Dotnetcat » .NET Books » ASP.NET books

This book is for anyone who wants to learn how to build rich and interactive web sites that run on the Microsoft platform. With the knowledge you gain from this book, you create a great foundation to build any type of web site, ranging from simple hobby-related web sites to sites you may be creating for commercial purposes.

Anyone new to web programming should be able to follow along because no prior background in web development is assumed although it helps if you do have a basic understanding of HTML and the web in general. The book starts at the very beginning of web development by showing you how to obtain and install Visual Web Developer. The chapters that follow gradually introduce you to new technologies, building on top of the knowledge gained in the previous chapters.

Do you have a strong preference for Visual Basic over C# or the other way around? Or do you think both languages are equally cool? Or maybe you haven't made up your mind yet and want to learn both languages? Either way, you'll like this book because all code examples are presented in both languages!

Even if you have some experience with prior versions of ASP.NET, you may gain a lot from this book. Although many concepts from previous versions are brought forward into ASP.NET 4, you'll discover there's a lot of new stuff to be found in this book, including an introduction to the ADO.NET Entity Framework, the inclusion of jQuery, ASP.NET AJAX, the many changes to the ASP.NET 4 Framework, and much more.

This book teaches you how to create a feature-rich, data-driven, and interactive web site called Planet Wrox. Although this is quite a mouthful, you'll find that with Visual Web Developer 2010, developing such a web site isn't as hard as it seems. You'll see the entire process of building a web site, from installing Visual Web Developer 2010 in Chapter 1 all the way up to putting your web application on a live server in Chapter 19. The book is divided into 19 chapters, each dealing with a specific subject.

• Chapter 1, “Getting Started with ASP.NET 4” shows you how to obtain and install Visual Web Developer 2010. You'll get instructions for downloading and installing the free edition of Visual Web Developer 2010, called the Express edition. You are also introduced to HTML, the language behind every web page. The chapter closes with an overview of the customization options that Visual Web Developer gives you.

• Chapter 2, “Building an ASP.NET Web Site” shows you how to create a new web site and how to add new elements like pages to it. Besides learning how to create a well-structured site, you also see how to use the numerous tools in Visual Web Developer to create HTML and ASP.NET pages.

• Chapter 3, “Designing Your Web Pages.” Visual Web Developer comes with a host of tools that allow you to create well-designed and attractive web pages. In this chapter, you see how to make good use of these tools. Additionally, you learn about CSS, the language that is used to format web pages.

• Chapter 4, “Working with ASP.NET Server Controls.” ASP.NET Server Controls are one of the most important concepts in ASP.NET. They allow you to create complex and feature-rich web sites with very little code. This chapter introduces you to the large number of server controls that are available, explains what they are used for, and shows you how to use them.

• Chapter 5, “Programming Your ASP.NET Web Pages.” Although the built-in CSS tools and the ASP.NET Server Controls can get you a long way in creating web pages, you are likely to use a programming language to enhance your pages. This chapter serves as an introduction to programming with a strong focus on programming web pages. Best of all: all the examples you see in this chapter (and the rest of the book) are in both Visual Basic and C#, so you can choose the language you like best.

• Chapter 6, “Creating Consistent Looking Web Sites.” ASP.NET helps you create consistent-looking pages through the use of master pages, which allow you to define the global look and feel of a page. Skins and themes help you to centralize the looks of controls and other visual elements in your site. You also see how to create a base page that helps to centralize programming code that you need on all pages in your site.

• Chapter 7, “Navigation.” To help your visitors find their way around your site, ASP.NET comes with a number of navigation controls. These controls are used to build the navigation structure of your site. They can be connected to your site's central site map that defines the pages in your web site. You also learn how to programmatically send users from one page to another.

• Chapter 8, “User Controls.” User controls are reusable page fragments that can be used in multiple web pages. As such, they are great for repeating content such as menus, banners, and so on. In this chapter, you learn how to create and use user controls and enhance them with some programmatic intelligence.

• Chapter 9, “Validating User Input.” A large part of interactivity in your site is defined by the input of your users. This chapter shows you how to accept, validate, and process user input using ASP.NET Server Controls. Additionally, you see how to send e-mail from your ASP.NET web application and how to read from text files.

• Chapter 10, “ASP.NET AJAX.” Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX allows you to create good-looking, flicker-free web pages that close the gap between traditional desktop applications and web applications. In this chapter you learn how to use the built-in Ajax features to enhance the presence of your web pages, resulting in a smoother interaction with the web site.

• Chapter 11, “jQuery.” jQuery is a popular, open source and cross-browser JavaScript library designed to make it easier to interact with web pages in the client’s browser. In this chapter you learn the basics of jQuery and see how to add rich visual effects and animations to your web pages.

