DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by BrianGenisio

Screencast: Using SpecFlow and WebAii

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:44:10 GMT

With TDD you have learned to create tests that ensure that you build the system right. Take a look at a specification language that can help ensure that you build the right system.

Introducing ActionLinq

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 16:00:17 GMT

I am excited to release a pet project of mine that I have been developing for a few months. ActionLinq is a complete LINQ-to-Objects implementation for ActionScript 3.0. Including the same deferred execution behavior as LINQ, ActionLinq is a functional query library designed to process and manipulate data in ActionScript 3.0. It is especially useful for processing data received from web services and manipulating it to fit into the view.

Cross-Training in Silverlight & Flex - Platform Overview

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 19:37:25 GMT

This is the second article in which I will compare the technical details between Silverlight and Flex. Before I jump into the nitty-gritty of the two, I thought I would give a general overview of the platforms that are Silverlight and Flex/Flash/Air. Understand these terms and the tools up front will make it much easier to cross-train on the two technologies.

Adventures in Ruby MVVM - Wrapping it up

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 01:01:14 GMT

Over the past few posts, I have written about my experiments with using IronRuby as the primary development language for my WPF applications using MVVM. This wraps it up with a fully functioning example

Adventures in MVVM -- Bootstrapping Ruby

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 01:19:12 GMT

In this post, I want to discuss how I am loading the Ruby ViewModels into the View. When I write my Views, I like to use the tools I have available to me; Visual Studio and/or Expression Blend. This means that I want a Visual Studio project and I want to be able to use these tools to create new views quickly. The XAML files that define my views will still be backed by the obligatory auto-generated C# code, but this is where I want my C# code to end (for these experiments)...

Adventures in Ruby MVVM - A ViewModel Base Class in Ruby

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 03:02:31 GMT

In my last post, I talked about how to fire events from Ruby code such that .Net code can subscribe and receive them. With that out of the way, I am moving forward to start building a simple ViewModel base class in Ruby that will let me declare notifiable properties with as little ceremony as possible.

Adventures in Ruby MVVM - Firing Events from Ruby

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:45:52 GMT

My Experiment: Can I move over to Ruby as my primary programming language when developing WPF and Silverlight applications? In this post, I talk about how to fire events from Ruby, including an implementation of INotifyPropertyChanged

Adventures in MVVM - My ViewModel Base - Silverlight Support!

Sat, 15 May 2010 02:32:58 GMT

In my last post, I outlined the powerful features that are available in the ViewModelSupport project. It takes advantage of the dynamic features of C# 4.0 (as well as some 3.0 goodies) to help eliminate the plumbing that often comes with writing ViewModels. It now has full support for Silverlight as well.

Adventures in MVVM - My ViewModel Base

Sun, 09 May 2010 01:17:17 GMT

First, I'd like to say: THIS IS NOT A NEW MVVM FRAMEWORK. That being said, I want to share my ViewModel base class with the world. It has a lot of features, all designed to reduce the friction in writing view models.

Goodbye XML. Hello YAML (part 2)

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 00:45:08 GMT

In this post, I will discuss a nice YAML tooling option as well as describe some small modifications to leverage the extremely powerful dynamic capabilities of C# 4.0 and dynamic binding in WPF.

Adventures in MVVM -- Dependant Properties with INotifyPropertyChanged

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:11:33 GMT

Although I use it all the time, I have always believed that INotifyPropertyChanged has some serious shortcomings. One of those shortcomings deals with dependant properties. This article discusses how to fix that problem by inverting the responsibility of notifying the change from the input properties to the dependant properties.

Adventures in MVVM -- A Rails-Inspired ViewModel

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:28:17 GMT

The RoR approach to application development uses a lot of conventions to allow the developer to be as expressive as possible without introducing too much plumbing. The framework facilitates DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) so your controllers declare what they do and the magic under the hood plumbs it all together for you. How can we translate these ideas to a better implementation of the MVVM pattern? In this article, I will focus on the ViewModel portion of the MVVM pattern.

Introducing DynamicWrapper

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:17:14 GMT

Over the past few weeks, I have been working on a utility that I have wanted for years: something that allows me to apply an interface to an object that matches the contract but doesn't actually implement the interface. In other words, I've wanted duck typing in C#. Works in .Net 3.5 and Silverlight 3.0

Adventures in MVVM - Binding Commands to ANY Event

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 23:32:46 GMT

One of the biggest points of friction for me when implementing the MVVM pattern happens when I need to bind commands to events. For a while now, I have toyed with the idea of just binding commands to events directly. This post will show you how.

Adventures in MVVM - Generalized Command Behavior Attachments

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 00:49:34 GMT

There are several examples on the web that describe the "Attached Behavior" pattern in Silverlight and WPF. This pattern works really well for binding commands in the ViewModel to controls in the View. The problem with this is that for every behavior, there is a LOT of boilerplate code that goes along with it. Because the DepencencyProperties need to be static, they cannot be easily abstracted into a common class.

Adventures in MVVM -- Ball of Mud vs MVVM

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:39:39 GMT

A demo that I added to my MVVM talk is one that compares a "Ball of Mud" application with a componentized MVVM application with the exact same set of features. I do this to contrast a messy, un-testable work of code to a cleanly separated, testable work. The application I chose to write is a Twitter search application in WPF. When you download the code, you will see two folders: "BallOfMud" and "MVVM".

Adventures in MVVM - Slides and Demo App

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 23:38:09 GMT

This post links a fully functional MVVM demo that is a front-end for a recipe database web service. It shows how MVVM can be used to eliminate the majority of your code-behind and lets you write unit tests against the UI behavior.

Adventures in MVVM - Commanding with List Boxes

Sat, 30 May 2009 01:39:22 GMT

Continuing in my series of "Adventures in MVVM", I want to talk about a few different approaches to working with List Boxes with the MVVM pattern...

Adventures in MVVM -- A Testing Story

Wed, 27 May 2009 23:58:34 GMT

This is the story of how I got interested in the MVVM pattern. Not surprisingly, it is all about testing.

Adventures in MVVM - Commands in Silverlight

Sat, 23 May 2009 07:00:59 GMT

One of the most important aspects of implementing the MVVM pattern in WPF and SIlverlight is the ability for the UI layer to bind directly to commands in the ViewModel. The only problem with this: commands were never implemented in Silverlight. This article will walk you through implementing commands in Silverlight. This technique can be used in WPF as well.

What to do About Those Pesky Singletons?

Sat, 02 May 2009 21:16:14 GMT

No matter what your opinion is about singletons (I favor against them in most cases), it is important to understand what you can do when you encounter code that is dependent upon them. Especially when it comes to testing.

Introducing Html Utilities for Silverlight

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 07:24:12 GMT

I have just released an early version of Html Utilties for Silverlight on CodePlex. This article will explain the whats and hows of this library.

My Silverlight Testing Rig

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 09:33:58 GMT

was recently asked by someone on Twitter to describe my setup for writing tests against my Silverlight application. I thought I would write them down here in case others might find this information useful.

Binding to Resources in Silverlight/WPF

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 07:22:15 GMT

Resources in .NET are generated as internal classes which makes them inaccessible to binding. This article shows how to get around that and bind to the resources.

My Silverlight 3 Wish List

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 08:36:28 GMT

Some things I am hoping to see in the next release of Silverlight.