MVC2

Sam Abraham to Discuss ASP.Net MVC3 and Razor Syntax at the West Palm Beach .Net Users' Group

Sam Abraham — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:07:36 GMT

Sam Abraham (Me) will be speaking at the West Palm Beach .Net Users’ Group on Tuesday November 23^rd, 2010 on ASP.Net MVC3 RC, Razor syntax, ASP.Net Web Pages Helpers and NuGet. I plan on sharing an introduction to ASP.Net MVC to bring everybody up to speed then explore the latest features of the ASP.Net MVC 3 Release Candidate. I will also introduce the NuGet Library Package Manager.

I hope for this talk to act as a platform for everyone to share their thoughts on ASP.Net MVC and provide their take on use cases where MVC can be leveraged as technology of choice.

--Sam Abraham

Experiences at Tampa .Net Code Camp 2010

Sam Abraham — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 13:56:55 GMT

I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the Tampa .Net Code Camp 2010. I covered MVC3 and NuGet. I also leveraged the lunch break to show most of Scott Hanselman’s highly rated open source PDC10 session. To watch Scott’s video please visit: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/PDC10BuildingABlogWithMicrosoftUnnamedPackageOfWebLove.aspx

Mr and Mrs. Keith Kabza and the VisualGov team’s hard work was quiet visible at the nicely organized event where all went smooth from early morning registration to the after party.

Topics covered at community-driven events such as code camps usually mirror current local interests in cutting-edge technologies. Interest was particularly high in Windows Phone 7 as highlighted by the numerous sessions and different areas covered.

I spoke on the latest ASP.Net MVC3 RC, Razor Syntax, Helpers and NuGet and had the pleasure of getting audience feedback and input on these promising technologies. Interest was obviously high as it attracted over 40 attendees and completely filled the room.

In conclusion, the Tampa .Net Code Camp 2010 presented a unique experience where I got to interact, discuss and share with the local Tampa .Net Community. I look forward to visiting Tampa again soon and to attending the Tampa .Net Code Camp 2011 next year. (At the rate MVC is evolving, I will probably be submitting a session on ASP.Net MVC 6 :))

--Sam Abraham

ASP.Net MVC 3 Release Candidate and NuGet Library Package Manager Released

Sam Abraham — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 19:46:38 GMT

Scott Guthrie just announced the release of ASP.Net MVC 3 RC. This new release features Intellisense and syntax colorization for Razor pages. It also includes the recently renamed NuGet (formerly known as NuPack) Library Package Manager. If NuGet is new to you, please check my blog post providing a quick introduction to this useful package. I also have a quick overview of Razor that you can reference if needed. For the authoritative and complete information, please check ScottGu’s blog.

To install the latest RC, you first need to uninstall any previous version of ASP.Net MVC 3, ASP.Net MVC3 VS2010 Tools and ASP.Net Web Pages. You can then download and install the RC.

Figure 1- uninstall ASP.Net MVC3 and ASP.Net Web Pages.

Figure 2- Install progress screen for ASP.Net MVC 3 RC

Figure 3 - Creating a new Razor Page with ASP.Net MVC 3 RC

After install, take a look at the packages installed within the VS2010 extensions manager. You will notice a new entry for NuGet. This package was initially introduced with the MVC3 beta release as NuPack but was later renamed by a community vote to “NuGet” (pronounces New Get). Phil Haack’s blog post explains the circumstances prompting the package rename.

Figure 4 - The newly renamed NuPack Library Package Manager.

--Sam Abraham

Leveraging HTML5 in ASP.Net Web Pages Helpers for WebMatrix and ASP.Net MVC3

Sam Abraham — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 22:42:19 GMT

ASP.Net Web Pages Helpers are re-usable components made of both HTML markup mixed with C# or VB.Net code.

Helpers are designated using a special Razor Syntax tag @helper which routes the content within the tag to the appropriate Razor parser. (A brief introduction to the Razor syntax can be found here)

I had the privilege of demonstrating a few out-of-the-box Web Pages Helpers using WebMatrix at the SoFla Local PDC10 a little over a week ago. Audience feedback was positive and Helpers' lightweight and flexible model was well appreciated.

