I'm not sure how to test this question. I have an ASP.NET page for which performance is a big issue. At the same time, most of the content is static. In fact, all of the content is static at the moment. The content resides within a file extension of .aspx.
I am considering adding some functionality that would require dynamic code on the server side.
My question is, if a .aspx page does not contain any server-side code or runat="server" attributes, does anything .NET related get started? Alternatively, if a single line of server code were added to a Page_Load event handler, would this introduce a bunch of overhead like starting up the .NET runtime and such? How big of a performance penalty is it to add server code?
Thank you,
If you have a .Net application pool (and if you're serving .aspx pages, you do), the ASP.Net processor has to start up and compile the app before the first request to your page by any user. So any startup code you're worried about is already running.
If you already has .aspx pages, then you are already executing ASP .NET, and the pages are getting compiled in the background.
In that case, there will be no performance penalty in adding code, other than executing the code in question, of course.
Why don't you try it and benchmark it? An aspx page with "static" content will still get compiled. If performance is an issue, you can consider caching if appropriate.
Related
I have an asp.net project, and I load a base aspx page to display to the user. Then I ajax in the results of an ascx component and inject it via innerHTML in javascript.
I have noticed that the ascx component loads slowly on the first page load, but instantly thereafter. This is really cool, but I do not understand how this can be cached, as the contents are generated by making several db calls.
Does the server send some kind of hash to compare the contents to, to see if it changed on the server or not? Is this a browser thing or an asp.net thing?
What you are experiencing is most likely just in time compiling and has very little to do with the user control itself.
Watch the performance monitor counters for .net. This will tell you a lot about what's going on.
Can you use Firebug/IE developer console/etc. to determine the response code? If you can check the headers, you should be able to see a date that indicates either a cache time or a last modified date. I poked through the MS ASP.NET Ajax documentation, but couldn't find any references to default caching times or cache modification.
However, jQuery's ajax function uses an ifModified property which (according to the documentation) checks the Last-Modified header to determine whether or not it should retrieve the results. I'd imagine that the ASP.NET Ajax calls work in a similar fashion. It may not be prudent for your current project, but jQuery makes it very easy to set caching options.
I am wondering are there any standard mechanisms available to protect the asp.net asp code in the client browser ? I found some references to Windows script encoders. Question is, are these script encoders encodes both aspx and code behind source ? If aspx is encoded with the Windows script encoders then how client browsers can decode it? Are they aware of the encoding algorithms ?
Or can we control the client browsers ( IE, Firefox, Chrome etc) to disable the view source option in the Tasks Menu when web site a loaded in them?
Any pointers will be appreciated.
The HTML code generated on a webpage is by definition public. It has to be accessible to the browser for it to be able to render the page properly. You will not find a reliable solution to hide the view source option in browsers.
To explain the basics a little bit :
When you create a page, you write markup in your .aspx file and some c# source code in the .aspx.cs file. The c# code is the server side code, which means that it is executed on the server (as opposed to, say, javascript which is executed directly in the client's browser -- client side).
When a page request is executed, the ASP.NET engine executes the server side code, and also executes the asp tags that you wrote in the .aspx page (for example : <asp:Button runat='server'... /> . It then spits out HTML code (this is a very simplified version of what actually happens).
The client's browser only ever gets the HTML (and it will not see the C# code nor any of asp markup code which is used to generate your page).
As I said before, the HTML generated is, and will always be public. There is nothing you can do to reliably hide it.
Server-side code (ie. code in code-behind pages, controllers, helpers, <% code nuggets %>, etc) will of course never be visible to a web client.
Your aspx or view pages (ie. .aspx, .cshtml, .vbhtml) files will also not be visible to web clients unless you have a signficiant security vulnerability, but the HTML generated by said files will be, along with any outputted or referenced JavaScript.
If the client couldn't read the HTML or JavaScript, how would the web browser be able to parse it?
Here's a question about obfuscating JavaScript, which will at least hinder but not completely remove a user's ability to view your source: How can I obfuscate (protect) JavaScript?
Similarly, one could theoretically obfuscate outputted HTML as well, but it could also be likely be reversed with some work.
It is impossible for the user to see your server-side (C#) source.
It is impossible to stop the user from seeing your client-side (HTML & Javascript) source.
In terms of javascript - the only thing you can do is obfuscate it to an extent that makes it worthless for someone to try to understand.
None of the code behind code is sent down to the client, only the rendered HTML.
there is no way to completely remove the ability for a client to view the source of your HTML. The only thing you can do is to obfuscate your HTML to make it harder for them to tell what they're looking at.
There are many libraries out there for obfuscating HTML in .net if you do a google search.
I'm confused really, but...
If you are on about the ASP.NET markup, you need not worry as any request to an ASP.NET page will cause the page to be compiled (if it hasn't already been, or isn't cached) which renders the page content as HTML.
If you are worried about people navigating to your code behind (e.g. mysite.com/SomePage.aspx.cs), you need not worry, as ASP.NET will not serve that content [unless the standard configuration has been changed].
If you are worried about people accessing your code through FTP, then I would suggest you change your compilation method and not deploy the source.
Am I missing anything?
