DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by brianmd

MEF will not get easier, it's cool as ICE

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:15:03 GMT

Over the past few weeks, several people asked me to show them how to use MEF (Managed Extensibility Framework), some of them seemed to have some difficulties with the concept of MEF. I tried explaining that it will not get easier than it is currently, hence the title of this blog post. MEF is based on 3 keywords: export, import, compose. Since these 3 words all start with a letter that can be combined to a word, and MEF is cool, here's a hint on how to remember it: MEF is cool as ICE!

Windows Azure Drive (aka X-Drive)

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:45:39 GMT

With today's release of the Windows Azure Tools and SDK version 1.1, also the Windows Azure Drive feature has been released. Announced at last year's PDC as X-Drive, which has nothing to do with a well-known German car manufacturer, this new feature enables a Windows Azure application to use existing NTFS APIs to access a durable drive. This allows the Windows Azure application to mount a page blob as a drive letter, such as X:, and enables easily migration of existing NTFS applications to the cloud. This blog post will describe the necessary steps to create and/or mount a virtual hard disk on a Windows Azure role instance.

Recording of my session at Remix 2009 - ASP.NET MVC

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:43:06 GMT

Session recording of my remix09 talk: ASP.NET MVC Wisdom Abstract: "Building a Twitter clone in 60 minutes, featuring what's new in ASP.NET MVC 2 preview 1 and focusing on some of the core ASP.NET MVC features like security and routing."

Leveraging ASP.NET MVC 2 futures ViewState

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 07:30:10 GMT

In my previous blog post, I called something "ViewState in MVC" while it is not really ViewState. To be honest, I did this on purpose, wanting to see people discuss this possibly new feature in MVC 2. Discussion started quite fast: most people do not like the word ViewState, especially when it is linked to ASP.NET MVC. As Phil Haack pointed out in a comment on my previous blog post, I used this foul word where it was not appropriate: "(.) I think calling it ViewState is very misleading. (.) what your serializing is the state of the Model, not the View. (.)" Let's use this in a practical example.

Adventures while building a Silverlight Enterprise application #25

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 07:26:27 GMT

In the previous episode I discussed how an enum can be used to encapsulate char values in a database, in this case using a Gender enum as an example. As cool as that was it does pose a problem with databinding in Silverlight that I'd like to share with you. Part of that explanation leads us into the realm of reflection (that would make for a cool blog title :) ) and then into some cool trick in binding, all to end with a bit of a dissapointment.

Exploring the ASP.NET MVC 2 futures assemby

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:15:00 GMT

The latest preview of ASP.NET MVC 2, preview 2, has been released on CodePlex last week. All features of the preview 1 version are still in, as well as some nice novelties like client-side validation, single project areas, the model metadata model, . This post dives into the accompanying futures assembly and discovers... ViewState is coming back!

Replacing ASP.NET Session with Velocity Session Provider

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 06:17:39 GMT

One nice feature of Microsoft Distributed Cache aka Velocity is a custom session provider that can replace the ASP.NET default session provider. In this post I'll explain how to replace ASP.NET session with the Velocity session provider that is being provided with Velocity.

xVal v1.0 is now released

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 08:00:00 GMT

In case you're not aware, xVal is a validation helper for ASP.NET MVC that lets you use your own choice of server-side validation framework (e.g., Microsoft's DataAnnotations attributes, or Castle Validator, or NHibernate Validaion) and dynamically generates client-side validation code from your rules. Version 1.0 adds new features including dynamic client-side validation summaries and remote (ajax) validation rules.

The cloud as a platform for platforms

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:08:20 GMT

AWS is not only a rich platform to build solutions but also a platform for building specialized platforms. Customers can choose to either use the AWS cloud directly or take advantage of these value-added platforms. Customers can also mix and match platforms from this rich ecosystem. In this post, we look at some of the best examples of specialized platforms built on AWS:

C# Identify Crisis, You Have To Know Your Identity

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:45:00 GMT

Marking the beginning of the end of C# as language and its ongoing identity crisis.

ASP.NET MVC MvcSiteMapProvider 1.0 released

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 01:15:00 GMT

Back in March, I blogged about an experimental MvcSiteMap provider I was building. Today, I am proud to announce that it is stable enough to call it version 1.0! Download MvcSiteMapProvider 1.0 over at CodePlex. Ever since the source code release I did back in March, a lot of new features have been added, such as HtmlHelper extension methods, attributes, dynamic parameters, . I'll leave most of them up to you to discover, but there are some I want to quickly highlight.