• Chapter 12, “Introducing Databases.” Understanding how to use a database is critical to building web sites, as most modern web sites require the use of a database. You’ll learn the basics of SQL, the query language that allows you to access and alter data in a database. In addition, you are introduced to the database tools found in Visual Web Developer that help you create and manage your SQL Server databases.

• Chapter 13, “Displaying and Updating Data.” Building on the knowledge you gained in the previous chapter, this chapter shows you how to use the ASP.NET data-bound and data source controls to create a rich interface that enables your users to interact with the data in the database that these controls target.

• Chapter 14, “LINQ and the ADO.NET Entity Framework.” LINQ is Microsoft’s solution for accessing objects, databases, XML, and more. The ADO.NET Entity Framework (EF) is Microsoft's new technology for database access. This chapter shows you what LINQ is all about, how to use the visual EF designer built into Visual Studio, and how to write LINQ to EF queries to get data in and out of your SQL Server database.

• Chapter 15, “Working with Data—Advanced Topics.” While earlier chapters focused mostly on the technical foundations of working with data, this chapter looks at the same topic from a front-end perspective. You see how to change the visual appearance of your data through the use of control styles. You also see how to interact with the data-bound controls and how to speed up your application by keeping a local copy of frequently accessed data.

• Chapter 16, “Security in Your ASP.NET 4 Web Site.” Although presented quite late in the book, security is a first-class, important topic. This chapter shows you how to make use of the built-in ASP.NET features related to security. You learn about a number of application services that facilitate security. You also learn how to let users sign up for an account on your web site, how to distinguish between anonymous and logged-on users, and how to manage the users in your system.

• Chapter 17, “Personalizing Web Sites.” Building on the security features introduced in Chapter 16, this chapter shows you how to create personalized web pages with content targeted at individual users. You see how to configure and use ASP.NET Profile that enables you to store personalized data for known and anonymous visitors.

• Chapter 18, “Exception Handling, Debugging, and Tracing.” In order to understand, improve, and fix the code you write for your ASP.NET web pages you need good debugging tools. Visual Web Developer ships with great debugging support that enables you to diagnose the state of your application at run time, helping you find and fix problems before your users do.

• Chapter 19, “Deploying Your Web Site.” By the end of the book, you should have a web site that is ready to be shown to the world. But how exactly do you do that? What are the things you need to know and understand to put your web site out in the wild? This chapter gives the answers and provides you with a good look at configuring different production systems in order to run your final web site.

Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

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 additio...

This book is for anyone who wants to learn how to build rich and interactive web sites that run on the Microsoft platform. With the knowledge you gain from this book, you create a great foundation to build any type of web site, ranging from simple hobby-related web sites to sites you may be creating for commercial purposes.

Anyone new to web programming should be able to follow along because no prior background in web development is assumed. The book starts at the very beginning of web development by showing you how to obtain and install Visual Web Developer. The chapters that follow gradually introduce you to new technologies, building on top of the knowledge gained in the previous chapters.

Do you have a strong preference for Visual Basic over C# or the other way around? Or do you think both languages are equally cool? Or maybe you haven't made up your mind yet and want to learn both languages? Either way, you'll like this book because all code examples are presented in both languages!

Even if you're already familiar with previous versions of ASP.NET, with the 1.x versions in particular, you may gain a lot from this book. Although many concepts from ASP.NET 2.0 are brought forward into ASP.NET 3.5, you'll discover there's a host of new stuff to be found in this book, including an introduction to LINQ, the new CSS and JavaScript debugging tools, new ASP.NET controls, and integrated support for ASP.NET Ajax.

To build effective and attractive database-driven web sites, you need two things: a solid and fast framework to run your web pages on and a rich and extensive environment to create and program these web pages. With ASP.NET 3.5 and Visual Web Developer 2008 you get both. Together they form the platform to create dynamic and interactive web applications.

ASP.NET 3.5 builds on top of its popular predecessor ASP.NET 2.0. While maintaining backward compatibility with sites built using this older version, the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 in general and ASP.NET 3.5 in particular add a lot of new, compelling features to the mix.

Continuing the path of "less code" that was entered with the 2.0 version of the .NET Framework, ASP.NET 3.5 lets you accomplish more with even less code. New features like LINQ that are added to the .NET Framework allow you to access a database with little to no hand written code. The integration of Microsoft ASP.NET Ajax into the ASP.NET Framework and Visual Web Developer means you can now create fast responding and spiffy web interfaces simply by dragging a few controls onto your page and setting a few properties. This book gives you an in-depth look at both these technologies.