I've been doing the html and css for a site, sending it off to a guy to implement in a web server. I get a call from the designer freaking out about the progress, saying the clients aren't happy. He wants me to personally integrate my css with what's on the site. The site is done in ASP.net, time is short, and I'm a little in over my head. I have an understanding of how php works, but have never worked extensively with it.
Looking at the stuff on the ftp, I can't even find equivalent of the index.html file (I know that when I go to the site itself, there is nothing after the base url, i.e., www.site.com/ brings me to the homepage.)
Can anyone give me a few tips or links as to what I am to do with this, or where to even being navigating this site?
EDIT: It's -not- a .Net Web Application, from the looks of it.
ASP.Net can be run in a compiled or a scripted environment. It is important to understand which environment your client has. If it is completely scripted, then you are likely looking for the default.aspx file and it's contents. If it is a compiled environment, you may be in for a ride. A compiled site may incorporate "master pages" as a templating engine, and then you'll need to apply your html/css modifications in several places.
You should start with the default.aspx page if there is one. Look for master page directives (it'll be named something like masterpage.master). If there isn't one, then you're in luck you'll just need to implement your changes on a page by page basis. The aspx page will be in a templated xml format so avoid touching tags that involve touching
If you are making changes to divs and structures of that nature, you may need to modify the CssClass attribute of the controls. I would recommend however that you make a back up, give it a shot, and under no circumstances attempt to do something that you aren't really ready to do. You will only anger the client and ruin your rep. It may actually be prudent to contact an actual ASP.Net developer to analyze the files separately and determine what you need to do.
I suggest that you read the Wikipedia article about ASP.NET to get familiarized with it as it summarizes the basic building structures.
Then, just to get you started: take a look at the more recent ASP.NET MVC (Model-View-Controller) paradigm. There's also development in what is called ASP.NET WebForms.
For example: when you go to www.site.com/ (known as friendly URLs) it may be redirecting you to an action method inside a controller. It's called routing. There's also URL rewrite.
In the MVC world a Controller can send/redirect the user to a specific View/Page.
A View (.aspx form/page) that contais HTML markup and CSS on the server side is basically an HTML page (.htm) page that'll be rendered on the client side.
Around 90% of the pages for our websites have no .Net code embedded in them yet are published as .aspx files. I want these to render as fast as possible so I'm removing as much as I can.
Does the .Net page directive have an impact on performance? I am thinking about two factors; the page speed for each GET and what happens when the file changes. The CMS system re-creates each page daily and I'm wondering if this triggers the ASP.Net compilation process.
If your pages have no .NET code and rendering speed is your goal, you may wish to consider changing the extension to .html. Any .aspx page will be passed to the .NET ISAPI filter by IIS and go through the entire chain of HttpModules, then will be handled by the Page HttpHandler. Using a .html extension would trigger IIS to process the request using the Static Resource ISAPI filter, which has a much shorter pipeline and is tuned for resources that run no code.
The <%# Page %> directive is not required. Without it, the default values for Language and other stuff will be assumed.
By changing a .aspx file, it'll be recompiled (it doesn't recompile the whole app though):
Any changes to a dynamically compiled file will automatically invalidate the file's cached compiled assembly and trigger recompilation of all affected resources. The next time a request to the code is made, ASP.NET recognizes that the code has changed and recompiles the affected resources of the Web application. This system enables you to quickly develop applications with a minimum of compilation processing overhead. (Note that depending on the change to the resources, the result can range from recompiling a single page to recompiling the whole Web site.)
Ok, put them in - just to be sure.
.NET pages are ALL compiled, page directive or not. nothing changes. Post compilation, they are as fast as it goes, as they turn into a class (type loaded once) that just executes.
Note that the post by Mehrdad Afshari is factually wrong (sadly I can not tag it). Any page change triggers a complete recompile AND restart of the appdomain. Acutally any FILE change does so, as long as it is outside App_Data and ASP.NET can see it (i.e. non-hidden flag on the directory / file).
My asp.net 2.0 web site generates text files. Sometimes these files can get quite large. Under most cases the files are presented to the user, and approved without modification. However there are times when the end-user has to make changes to these files and submit the changed version back to the system.
Currently, when a file needs to be changed, I load the text into a textbox control, and I rewrite the file on postback. However I'm running into problems with OutOfMemory exceptions, invalid viewstate, etc.... These problems only occur when the file generated is large.
I beginning to think that I need another strategy for editing these files, but I'm at a loss as to which direction to take. Is there an ACTIVEX control that would serve me better? Should I abandon server side controls for this interaction and just deal with plain vanilla http posts?
Thanks in advance.
I am not sure about an activeX control, but you could use Silverlight. Thsi would allow you to stream the file to th Silverlight control, and then it could be edited on the clints machine, and when they are done, the chnages are sent back and stored by the server.
However, you will need to have .Net 3.5 on the server and make some changes to the web.config inorder to build against the 3.5 framework. If this is not acceptable, but you like the idea of doing stuff on the client side, you can also try using flash.
One suggestion to consider would be an ajax call to a pagemethod that way you could just post the text file to the server without posting the whole page and the associated viewstate.
Can you break up the text files into sections and allow the users to submit changes one section at a time?