With Microsoft’s commitment and involvement in the maturing HTML 5, one can only think of the potential that can be achieved by combining the powerful features HTML5 brings with the easy and clean re-usability enabled by ASP.Net Web Pages Helpers. I had already blogged about the value HTML5/Helpers bring when used together, but at the time, I did not provide any code demonstrations to justify my argument. I decided however that now is a suitable time to provide this overdue quick example.

In the following few lines, I will be demonstrating a quick sample to showcase how HTML5 tags can be included in a .cshtml page defining a custom ASP.Net Web Pages Helper function in WebMatrix. Same concepts can be also leveraged in ASP.Net MVC3 as it supports the Razor Syntax.

The following steps assume you are already familiar with WebMatrix (Please feel freel to check my WebMatrix overview blog post if you deem necessary.)

Create an App_code folder under your WebMatrix project (Figure 2).
Create a new .cshtml page. For me I called it HTML5Canvas.cshtml. You can also use VB.Net, but in that case your file name will have a .vbhtml extension instead (Figure 2).
Create a custom helper function within the .cshtml file created in step 2. As my desire is to demonstrate how HTML5 can naturally work with helpers and the Razor parser, I am including the HTML5 canvas tag (Figure 1). Notice that the Helper function takes a string argument that it displays at runtime. Also note how the @name parameter is referenced within the HTML markup.
Include a call to our new custom helper in any .cshtml file as desired (Figure 2)
Run code. You should get an output as shown in figure 3.

Notes:

The code in Figure 2 will simply draw a 2D red rectangle, but can be as elaborate as we so desire. The purpose here is to illustrate the concept rather than demonstrate HTML5 features.

Figure 1 - Our custom HTML 5 helper function

Figure 2 - Calling our custom helper function in web page. Note the helper .cshtml file is defined under App_code/Html5Canvas.cshtml.

Figure 3 - HTML5 Canvas output

Sam Abraham to Speak at the Tampa .Net Code Camp 2010 - November 13th, 2010

Sam Abraham — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 21:34:13 GMT

Sam Abraham (Me) will be introducing ASP.Net MVC 3 at the Tampa .Net Code Camp, taking place on Saturday November 13th, 2010. I plan to introduce ASP.Net MVC and showcase the latest and greatest features introduced with ASP.Net MVC3 including: Razor syntax, ASP.Net Web Pages Helpers and NuGet (formerly NuPack). Audience participation is encouraged and will be solicited.

Look forward to seeing you all there!

Here is the description and bio I submitted:

Introducing ASP.Net MVC
In this session, we will introduce ASP.Net MVC and compare it to traditional Web Forms. We will also introduce the two built-in view engines that MVC ships with (ASPX and Razor).

Speakers:
Sam Abraham is a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) and Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS ASP.Net 3.5/4.0) He currently lives in South Florida where he leads the West Palm Beach .Net User Group (www.fladotnet.com) and actively participates in various local .Net Community events as organizer and/or technical speaker. Sam also serves as Director of Electronic Communications and as Mentoring Project Leader at the South Florida Chapter of the Project Management Institute (www.southfloridapmi.org). Sam finds his passion in leveraging latest and greatest .Net Technologies along with proven Project Management practices and methodologies to produce high quality, cost-competitive software. Sam can be contacted through his blog: http://www.geekswithblogs.net/wildturtle

Reflections on SoFla Local PDC10

Sam Abraham — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 20:23:15 GMT

On Thursday October 28^th, 2010, I had the privilege of attending and speaking at the SoFla Local PDC10 hosted by the Gold Coast and Miami .Net User Groups. While most local PDCs focused on viewing the Redmond event, South Florida kicked it up a notch by availing some of the community’s local speakers to comment and address any questions the audience might have. I greatly enjoyed covering and answering audience questions on WebMatrix, Razor Syntax, ASP.Net Web Pages Helpers, IIS Express, ASP.Net MVC 3 and NuPack. A thank you is in order to Joe and Maureen Homnick and others whose tireless work and support made this event a success.