The support for cascading style sheets (CSS), the language to lay out and format web pages, has undergone a major overhaul in Visual Web Developer. The design time support, that shows you how a page will eventually look in the browser, has been vastly improved. Additionally, Visual Web Developer now ships with a lot of tools that make writing CSS a breeze.

However, drag-and-drop support and visual tools are not the only things you'll learn from this book. ASP.NET 3.5 and Visual Web Developer 2008 come with a great and extensive set of tools to help you program your web applications. These tools range from the new LINQ syntax that allows you to query data and databases in your web applications, to the vastly improved debugging capabilities that allow you to debug your application from client-side JavaScript all the way up into your server-side code, all with the same familiar user interface, commands, and actions.

Under the hood, ASP.NET 3.5 makes use of the same run-time as version 2.0. This ensures a great backward compatibility with that version, which means that ASP.NET 2.0 applications continue to run under the new framework. But don't be fooled by the fact that the run-time hasn't changed. Although the technical underpinnings needed to execute your web application haven't changed, the .NET 3.5 Framework and ASP.NET add a lot of new features, as you'll discover in this book.

Probably the best thing of Visual Web Developer 2008 is its price: it's available for free. Although the commercial versions of Visual Studio 2008 ship with Visual Web Developer, you can also download and install the free Express Edition. This makes Visual Web Developer 2008 and ASP.NET 3.5 probably the most attractive and compelling web development technologies available today.

This book teaches you how to create a feature-rich, data-driven, and interactive web site. Although this is quite a mouthful, you'll find that with Visual Web Developer 2008 this isn’t as hard as it seems. You'll see the entire process of building a web site, from installing Visual Web Developer 2008 in Chapter 1 all the way up to putting your web application on a live server in Chapter 18. The book is divided into 18 chapters, each dealing with a specific subject.

Chapter 1, “Getting Started With ASP.NET 3.5.” In this chapter you'll see how to obtain and install Visual Web Developer 2008. You'll get instructions for downloading and installing the free edition of Visual Web Developer 2008, called the Express Edition. You are also introduced to HTML, the language behind every web page. The chapter closes with an overview of the customization options that Visual Web Developer gives you.

Chapter 2, “Building an ASP.NET Web Site.” This chapter shows you how to create a new web site and how to add new elements like pages to it. Besides learning how to create a well-structured site, you also see how to use the numerous tools in Visual Web Developer to create HTML and ASP.NET pages.

Chapter 3, “Designing Your Web Pages.” Visual Web Developer comes with a host of tools that allow you to create well-designed and attractive web pages. In this chapter, you see how to make good use of these tools. Additionally, you learn about CSS, the language that is used to format web pages.

Chapter 4, “Working with ASP.NET Controls.” ASP.NET Server controls are one of the most important concepts in ASP.NET. They allow you to create complex and feature-rich web sites with very little code. This chapter introduces you to the large number of server controls that are available, explains what they are used for, and shows you how to use them.

Chapter 5, “Programming Your ASP.NET Web Pages.” Although the built-in CSS tools and the ASP.NET server controls can get you a long way in creating web pages, you are likely to use a programming language to enhance your pages. This chapter serves as an introduction to programming with a strong focus on programming web pages. Best of all: all the examples you see in this chapter (and the rest of the book) are in both Visual Basic and C#, so you can choose the language you like best.

Chapter 6, “Creating Consistent Looking Web Sites.” Consistency is important to give your web site an attractive and professional appeal. ASP.NET helps you create consistent-looking pages through the use of master pages, which allow you to define the global look and feel of a page. Skins and themes help you to centralize the looks of controls and other visual elements in your site. You also see how to create a base page that helps to centralize programming code that you need on all pages in your site.

Chapter 7, “Navigation.” To help your visitors find their way around your site, ASP.NET comes with a number of navigation controls. These controls are used to build the navigation structure of your site. They can be connected to your site's central site map that defines the pages in your web site. You also learn how to programmatically send users from one page to another.

Chapter 8, “User Controls.” User Controls are reusable page fragments that can be used in multiple web pages. As such, they are great for repeating content like menus, banners, and so on. In this chapter, you learn how to create and use User Controls and enhance them with some programmatic intelligence.

Chapter 9, “Validating User Input.” A large part of interactivity in your site is defined by the input of your users. This chapter shows you how to accept, validate, and process user input using ASP.NET server controls. Additionally, you see how to send e-mail from your ASP.NET web application and how to read from text files.

Chapter 10, “ASP.NET Ajax.” Microsoft ASP.NET Ajax allows you to create good looking, flicker free web pages that close the gap between traditional desktop applications and web applications. In this chapter you learn how to use the built-in Ajax features to enhance the presence of your web pages, resulting in a smoother interaction with the web site.

