DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by shyvonen

Integration Testing Your ASP.NET MVC Application

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 07:15:00 GMT

Unit tests are great for proving the correctness of a single component. But how can you prove that you whole ASP.NET MVC application hangs together properly - including its view templates, configuration settings, and database schema? Integration tests cover what unit tests can't - Steven Sanderson shows one way to approach it with ASP.NET MVC.

Handling Legacy URLs with ASP.NET MVC

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:00:00 GMT

According to Google's Webmaster tools, there are about 15,000 incoming links to my site. 13,000 of those reference a .ASPX file on disk. When I convert to MVC, with new Search Engine Friendly urls, all those links will break unless I do something about it. Presenting users with a 404 - file not found is not an option. I need to show them the content they were expecting, and update Search Engines with the news that things have changed. Here's how I will be managing those Legacy URLs.

Automatically minify and combine JavaScript in Visual Studio

Thu, 21 May 2009 03:06:38 GMT

As you begin developing more complex client-side functionality, managing the size and shape of your JavaScript includes becomes a key concern. It's all too easy to accidentally end up with hundreds of kilobytes of JavaScript spread across many separate HTTP requests, significantly slowing down your initial page loads. I hope you'll find that this technique is a good compromise between the tedium of using manual minification tools and the overwrought complexity of setting up some of the more "enterprisey" automation solutions.

More ASP.NET MVC Best Practices

Wed, 06 May 2009 19:16:02 GMT

In this post, I'll share some of the best practices and guidelines which I have come across while developing ASP.NET MVC web applications. I will not cover all best practices that are available, instead add some specific things that have not been mentioned in any blog post out there. Existing best practices can be found on Kazi Manzur Rashid's blog and Simone Chiaretta's blog.

jQuery UI DatePicker instead of AJAX Control Toolkit CalendarExtender

Thu, 07 May 2009 02:46:01 GMT

The reasons why I abandoned using the CalendarExtender and choose to use the jQuery UI DatePicker instead.

Creating RSS Feeds Using ASP.NET 3.5

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:01:05 GMT

"We wanted to have an RSS feed so customers could keep up to date with new or recently updated Dovetail Knowledge Base articles. My personal mental gate was that I really didn't want to try to figure out how to properly create an RSS or Atom feed and I didn't want to bother with complex heavy handed frameworks like Argotic. Then one day Josh introduced me to the System.ServiceModel.Syndication namespace (introduced in .Net 3.5) and my life was never the same. "

89 Ways for You to Become the Coolest Developer in the World

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:31:08 GMT

You can learn how to improve your programming skills, work better and enjoy it from this collection of advice from experienced developers.

Insidious Dependencies

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 23:46:02 GMT

Many dependencies in code are obvious, such as relying on a particular framework or database implementation. Others can easily be overlooked. This article exposes some of the more insidious dependencies that commonly exist within applications which may be overlooked as such.

If the .Net BCL is drywall, Extension Methods are spackle

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 04:46:49 GMT

I know many people get upset at the very idea of Extension Methods, but I already consider them to be an indispensable part of my programming toolkit. I'm seeing so many times where a quick extension method can make code be much more readable. Other times an extension method against even a core BCL type seems to fill in a natural hole in the official API's and knocks out a lot of duplication.

IServiceLocator a step toward IoC container / Service locator detente

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:46:04 GMT

Today we launched an exciting project on CodePlex, namely the Common Service Locator library. What is it? It's a shared interface that applications and frameworks can reference in order to leverage IoC containers / service location mechanisms without taking hard dependencies.

Separate Assemblies != Loose Coupling

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 04:16:07 GMT

read and learn

$("Microsoft").append("excitement");

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 02:46:14 GMT

Right now is honestly the most excited that I have ever been about the .net platform. With IronRuby and ASP.NET MVC on the horizon and jQuery being integrated as part of the official Microsoft development platform, I think that Microsoft is finally "getting" web development.

How Do Locks Lock?

