Book review: ASP.NET 3.5 CMS Development

2009-09-04 by mookid8000 1 Comment

asp-net-35-cms-development Another book from Packt, that I got a chance to review, is ASP.NET 3.5 CMS Development.

First I thought that this would be the book that showed me a genuine reference implementation of a CMS in ASP.NET, giving me the introduction to the concepts of CMSs that I think I need. I have never used CMSs before (besides WordPress :)), so I have only a vague notion of the concepts.

But the book turns out to be more like a beginner’s introduction to the .NET stack, which just happens to be in a CMS context.

The book starts out by explaining how to set up an ASP.NET website with a single page based on a text file that can be edited “online”. Then it moves on and expands the website in all directions by putting the pages inside a SQL Server – and then it walks the reader through the details of setting up the site in IIS.

The book is actually pretty good at explaining all these things in a precise to-the-point manner, but I think it should be noted that the stuff in this book is not production ready. But then again, lots of books contain code samples and stuff that is not production ready.

If you are new to the .NET platform, you could definitely benefit from reading this book. If you are looking for instructions on how to develop CMSs, I don’t think this is the right book.

Conclusion: A nice introduction to the .NET platform.

Title: ASP.NET 3.5 CMS Development
Authors: Curt Christianson, Jeff Cochran
ISBN 10/13: 1847193617 / 978-1-847193-61-2
Publisher: Packt Publishing

How to configure NHaml

2008-05-17 by mookid8000 Leave a comment

Ever wanted to use your own custom HtmlHelper extensions inside your NHaml views? I wanted that, but I got this error:

error CS1061: ‘System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper’ does not contain a definition for ‘WhyOhWhy’ and no extension method ‘WhyOhWhy’ accepting a first argument of type ‘System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper’ could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

The problem was that NHaml would not know that there existed some extensions of the HtmlHelper class in some obscure assembly somewhere inside my web app. To do this, you need to tell NHaml exactly which assembly and which namespaces to include in its search. Here is how to do it:

In your web.config, beneath the <configSections> node, add this

<section name="nhamlViewEngine" type="MvcContrib.NHamlViewEngine.Configuration.NHamlViewEngineSection, MvcContrib.NHamlViewEngine" />

1	<section name="nhamlViewEngine" type="MvcContrib.NHamlViewEngine.Configuration.NHamlViewEngineSection, MvcContrib.NHamlViewEngine" />

– and then outside of <configSections>, add this:

<nhamlViewEngine configSource="NHaml.config"/>

1	<nhamlViewEngine configSource="NHaml.config"/>

This will cause NHaml.config to be included. We could just have embedded the configuration inside the web.config file, but we want to make separate NHaml.config files for each environment we want to deploy our application in. Then we can turn on NHaml’s compiled view caching feature by flicking the production attribute.

An example NHaml configuration is something like this:

<nhamlViewEngine production="false">
  <views>
    <assemblies>
      <add assembly="MyAssembly" />
    </assemblies>
    <namespaces>
      <add namespace="MyAssembly.HtmlHelperExtensions" />
      <add namespace="MyAssembly.EvenMoreHtmlHelperExtensions" />
    </namespaces>
  </views>
</nhamlViewEngine>

<views>

</assemblies>

</namespaces>

</views>

</nhamlViewEngine>

Suddenly you will gain access to everything inside the specified namespaces inside your NHaml templates. Nifty!

Nifty web site with ASP.NET MVC

2008-03-10 by mookid8000 1 Comment

Sorry about the delay – I was interrupted by the new ASP.NET MVC release CTP 2 which came out last Wednesday or Thursday or something… I am currently working on updating the series to use CTP 2 instead of the first one… please be patient 🙂

Update: Sorry, but I cancelled this series again. There so many tutorials on how to get going with ASP.NET MVC out there, so I will not finish this series. You should definitely check out Kazi Manzur Rashid’s blog – e.g. his two posts on best practices are brilliant: part 1 & part 2, and he has written a lot of other interesting stuff as well.

Nifty web site with ASP.NET MVC Part 2

2008-02-27 by mookid8000 Leave a comment

[this post is outdated – too much has happened since the first CTP]

In this part of the ASP.NET MVC tutorial we will create our own controller factory which will use Windsor to resolve dependencies and supply each controller with a NHaml view factory. Then we will create some simple views and watch the whole thing in the web browser.
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Nifty web site with ASP.NET MVC Part 1

2008-02-20 by mookid8000 Leave a comment

[this post is outdated – too much has happened since the first CTP]

This is the first post in a series of at least four about ASP.NET MVC, which I am planning. The series will show a way to build a nifty web site with a tidy, sound, and scalable architecture. ASP.NET MVC will be used to structure the web site, Castle ActiveRecord will be used for persistence, Castle Windsor for dependency injection, NUnit and NMock for testing, NHaml for the views, and principles from agile, domain-driven design, and test-driven development will be used. The series assumes that you want to use the model-view-controller pattern, so I will not try to convince you that it is a great way to structure a web site 🙂 – even though it is, and currently in my opinion the only sane way to make websites when they contain more than one page…

ASP.NET MVC is a part of the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions, which is currently only available as a preview. Thus, the details might turn out to be a little off, but still most of the stuff we go through here will apply.

As this is the first post in the series, we will start out by creating a the solution and the project structure – just to get going.
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