Contents tagged with ASP.NET MVC
ASP.NET MVC Gotcha – String as Model
A very common task in ASP.NET MVC is to return a ViewResult from a controller Action. This is usually achieved by a simple:
ViewBag can be good…honestly
A lot of people seem to have an allergic reaction towards anything not “strongly typed”. They abhor ViewBag and resent ViewData[“key”] for passing values from the controller to the view. They write viewmodels that aggregate a few other viewmodels or worse, use inheritance to generate complex hierarchies. And in order to try and keep all that clean, they use design patterns and what not to achieve “compile time checking”, “testability” and a few other mirages of “good code”. Maybe I like leaning over the edge a bit, but I really can’t understand why something that is to be a data carrier has to be part of something that’s as complex (if not more) than a trivial application’s domain. Here are some of the drawbacks of strongly typing all viewmodel data:
ASP.NET MVC 3 CTP1 View Improvements
ASP.NET MVC 3 CTP1 has introduced many improvements, not least of which is in the View. This screencast explores the improvements in the View, specially looking at the awesome new ViewEngine – Razor. It covers Razor syntax, layouts, templates, issues with namespaces etc. It also looks at the new dynamic viewmodel and shows how it can be used to clean up view code. It's just over 45 minutes long and we do go into a little depth. Hope you enjoy it :)
ASP.NET MVC – Unit Testing JsonResult Returning Anonymous Types
Unit testing of ASP.NET MVC JsonResults can be a source of confusion. The problem arises from the fact that an Action Method itself doesn't produce any html / json / string output – it simply returns an Action Result. ASP.NET MVC then calls the ExecuteResult() method on that Action Result. The ExecuteResult() method is what causes output to be written to the Response stream. Let's take the following controller and action method for example:
ASP.NET MVC: ModelBinding Multiple File Uploads to an Array
Web apps often need to upload files. ModelBinding a file upload to an HttpPostedFileBase action parameter is straightforward as long as you know the exact name of the file upload html control. There may be some situations where there are quite a few file upload controls and for whatever reason, they have very different names (they could be autogenerated on the page for example). In such a case, it becomes difficult to know what names to give to the action parameters at compile time. The usual option would be to hook into the Request parameters. That works, but is not very testable (without a good mocking framework like SharpMock, Moles, TypeMock Isolator etc.). In such situations, we can use a model binder to bind all file uploads to a single upload parameter.
Encrypted Hidden Redux : Let's Get Salty
This article builds on the ideas presented in my earlier article http://www.heartysoft.com/post/2010/02/25/Encrypted-Hidden-Inputs-in-ASPNET-MVC.aspx
MVC 2 RC 2 Templated Helper Bug and a Potential Solution
ASP.NET MVC 2 introduces templated helpers. They're a convenient and type safe way to render model data. There is a potential problem in the way in which the system processes the lambda expression passed in to the helper. The problem causes overridden properties to be ignored and uses the base class' declaration of the property instead. This can have adverse reactions where the client side validation feature of ASP.NET MVC 2 is used.
Encrypted Hidden Inputs in ASP.NET MVC
There are many situations where we need to persist some data during the user's session. There are a few options in achieving this:
Asp.net MVC 2.0 RC 2 Just Released
I was just moderating the asp.net forums and approved Phil's announcement 29 minutes ago that Asp.net MVC 2.0 RC 2 has just been released:
Ajax, Asp.net Ajax, jQuery – Misconceptions and Facts
There seems to be some confusion among a lot of developers about Asp.net Ajax. This article will hopefully clear some doubts regarding what it is, what it isn’t and where jQuery comes in.
Asp.net MVC, Html.DropDownList and Selected Value
I recently ran into the altogether common problem of the Html.DropDownList helper rendering a drop down list with no value selected. This is a major problem when editing data as by default, the first value is selected and saving would mean the first value is used.