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:31:02 GMT

A detailed explanation of how a locks like ReaderWriterLockSlim really work.

Introduction to jQuery Article posted

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 02:46:05 GMT

I've posted Part 1 in a 2 part series on jQuery today. Part 1 covers the client side features of jQuery from the basics all the way through creating simple plugins and extending jQuery. This is a long article that discusses a host of the really useful features that jQuery brings to the table for client side Javascript development. Part 2 will then follow up with server side ASP.NET integration.

jQuery and Microsoft

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 02:01:02 GMT

ScottGu announce that Microsoft will be shipping jQuery with Visual Studio going forward. We will distribute the jQuery JavaScript library as-is, and will not be forking or changing the source from the main jQuery branch. The files will continue to use and ship under the existing jQuery MIT license.

Development Tools I Use & Recommend

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 04:16:03 GMT

Eventually I will get to some technical code Posts. But for now, I'm a bit delayed with some other things at work lately. I will be blogging about Code Generation, OOP, and other topics very soon though. In the meantime, I wanted to share a list of tools I regularly use now or have used in the past as a C# / ASP.NET Engineer listed below:

Getting rid of spaghetti code in the real-world: a Case Study

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 23:46:10 GMT

A case study of cleaning up entangled code by reducing dependencies. Tips of how to avoid more entangled code to be added. Plugs NCover.

Why you REALLY need to think about your interfaces

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 02:46:02 GMT

When you write your interfaces in C#, you might be casting them in stone. You REALLY need to think about how you write your interfaces. Avoid interfaces with concrete parameters such as Dictionary<> and List<> and prefer interfaces such as IDictionary<> and IList<>. Here is why!

Avoiding Dependencies

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 20:46:03 GMT

As a rule, code should not directly depend on external resources such as System.Net.Mail's email sending capabilities. Having code that directly calls out to System.Net.Mail is difficult to unit test as well as difficult to walk through in a test or stage environment without having actual emails sent. Two design patterns can be used to reduce this dependency: Facade and Strategy. The Strategy pattern offers a host of benefits above and beyond what the facade layer provides, as this articles demonstrates with code examples.

Important questions a developer should ask a prospective employer

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 05:01:08 GMT

A list of questions that software developers should ask a prospective employer during their interview process. Similar to the Joel test, but more in-depth.

Unity - Dependency Injection and Inversion of Control Container

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 20:01:14 GMT

Dependency injection is a programming technique to reduce component coupling. Dependency injection is also commonly known as "inversion of control" or IoC or sometimes as The Hollywood Principle - "Don't call us, we'll call you". The goal of dependency injection is to separate the concerns of how a dependency is obtained from the core concerns of a boundary. This improves reusability by enabling components to be supplied with dependencies which may vary depending on context.

ASP.NET MVC Application Building: Forums #1 - Create the Perfect App

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:46:03 GMT

n this series of blog entries, I build an entire ASP.NET MVC Forums application from start to finish. The goal is to discover and promote best-practices for building applications with the ASP.NET MVC framework. In this first entry, I discuss the overall goals for the forums application. I discuss the importance of avoiding code smells and how software design principles and patterns can help you write code that is resilient to future change. I also justify my choice to use test-driven development while building the Forums application.

Getting rid of strings (3): take your app settings to the next level

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 00:31:02 GMT

In the first article of this series I talked about the problems with strings in code. This article will show you how you can use lambda expressions and expression trees as another tool to avoid strings

Easily build powerful client-side AJAX paging, using jQuery

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:31:14 GMT

An in-depth example of using jQuery to build client-side paging, including progress indicators, to page into any server side data source that can be JSON serialized by ASP.NET AJAX.

10 Invaluable CSS Resources

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 23:01:13 GMT

First things first. I'm an application (middle tier) developer. My design skills while adequate, are not by any means what I'd like them to be. Like a good geek girl, I've been working on this. I've put together a list of very helpful CSS resources I've stumbled upon in my quest to improve my presentation layer skills. I thought I'd share them: