This book was written to introduce you to the features and capabilities that ASP.NET 4 offers, as well as to give you an explanation of the foundation that ASP.NET provides. We assume you have a general understanding of Web technologies, such as previous versions of ASP.NET, Active Server Pages 2.0/3.0, or JavaServer Pages. If you understand the basics of Web programming, you should not have much trouble following along with this book's content.If you are brand new to ASP.NET, be sure to check out Beginning ASP.NET 4: In C# and VB by Imar Spaanjaars (Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2010) to help you understand the basics.In addition to working with Web technologies, we also assume that you understand basic programming constructs, such as variables, For Each loops, and object-oriented programming.You may also be wondering whether this book is for the Visual Basic developer or the C# developer. We are happy to say that it is for both! When the code differs substantially, this book provides examples in both VB and C#.This book explores the 4 release of ASP.NET. It covers each major new feature included in ASP.NET 4 in detail. The following list tells you something about the content of each chapter.Chapter 1, ″Application and Page Frameworks.″ The first chapter covers the frameworks of ASP.NET applications as well as the structure and frameworks provided for single ASP.NET pages. This chapter shows you how to build ASP.NET applications using IIS or the built-in Web server that comes with Visual Studio 2010. This chapter also shows you the folders and files that are part of ASP.NET. It discusses ways to compile code and shows you how to perform cross-page posting. This chapter ends by showing you easy ways to deal with your classes from within Visual Studio 2010.Chapters 2, 3, and 4. These three chapters are grouped together because they all deal with server controls. This batch of chapters starts by examining the idea of the server control and its pivotal role in ASP.NET development. In addition to looking at the server control framework, these chapters delve into the plethora of server controls that are at your disposal for ASP.NET development projects. Chapter 2, ″ASP.NET Server Controls and Client-Side Scripts,″ looks at the basics of working with server controls. Chapter 3, ″ASP.NET Web Server Controls,″ covers the controls that have been part of the ASP.NET technology since its initial release and the controls that have been added in each of the ASP.NET releases. Chapter 4, ″Validation Server Controls,″ describes a special group of server controls: those for validation.Chapter 5, ″Working with Master Pages.″ Master pages provide a means of creating templated pages that enable you to work with the entire application, as opposed to single pages. This chapter examines the creation of these templates and how to apply them to your content pages throughout an ASP.NET application.Chapter 6, ″Themes and Skins.″ The Cascading Style Sheet files you are allowed to use in ASP.NET 1.0/1.1 are simply not adequate in many regards, especially in the area of server controls. This chapter looks at how to deal with the styles that your applications require and shows you how to create a centrally managed look-and-feel for all the pages of your application by using themes and the skin files that are part of a theme.Chapter 7, ″Data Binding.″ One of the more important tasks of ASP.NET is presenting data, and this chapter looks at the underlying capabilities that enable you to work with the data programmatically before issuing the data to a control.Chapter 8, ″Data Management with ADO.NET.″ This chapter presents the ADO.NET data model provided by ASP.NET, which allows you to handle the retrieval, updating, and deleting of data quickly and logically.Chapter 9, ″Querying with LINQ.″ The.NET Framework 4 includes a nice access model language called LINQ. LINQ is a set of extensions to the .NET Framework that encompass language-integrated query, set, and transform operations. This chapter introduces you to LINQ and how to effectively use this feature in your Web applications today.Chapter 10, ″Working with XML and LINQ to XML.″ The .NET Framework and ASP.NET 4 have many capabilities built into their frameworks that enable you to easily extract, create, manipulate, and store XML. This chapter takes a close look at the XML technologies built into ASP.NET and the underlying .NET Framework.Chapter 11, ″Introduction to the Provider Model.″ The provider model is built into ASP.NET to make the lives of developers so much easier and more productive than ever before. This chapter gives an overview of this provider model and how it is used throughout ASP.NET 4.Chapter 12, ″Extending the Provider Model.″ After an introduction of the provider model, this chapter looks at some of the ways to extend the provider model found in ASP.NET 4. This chapter also reviews a couple of sample extensions to the provider model.Chapter 13, ″Site Navigation.″ Most developers do not simply develop single pages—they build applications. One of the application capabilities provided by ASP.NET 4 is the site navigation system covered in this chapter.Chapter 14, ″Personalization.″ Developers are always looking for ways to store information pertinent to the end user. After it is stored, this personalization data has to be persisted for future visits or for grabbing other pages within the same application. The ASP.NET team developed a way to store this information—the ASP.NET personalization system. The great thing about this system is that you configure the entire behavior of the system from the web.config file.Chapter 15, ″Membership and Role Management.″ This chapter covers the membership and role management system developed to simplify adding authentication and authorization to your ASP.NET applications. This chapter focuses on using the web.config file for controlling how these systems are applied, as well as on the server controls that work with the underlying systems.Chapter 16, ″Portal Frameworks and Web Parts.″ This chapter explains Web Parts—a way of encapsulating pages into smaller and more manageable objects.Chapter 17, ″HTML and CSS Design with ASP.NET.″ Visual Studio 2010 places a lot of focus on building a CSS-based Web. This chapter takes a close look at how you can effectively work with HTML and CSS design for your ASP.NET applications.Chapter 18, ″ASP.NET AJAX.″ AJAX is an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. In Web application development, it signifies the capability to build applications that make use of the XMLHttpRequest object. Visual Studio 2010 contains the ability to build AJAX-enabled ASP.NET applications from the default install of the IDE. This chapter takes a look at this way to build your applications.Chapter 19, ″ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit.″ Along with the capabilities to build ASP.NET applications that make use of the AJAX technology, a series of controls is available to make the task rather simple. This chapter takes a good look at the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit and how to use this toolkit with your applications today.Chapter 20, ″Security.″ This chapter discusses security beyond the membership and role management features provided by ASP.NET 4. This chapter provides an in-depth look at the authentication and authorization mechanics inherent in the ASP.NET technology, as well as HTTP access types and impersonations.Chapter 21, ″State Management.″ Because ASP.NET is a request-response–based technology, state management and the performance of requests and responses take on significant importance. This chapter introduces these two separate but important areas of ASP.NET development.Chapter 22, ″Caching.″ Because of the request-response nature of ASP.NET, caching (storing previous generated results, images, and pages) on the server becomes rather important to the performance of your ASP.NET applications. This chapter looks at some of the advanced caching capabilities provided by ASP.NET, including the SQL cache invalidation feature which is part of ASP.NET 4. This chapter also takes a look at object caching and object caching extensibility.Chapter 23, ″Debugging and Error Handling.″ This chapter tells you how to properly structure error handling within your applications. It also shows you how to use various debugging techniques to find errors that your applications might contain.Chapter 24, ″File I/O and Streams.″ This chapter takes a close look at working with various file types and streams that might come into your ASP.NET applications.Chapter 25, ″User and Server Controls.″ Not only can you use the plethora of server controls that come with ASP.NET, but you can also use the same framework these controls use and build your own. This chapter describes building your own server controls and how to use them within your applications.Chapter 26, ″Modules and Handlers.″ This chapter looks at two methods of manipulating the way ASP.NET processes HTTP requests: HttpModule and HttpHandler. Each method provides a unique level of access to the underlying processing of ASP.NET, and each can be a powerful tool for creating Web applications.Chapter 27, "ASP.NET MVC." ASP.NET MVC is the latest major addition to ASP.NET and has generated a lot of excitement from the development community. ASP.NET MVC supplies you with the means to create ASP.NET using the Model-View-Controller models that many developers expect. ASP.NET MVC provides developers with the testability, flexibility, an...

This book is for the career developer who wants to take his or her skill set and/or project to the next level. If you are a professional software developer with 3–4 years of experience looking to bring a higher level of discipline to your project, or to learn the skills that will help you transition from software engineer to technical lead, then this book is for you. The topics covered in this book will help you focus on delivering software at a higher quality and lower cost. The book is about practical techniques and practices that will help you and your team realize those goals.This book is for the developer understands that the business of software is, first and foremost, business. Writing code is fun, but writing high-quality code on time and at the lowest possible cost is what makes a software project successful. A team lead or architect who wants to succeed must keep that in mind.Given that target audience, this book assumes a certain level of skill at reading code in one or more languages, and basic familiarity with building and testing software projects. It also assumes that you have at least a basic understanding of the software development lifecycle, and how requirements from customers become testable software projects.Who This Book Is Not For: This is not a book for the entry-level developer fresh out of college, or for those just getting started as professional coders. It isn’t a book about writing code; it’s a book about how we write code together while keeping quality up and costs down. It is not for those who want to learn to write more efficient or literate code. There are plenty of other books available on those subjects, as mentioned previously.This is also not a book about project management or development methodology. All of the strategies and techniques presented here are just as applicable to waterfall projects as they are to those employing Agile methodologies. While certain strategies such as Test-Driven Development and Continuous Integration have risen to popularity hand in hand with Agile development methodologies, there is no coupling between them. There are plenty of projects run using SCRUM that do not use TDD, and there are just as many waterfall projects that do. Philosophy versus Practicality: There are a lot of religious arguments in software development. Exceptions versus result codes, strongly typed versus dynamic languages, and where to put your curly braces are just a few examples. This book tried to steer clear of those arguments here. Most of the chapters in this book deal with practical steps that you as a developer can take to improve your skills and improve the state of your project. The author makes no claims that these practices represent the way to write software. They represent strategies that have worked well for the author and other developers that he have worked closely with.Philosophy certainly has its place in software development. Much of the current thinking in project management has been influenced by the Agile philosophy, for example. The next wave may be influenced by the Lean methodologies developed by Toyota for building automobiles. Because it represents a philosophy, the Lean process model can be applied to building software just as easily as to building cars. On the other hand, because they exist at the philosophical level, such methodologies can be difficult to conceptualize. The book tries to favor the practical over the philosophical, the concrete over the theoretical. This should be the kind of book that you can pick up, read one chapter of, and go away with some practical changes you can make to your software project that will make it better.That said, the first part of this book is entitled “Philosophy” because the strategies described in it represent ways of approaching a problem rather than a specific solution. There are just as many practical ways to do Test-Driven Development as there are ways to manage a software project. You will have to pick the way that fits your chosen programming language, environment, and team structure. The book has tried to describe some tangible ways of realizing TDD, but it remains an abstract ideal rather than a one-size-fits-all technical solution. The same applies to Continuous Integration. There are numerous ways of thinking about and achieving a Continuous Integration solution, and this book presents only a few. Continuous Integration represents a way of thinking about your development process rather than a concrete or specific technique.The second and third parts represent more concrete process and construction techniques that can improve your code and your project. They focus on the pragmatic rather than the philosophical.Every Little Bit Helps: You do not have to sit down and read this book from cover to cover. While there are interrelationships between the chapters, each chapter can also stand on its own. If you know that you have a particular problem such as error handling with your current project, read that chapter and try to implement some of the suggestions in it. Don’t feel that you have to overhaul your entire software project at once. The various techniques described in this book can all incrementally improve a project one at a time.If you are starting a brand new project and have an opportunity to define its structure, then by all means read the whole book and see how it influences the way you design your project. If you have to work within an existing project structure, you might have more success applying a few improvements at a time.In terms of personal career growth, the same applies. Every new technique you learn makes you a better developer, so take them one at a time as your schedule and projects allow.Examples: Most of the examples in this book are written in C#. However, the techniques described in this book apply just as well to any other modern programming language with a little translation. Even if you are unfamiliar with the inner workings or details of C# as a language, the examples are very small and simple to understand. Again, this is not a book about how to write code, and the examples in it are all intended to illustrate a specific point, not to become a part of your software project in any literal sense.This book is organized into three sections, Philosophy, Process and Code Construction. The following is a short summary of what you will find in each section and chapter.Part I (Philosophy) contains chapters that focus on abstract ideas about how to approach a software project. Each chapter contains practical examples of how to realize those ideas.Chapter 1 (Buy, not Build) describes how to go about deciding which parts of your software project you need to write yourself and which parts you may be able to purchase or otherwise leverage from someplace else. In order to keep costs down and focus on your real competitive advantage, it is necessary to write only those parts of your application that you really need to.Chapter 2 (Test-Driven Development) examines the Test-Driven Development (or Test-Driven Design) philosophy and some practical ways of applying it to your development lifecycle to produce higher-quality code in less time.Chapter 3 (Continuous Integration) explores the Continuous Integration philosophy and how you can apply it to your project. CI involves automating your build and unit testing processes to give developers a shorter feedback cycle about changes that they make to the project. A shorter feedback cycle makes it easier for developers to work together as a team and at a higher level of productivity.The chapters in Part II (Process) explore processes and tools that you can use as a team to improve the quality of your source code and make it easier to understand and to maintain.Chapter 4 (Done Is Done) contains suggestions for defining what it means for a developer to “finish” a development task. Creating a “done is done” policy for your team can make it easier for developers to work together, and easier for developers and testers to work together. If everyone on your team follows the same set of steps to complete each task, then development will be more predictable and of a higher quality.Chapter 5 (Testing) presents some concrete suggestions for how to create tests, how to run them, and how to organize them to make them easier to run, easier to measure, and more useful to developers and to testers. Included are sections on what code coverage means and how to measure it effectively, how to organize your tests by type, and how to automate your testing processes to get the most benefit from them.Chapter 6 (Source Control) explains techniques for using your source control system more effectively so that it is easier for developers to work together on the same project, and easier to correlate changes in source control with physical software binaries and with defect or issue reports in your tracking system.Chapter 7 (Static Analysis) examines what static analysis is, what information it can provide, and how it can improve the quality and maintainability of your projects.Part III (Code Construction) includes chapters on specific coding techniques that can improve the quality and maintainability of your software projects.Chapter 8 (Contract, Contract, Contract!) tackles programming by contract and how that can make your code easier for developers to understand and to use. Programming by contract can also make your application easier (and therefore less expensive) to maintain and support.Chapter 9 (Limiting Dependencies) focuses on techniques for limiting how dependent each part of your application is upon the others. Limiting dependencies can lead to software that is easier to make changes to and cheaper to maintain as well as easier to deploy and test.Chapter 10 (The Model-View-Presenter Model) offers a brief description of the MVP model and explains how following the MVP model will make your application easier to test....

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