Your very first NHibernate application - Part 1

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 01:05:03 GMT

In this series of articles Gabriel Schenker want to show and discuss which pieces are needed to successfully write an application based on NHibernate and Fluent NHibernate.

AI: Population based Incremental Learning in C# and .NET

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 02:45:00 GMT

In this article I would like to discuss another offshoot of the genetic algorithm called Population Based Incremental Learning (PBIL).

SQL Azure Manager

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 11:00:04 GMT

SQL Azure manager: a community effort to quickly enable connecting to your SQL Azure database(s) and perform basic tasks.

ASP.NET MVC Chained Controller Factory

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 03:30:00 GMT

My last post on the REST for ASP.NET MVC SDK received an interesting comment. Basically, the spirit of the comment was: "There are tons of controller factories out there, but you can only use one at a time!". This is true. One can have an IControllerFactory for MEF, for Castle Windsor, a custom one that creates a controller based on the current weather, . Most of the time, these IControllerFactory implementations do not glue together. Unless you chain them!

Haacked: Simpler Transactions

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 04:34:47 GMT

"My idea was to write a method that accepts an Action which contains the code you wish to run within the transaction. "

Creating a Html.DisplayForMany Helper for MVC 2

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:05:24 GMT

The Html helper in ASP.NET MVC 2 comes with some handy methods called "DisplayFor" and "EditFor" - please see Scott Gu's article if you are not familiar with these new features. Long story short, they provide an ASP.NET Dynamic Data-like mechanism which uses reflection and templating to render a display form or an edit form. This article explains how to take it one step further by creating a Html.DisplayForMany() helper.

REST for ASP.NET MVC SDK

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:15:10 GMT

Earlier this week, Phil Haack did a post on the newly released REST for ASP.NET MVC SDK. I had the feeling though that this post did not really get the attention it deserved. I do not have the idea my blog gets more visitors than Phil's, but I'll try to give the SDK some more attention by blogging an example

Claims based Authentication & Authorization: The Guide

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:15:42 GMT

Eugenio announced yesterday the kickoff of a new guide from patterns & practices in which I'm collaborating: Claims based Authentication & Authorization Guide. This is not a new topic as Eugenio suggests in his blog, but it's getting more and more attention because: .Technology is more mature, hence it's easier to implement claim-based identity .Enterprises are failing to control the amount of different identity repositories, leading to higher provisioning/deprovisioning costs, security problems, etc. .End users want simpler user experiences and less passwords .The cloud makes all these even more challenging ...

Asp.Net MVC Membership Starter Kit Released

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:30:06 GMT

Almost six months after the official release of Asp.Net MVC 1.0 and nearly a year after the last release of the starter kit, I've finally rewritten and released the Asp.Net MVC Membership Starter Kit.

ASP.NET MVC 2 Preview 1 released!

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:15:04 GMT

Today, Phil Haack did a blog post on the release of ASP.NET MVC 2 Preview 1! Get it while it's fresh :-) An updated roadmap is also available on CodePlex. Guess now is about time to start revising my ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Quickly book.

Authenticating users with RPXNow (in ASP.NET MVC)

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 11:45:00 GMT

Don't you get sick of having to register at website X, at website Y, at website Z, .? It is really not fun to maintain all these accounts, change passwords, . Luckily, there are some large websites offering delegated sign-in (for example Google Accounts, Live ID, Twitter OAuth, .). You can use these delegated sign-in methods on your own site, removing the need of registering yet another account. Unfortunately, not everyone has an account at provider X. A while ago, I found out about the free service JanRain is offering: RPXNow. This (free!) service combines the strengths of several major account providers (Google Accounts, Live ID, Twitter, Facebook, OpenID, .) into one simple API. This means that people are able to log in to your website if they have an account at one of these providers! Here's how to use it in ASP.NET MVC.

ASP.NET MVC Calendar component

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 05:01:53 GMT

I am writing simple ASP.NET MVC system that I plan to publish with source code pretty soon. I needed some simple calendar component that doesn't require ASP.NET server-side form to work. I found different JavaScript based calendars and only one pretty old calendar that was specially written for ASP.NET MVC. I updated it and here is the source and binary downloads for Visual Studio 2008 and ASP.NET MVC 1.0.

OpenForum - new ASP.NET MVC based forum

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:00:00 GMT

There is new project in CodePlex called OpenForum. With source code you get also some samples you can run on your machine. OpenForum is pretty new and simple. There are no advanced forum features and currently it is suitable for smaller forums. You can change the look of OpenForum and write your own user repositories. Let's see how OpenForum looks like.

Using VirtualPathProvider to load ASP.NET MVC views from DLLs

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:02:38 GMT

Exactly what the title says.