Throughout the day-long event, I had the opportunity to chat with many professional developers from both small and large organizations in both public and private sectors. Tools, frameworks and architectural patterns we discussed varied based on the nature of the business, company size, budget as well as specific product requirements. I am by no means an expert, but I found myself repeating the following in most conversations:

Planning is priority one. In order to put the correct technology to service, one first needs to fully analyze short as well as long term project goals.
The triple constraints: scope/quality, time and budget need to be delicately balanced. Looking at cost alone will probably sacrifice either or both product quality and feature set. Focusing on quality alone however is bound to jeopardize the project as it increases the likelihood of running over budget.
Need to balance all Stakeholders’ needs. A good strategy to balance all stakeholders’ needs is to work with all parties to break a project into smaller manageable pieces/functional areas (phases). Furthermore, it would be ideal if each phase creates a complete feature even if simple. This strategy would ease the following:

-Reusability. Should the plug be pulled off a project, already-completed features can always be documented for future re-use thereby resurrecting part of the time and money already spent.

-Measuring Progress. Periodic evaluation of completed features enables non-technical stakeholders to get a feel for project progress without the need for a translator to decipher geek jargon.

-Stage Gating. Despite the hard work, tools and measures applied to analyze the feasibility of a project before execution, a project might no longer be a good fit for the company at a later time. Regrouping to evaluate an implemented feature can also act as a gate to evaluate project continuity.

Putting my geek hat back on, I would like to share the following ressources I brought up at the event:

1-A great resource page for WebMatrix development can be found at:

http://msjoe.com/blog/posts/a-list-of-resources-to-help-jumpstart-your-asp-net-webmatirx-development/

2-You can run ASP.Net MVC 3 side-by-side with ASP.NET WebForms in the same Visual Studio solution. Scott Guthrie wrote a nice chapter on this and made it available freely to all, so feel free to lookup. Other articles and webcasts have also addressed this situation. For instance, the following article provides a nice sample and coverage of the topic:

http://weblogs.asp.net/rajbk/archive/2010/05/11/running-asp-net-webforms-and-asp-net-mvc-side-by-side.aspx

--Sam Abraham

Thoughts on HTML 5 for ASP.Net MVC 3, WebMatrix and Silverlight

Sam Abraham — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 13:16:27 GMT

With concerns of HTML 5 overshadowing or affecting the roadmap for Silverlight actively addressed in many blog posts, I decided to cover the value HTML 5 brings to another set of web-based Microsoft solutions: ASP.Net MVC 3 and WebMatrix.

A direction to embrace HTML 5 can already be clearly seen in ASP.Net MVC 3 with Unobtrusive Javascript leveraging the “data-“HTML 5 attributes. Additionally, WebMatrix Razor site templates are already HTML5 and CSS3 compliant while continuing to be backwards compatible for older browsers.

With HTML 5, ASP.Net Web Pages Helpers (for both WebMatrix and MVC 3) can evolve to produce elaborate out-of-the-box reusable components while maintaining their light-weight competitive advantage.

Both ASPX and the new Razor view engines enable complete control over a screen’s HTML markup and hence can immediately benefit from the new features of HTML 5 on both IE 9 and other HTML 5 supporting browsers such as Firefox 3.5

With developers doing “HTML 5 coding”, I foresee Razor gaining more popularity due to its efficient syntax and intelligent parsing mechanism that focuses on minimizing tag keystrokes.

In conclusion, HTML 5 might cause some strategy shifts for Silverlight with both technologies bound to co-exist and continue going strong. However one should not ignore the value and power HTML 5 brings to other Microsoft web technologies such as ASP.Net MVC3 and WebMatrix.

