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9 Steps You Can Take to Start Weaning Yourself off Web Forms

Thu, 24 May 2012 15:17:52 GMT

ASP.NET MVC is seeing a lot of enthusiasm from the community right now, but not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to make the switch right away. Some of you may be maintaining large applications where a full rewrite is not possible, or at least not in the immediate future. That doesn't mean there aren't steps you can take to get your code ready for an eventual transition to MVC.

Attribute based routing in ASP.NET Web API

Thu, 24 May 2012 06:06:44 GMT

The AttributeRouting library has been extended to support ASP.NET Web API, and is now available on NuGet. Let's have a look at how it can immediately make your life easier and drastically improve the way you handle your routes.

JSON Serialization in .NET 4.0

Wed, 23 May 2012 06:34:27 GMT

Serialization is the process of converting a logical and in-memory object to a string data-type. This has many advantages such as: Storing this data in a database and later retrieving it, exposing an API that serves this data for consumers to use, and many more. JSON is the JavaScript Object Notation and it's used to represent JavaScript objects in string format. There are a ton of benefits to using this format in JavaScript-rich, interactive programs.

Implementing message handlers to track your ASP.NET Web API usage

Thu, 17 May 2012 13:56:50 GMT

Using DelegatingHandlers, building a functionality that checks for an API key on an incoming API request and then logs all requests and responses, thus allowing you to track the usage of your API.

Towards more secure password hashing in ASP.NET

Thu, 17 May 2012 13:50:15 GMT

A lot can be done to increase security of how password hashes are created and stored in ASP.NET applications. This article explains more about the PBKDF2 algorithm found in the framework, and how to configure it for more secure password hashing.

Consuming RSS feeds in ASP.NET

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:26:53 GMT

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an incredibly easy way to display content from other websites in all types of industries. You can also publish your own RSS feeds so that people can display your content on their website with incredible ease. I plan on showing both methods in this article.

Output caching in ASP.NET Web API

Sun, 13 May 2012 14:22:10 GMT

Caching output of the ASP.NET Web API Controllers' actions using a custom ActionFilterAttribute

Asp.net Web API and google chrome's Postman plugin

Sun, 13 May 2012 14:21:18 GMT

debug and test your Asp.net Web API with google chrome's Postman plugin

There's a Tool for That: 13 Essential Tools for the Ninja Web

Wed, 09 May 2012 13:46:47 GMT

In this blog I highlight a few tools I find useful for web development, and best of all, almost all of them are completely free!

Native HTML5 push notifications with ASP.NET Web API and Knockout.js

Tue, 08 May 2012 05:56:39 GMT

Tutorial on how to build a multi-person browser-based chat using ASP.NET Web API (PushStreamContent), Server Sent Events (JS Event Source) and Knockout.js. Features HTML5 push notifications over HTTP.

Creating and using plugins in ASP.NET MVC3

Fri, 04 May 2012 13:46:21 GMT

Shows how you without effort can create and use plugins in ASP.NET MVC3. The article demonstrates the plugin features of Griffin.MvcContrib. You can for instance edit the plugin views at runtime and just hit F5 in the browser to see the changes.

Avoid Session TimeOut In Asp.Net To Keep Session Alive

Tue, 01 May 2012 20:17:50 GMT

In this post i'm explaining different methods of Avoid Or Prevent Session TimeOut In Asp.Net to Keep Alive.

Call to Action: Make LESS Native in Modern Browsers

Tue, 01 May 2012 20:16:55 GMT

LESS is a CSS pre-processor that elegantly extends the language features of the world's most popular styling syntax, but using it today requires extra processing. Modern browsers should add native LESS support to make future developers more productive.

Resize image on the fly with ASP.NET MVC

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:18:10 GMT

I built a piece of code sometime ago to display image thumbnails in a listing page. I thought it's about time to optimize it. I refactored it and started using the WebImage class that comes in System.Web.Helpers namespace. With this class in place you can resize, crop, rotate, etc any image. There's no need to save the thumbnail in the disk, that is, a new image can be generated on the fly/dynamically and sent to the user's browser.

Take your ASP.NET Controls to the Gym

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 08:45:40 GMT

One of the new ASP.NET 4.5 improvements I'm excited about is the ability to have strongly typed controls. That's right, you heard me, strongly typed! Why am I so excited about them? Read on to find out.

QR codes for Asp.Net with NuGet

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 07:47:59 GMT

About a week ago, I received an email from a visitor about my QR code post which I blogged about back in 2010. I have been told that the most important reference was down. It was the reference to the DLL for generating the QR codes. So I uploaded the DLL as mirror Apparently the twitt88.com website is back online at http://platform.twit88.com/projects/mt-qrcode/files It also seems that there has been some new releases for the DLL. Since 2011 you only use NuGet to keep your packages up to date, I thought that adding it through NuGet would be the best option.

RSS & Atom MediaTypeFormatter for ASP.NET WebAPI

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:55:09 GMT

Today we are going to build a custom formatter for ASP.NET WebAPI, deriving from MediaTypeFormatter class. It will return our model (or collection of models) in RSS or Atom format.

Generating ASP.NET MVC View Controls According to Xml Configurations

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:44:30 GMT

Last week I was consulting about ASP.NET MVC at a customer. One of the customer project requirements is to generate forms according to Xml configuration files. In this post I'll offer an end-to-end solution to this requirement. This solution can be rafactored to use databases or any other data sources in order to achieve the same results.

67% of ASP.NET websites have serious configuration vulnerabilities

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:09:21 GMT

This is one of those "with great power comes great responsibility" scenarios; ASP.NET is an incredibly powerful environment which lets you do amazing things with ease, but that ease also extends to the configurability and creates the opportunity to leave gaping holes in websites without even noticing it.

A Match Made in Http Heaven - ASP.NET Web Forms and WebAPI

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 07:27:34 GMT

With the introduction of MVC 4 Microsoft has created a fantastic new way for developers to expose data via HTTP service. While WebAPI shipped with MVC 4, it can easily be used in Asp.Net AJAX as well! In this blog we will take a look at setting up WebAPI in ASP.Net Web Forms.

Extract jpg or png images from a PDF

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:49:35 GMT

There are a lot of tools available online to extract images from a PDF, but most of them are shareware or trialware. If you need just a single image, you can right click it in Adobe acrobat reader and copy paste it into Microsofts paint, Paint.net or (overkill) Adobe Photoshop. But if you have a PDF with several pages and several images on each page, you'd like to have it automated. That's when you start your search for a good free/low cost utility. Or, you can write your own! Much more fun guaranteed!

Make Your Own Wi-Fi Hotspot - Testing Development Websites on Mobiles

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 07:36:27 GMT

Often you need to test a website on an tablet device such as an iPad using a local development machine's web server. For whatever reason the available Wi-Fi when developing your site may be on another subnet or network entirely to you development machine (such as in an office environment). Situations like these call for a bit of creative thinking and a different approach, so if this is a problem you face here's my take on a possible solution.

Calling Web Services Using AJAX

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 09:59:10 GMT

Presents code that uses AJAX to call a web service.

Minify your CSS & JavaScript with SquishIt

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 17:03:13 GMT

NuGet package to minify your website CSS and JavaScript file.

Visualizing the offline application cache update progress

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 06:24:19 GMT

I wrote about using the HTML5 application cache earlier, mostly focusing on generating and serving the manifest file using ASP.NET MVC. I also bitched about how not one browser I know of gives an indication of the application cache update progress. Today I wanted to write something about how you can visualize the application cache update progress yourself.