parts; implementing CMSAbstractLayoutWebPart, as described here, which has allowed me to generate a repeating amount of web part zones, so I feel like I'm half way there. The issue with that though is that as it stands, I don't seem to be able to make use of the great power and flexibility of the transformations on the page type (which I really think I need to do, and seems like it should be possible..).
I thought I may be able to specify the WebPartZone control in the transformation markup directly, like in the following:
<%# Register Src="~/CMSInlineControls/WebPartZone.ascx" TagName="CMSWebPartZone" TagPrefix="cms" %>
<cms:CMSWebPartZone ZoneID="ZoneIDHere" runat="server" />
<div>
<h3><%# Eval("Heading") %></h3>
<p><%# Eval("Summary") %></p>
</div>
But the design view doesn't seem to pick up the web part zone; so I'm assuming the page lifecycle may not allow me to do this as I'd hoped.
So what I would like to know is:
Is it possible to include WebPartZone control in a transformation such that I can then bring in new web parts in Design view?
If not, what is the recommended way to go about this? (If a custom web part is the way to go, I'd like to clone the Repeater web part in the first instance, as many of its existing properties will be needed - but presumably this must still inherit from CMSAbstractLayoutWebPart?
Thanks!
Update
Good point about the editor's experience; I would definitely like to keep this as consistent as possible. The issue for me is that the requirements that drive my data structures are not always fully understood - and are certainly subject to change. Also, they are liable to vary (albeit subtly) across different products. So I've been trying to keep templates and page types more or less the same across the board, and push out the differences into page properties that drive web part config through macros. So given that the transformation approach won't work, I expect a custom web part is the right fit for me.
I shall post my findings!
I think adding a web part zone into transformation is not a right direction as web part zone should be a part of page template (not transformation) in order to utilize it.
I'd probably try to organize my content so each item you currently showing in the repeater has any number of child pages (potentially of a different type) and use something like hierarchical viewer in order to present all of them on the page. It allows using different transformation based on either page type or node level. Another advantage of this approach is that you keep editors experience consistent.
In the end, I was able to use transformation markup to specify the generation of web part zones. I went down the route of creating a custom web part that inherits from CMSAbstractLayoutWebPart, rather than using CMSRepeater web part or similar...
Here's a breakdown of things I needed to do this:
Gave the custom layout-type web part some properties with which to query the content tree, and supply them to a TreeProvider.SelectNodes() method in the web part code once it has initialised (by overriding the OnInit() method)
Gave the web part a TransformationName property so that the raw markup can be retrieved using TransformationInfoProvider.GetTransformation(this.TransformationName)
Used the markup above and resolved macros within it using each node from the node query
Example of macro resolution code (HTML transformations with macros)
protected virtual string ResolveNode(TreeNode node)
{
var resolver = this.ContextResolver.CreateChild();
resolver.AddAnonymousSourceData(node);
return resolver.ResolveMacros(rawTransformationMarkup);
}
Then I go looking for placeholder text in the transformation markup and use the methods available in the CMSAbstractLayoutWebPart parent class(es), as detailed here, to Append() the resolved markup and also call AddZone() as necessary to tap into the response string builder
Summary: The great functionality of the API allowed me to completely avoid the use of any repeater controls. I could generate web part zones as part of the layout web part usual layout generation process.
It would be nice if I could figure out how to resolve the expressions in SCRIPT tags in ASCX transformations to complete the story, but by using HTML transformations I can use the above to accomplish what I need.
I have been tasked with creating a small website using SharePoint 2010 Site Pages via SharePoint Designer. I am bringing over my favorite html template, which loads and runs as expected (mostly), but I quickly ran into the following problem.
I typically use PHP to inject certain data into my page by reading directly from a local file. I have no experience with ASP, which appears to be the only method to accomplish this. I have searched the docs and so many sites but haven't found a clear-cut way to do this, and now my head is spinning. Can anyone help me with a simple process for reading a file into the middle of my html file as it gets served?
For example:
<html>
<body>
Here's my title
<inject file contents here>
Here's my footer
</body>
</html>
Thanks all, any help will be much appreciated!
You cannot do this out of the box. You will have to create a customised solution to do this, by implementing a custom controls for instance.
When you start using Sharepoint you need to change your mindset about whatever you used before. Believe me you don't want to pick a fight with Sharepoint, because the beast will win.
back to your problem I think you should be looking at Reusable Content.
Here is a description about it:
http://en.share-gate.com/blog/sharepoint-reusable-content-a-forgotten-beauty
Basically you have a list where you manage all your reusable content bits (sort of like your files).
And then in the Rich text editor for the page content you can then insert a snippet that inject your reusable content.
if the content changes all the places you are using the reusable content bits will also change.
So this behaviour is pretty much the same you get if using a file. Except it's the SharePoint Way.
Good luck
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.
I'm feeling a bit lost with my question about HTML5 code generation, and despite having put some efforts into my research I don't really feel much wiser.
I use VS2010 for the creation of ASP.NET pages, and I do know that there is an (unofficial) "Web Standards Update" for VS2010 SP1. Using this update I can change the settings of the "Target Schema for Validation" in the ASPX editor window to HTML5. The new elements / tags and semantics are then available via Intellisense, and I can nicely code away manually using all the fancy new stuff.
What I don't understand is how to get something like the ASP.NET controls to generate HTML5 code (where it makes sense). Is this at all possible or am I completely going in the wrong direction here? I would have expected that I do not have to "hand code" HTML5 as long as I use the existing controls (which tend to generate a lot of JavaScript in the background when the page is delivered to the client's browser).
Thanks in advance for a clarifying answer
G.
Some controls generate slightly different dialects of HTML based on the particular User-Agent. However, not all of them know about HTML 5 yet, and there's no specific property to enable HTML 5 generation, just as there isn't a property to enable other dialects of HTML.
If you want to generate HTML 5, you can do one of three things:
Create a new control that overrides the existing one, and either use it directly or replace the original with it everywhere in your app with tag mapping
Create a control adapter and modify the control's output as it's generated
Create a custom control
The controls you are referring in ASP.NET are what is commonly known as "webforms". They are basically server side controls that generates the javascript code needed to postback the data to the server, mantain the state of the controls between postbacks, and stuff like that. As you said, those controls generate too much code and a excessive number of roundtrips to the server, so it is not very recommended to use webforms.
HTML5 is mainly client side, so it has very little to do with the webforms server controls. It's a different approach than the old ASP.NET webforms. Because of this, ASP.NET is including on its newer versions the MVC framework, the razor engine, JQuery and another javascriprt libraries. MVC includes some helper classes and templates that helps you generating the client code, and many other features to support HTML5 enabled webs. So, I would recommend to start reading about it.
Anyway, now that jquery is fully integrated in Visual Studio, javascript coding is not so difficult.
Yes that sounds backwards. I want to create an area or frame in my Silverlight app to host another page from my site. I've seen it done before but I can't seem to find any examples.
This way I can control the entire page layout using SL but still use existing aspx pages.
thanks
Yes, it can be done and its quite easy to do. I plan on blogging about my HtmlBrowser control and posting the source. The basics are to make sure the Silverlight control is hosted with the isWindowless parameter enabled and then you can at runtime through the HtmlPage class create an IFRAME element and set the src attribute to the HTML page location. The fun part is getting the sizing right, but its not too difficult.
Follow my blog http://craign.net/ over the next couple of days as I'll post my control.
Will frame break out code break out or not when using this technique.