--Sam Abraham

Sam Abraham to Speak at the SoFla PDC 2010 10/28/2010

Sam Abraham — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 19:00:08 GMT

Sam Abraham (Me) will be speaking at the SoFla PDC 2010 hosted by the Gold Coast and Miami .Net User Groups in Boca Raton, Florida on October 28th, 2010. The local PDC event will run in parallel to and will embrace some of the content covered and unveiled at the main PDC 2010 hosted in Redmond. This would be my third speaking event in a quiet busy October 2010 and my second visit as speaker to the Gold Coast .Net User’s Group for the month of October.

I will be covering WebMatrix, Razor Syntax, ASP.Net Web Pages Helpers, IIS Express, ASP.Net MVC 3 and NuPack with brief demos as well as presentation slides content showcasing the value each brings. Audience participation and input is encouraged and will be solicited.

All the aforementioned technologies share a few common characteristics:

Free. None requires a license fee.
Open and transparent. Everybody knows where these technologies came from, where they are at today and where they are heading tomorrow with ample information readily available online
Open Source. One can learn internals as well as extend and fix bugs as needed without having to wait for a next official release.

Light weight and efficient. All tools focus on saving development time while improving the efficiency of the development process.

Listens to feedback. While all Microsoft products and groups have multiple communication channels for community feedback, these aforementioned technologies are particularly notable for being mainly community driven.

Welcomes outside contributions. NuPack is a great example of a new convenient tool that is open to developers outside of Microsoft to contribute to. The MVCContrib library is another great example of how community involvement can supplement the base MVC feature set.

I look forward to meeting everyone at the SoFla PDC 2010 and to an engaging discussion of the latest and greatest technologies at the event.

--Sam Abraham

Gold Coast .Net User's Group With Sam Abraham and Joe Homnick - The Open Data Protocol (OData)

Sam Abraham — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 04:09:00 GMT

I had the pleasure of speaking with Joe Homnick today about the Open Data Protocol. I presented an example on consuming OData in an MVC solution using jQuery. Joe presented on consuming OData feeds in SharePoint 2010/Silverlight 4.0 as well as a nice sample on setting up an OData service interface.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak at a user group known for consistently bringing in only the very best speakers and content.

At the end of the talk, I was presented with a certificate of appreciation for my speaking contribution at today’s event.

I look forward to returning to the Gold Coast .Net User’s Group on October 28th, 2010 as part of the SoFla PDC 2010 where I will be speaking on the latest and greatest ASP.Net MVC 3.

All the best,

--Sam Abraham

Exploring NuPack Tools from an ASP.Net MVC 3 Developer's Perspective

Sam Abraham — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 19:28:37 GMT

As I continue to explore ASP.Net MVC 3, I decided to share a little on NuPack Tools, a recently released Visual Studio 2010 extension. There are a few nice blog entries on NuPack already which you can access here.

Figure 1 - NuPack Tools shown as a Visual Studio 2010 Extension

What is NuPack Tools?

NuPack Tools is a Visual Studio 2010 Extension installed along with ASP.Net MVC 3 and also available as a stand-alone install. It provides a friendly interface that automates the retrieval and installation of available packages to be incorporated in Visual Studio projects. NuPack is open source and can be contributed to by developers outside of Microsoft. In determining available packages, NuPack connects to an ATOM feed from Microsoft by default, but can be configured to point to other sources as shown below.

Figure 2 - NuPack Tools package sources setup

Figure 3 - NuPack Tools default ATOM feed from Microsoft

NuPack provides an easy-to-use PowerShell interface (accessible from View->Other Windows->Package Manager Console) where you can search/install/uninstall packages. NuPack can also be used via a user interface by selecting the Add Package Reference (from the references context menu).

Figure 4 - NuPack Tools user interface.

Figure 5 - NuPack Package Manager Console interface

NuPack caries special importance for MVC projects as it enables the easy lookup, installation and management of the many MVC extension packages available.

The Package Manager Console features a convenient get-help command which can be used to quickly get up to speed with the various switches a command can accept.

Figure 6- NuPack Package Manager Console get-help command.

--Sam Abraham