Chapter 11, “Introduction to Databases.” Understanding how to use databases is critical to building modern web sites, as most modern web sites require the use of a database. You'll learn the basics of SQL, the query language that allows you to access and alter data in a database. In addition, you are introduced to the database tools found in Visual Web Developer that help you create and manage your SQL Server databases.

Chapter 12, “Displaying and Updating Data.” Building on the knowledge you gained in the previous chapter, this chapter shows you how to use the ASP.NET data-bound and data source controls to create a rich interface that enables your users to interact with the data in the database that these controls target.

Chapter 13, “LINQ.” LINQ is Microsoft's new solution for accessing objects, databases, XML, and more. In this chapter you'll see how to use LINQ to SQL to access SQL Server databases. Instead of writing a lot of manual code, you create a bunch of LINQ objects that do the heavy work for you. This chapter shows you what LINQ is all about, how to use the visual LINQ designer built into Visual Web Develo...

Ultra-Fast ASP.NET presents a practical approach to building fast and scalable web sites using ASP.NET and SQL Server. In addition to a wealth of tips, tricks and secrets, you'll find advice and code examples for all tiers of your application, including the client, caching, IIS 7, ASP.NET, threads, session state, SQL Server, Analysis Services, infrastructure and operations. By applying the ultra-fast approach to your projects, you’ll squeeze every last ounce of performance out of your code and infrastructure—giving your site unrivaled speed.

The approach is mostly prescriptive; rather than drowning you in options, the book presents and explains specific high-impact recommendations and demonstrates them with detailed examples. Using this knowledge, you will soon be building high-performance web sites that scale easily as your site grows.

What you’ll learn

• A way of thinking about performance issues that will help you obtain real results.
• How to apply key principles that will help you build ultra-fast and ultra-scalable web sites.
• How to use the ultra-fast approach to be fast in multiple dimensions. You’ll have not only fast pages but also fast changes, fast fixes, fast deployments and more.
• Techniques that are being used by some of the world's largest web sites.
• How to structure your HTML and CSS to create pages that load ultra-fast.
• Tips for using Silverlight, Ajax and IIS 7 to improve the performance of your site.
• How to use comprehensive caching at all tiers to deliver content faster.
• Why you should avoid traditional session state and how to make the best use of cookies.
• Tips and tricks for optimizing your ASP.NET and SQL Server code for performance and scalability.
• How to use Analysis Services to offload your relational database.
• Why many sites that serve individual pages quickly are not scalable.
• How to avoid common pitfalls that can have an adverse impact on your site’s performance, both now and as it grows.
• How to apply an end-to-end systems-based approach to web site performance and scalability, which includes everything from the browser and the network to caching, back-end operations, hardware infrastructure, and your software development process.

Who is this book for?

This book will be useful for intermediate to advanced developers and architects who want to improve the performance of their ASP.NET-based web sites. Some knowledge of ASP.NET, SQL Server, and IIS is assumed. Example code is provided in C#. Experienced web developers who have recently moved from Java or PHP to .NET will find lots of valuable and interesting information.

This book will also be useful for non-developers who have a technical interest in what makes a web site fast. In particular, if you’re involved with web site operations, testing, or management, you will discover many of the principals and issues that your development teams should be addressing, along with demonstrations that help drive the points home.

Top-selling MVC book from a top team at Microsoft—now fully updated!

ASP.NET MVC 2.0 is now available and shipping with Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4. A new update to Microsoft’s Model-View-Controller technologies, MVC 2 enables developers to build dynamic, data-driven Web sites. Professional ASP.NET MVC 2 shows you step-by-step how to use MVC 2. You’ll learn both the theory behind MVC 2, as well as walk through practical tutorials, where you’ll create a real-world application. Topics include transitioning from ASP.NET development, as well as an overview of related tools and technologies, including LINQ, jQuery, and REST.

This book is divided into two very broad sections, each comprising several chapters.

The first half of the book is concerned with introducing the MVC pattern and how ASP.NET MVC 2 implements that pattern.

Chapter 1 "NerdDinner" uses a small but complete application to walk you through how to build an ASP.NET MVC 2 application and some of the core concepts behind ASP.NET 2 MVC. 

Chapter 2 "Model-View-Controller and ASP.NET" starts off with a description of the Model-View-Controller pattern, explaining the basic concepts of the pattern and providing a bit of its history. The chapter goes on to describe the state of the MVC pattern on the web today as it is implemented by various frameworks, such as ASP.NET MVC 2.

Chapter 3 "ASP.NET

ASP.NET 3.5 is the latest version of Microsoft’s revolutionary ASP.NET technology. It is the principal standard for creating dynamic web pages on the Windows platform. Pro ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008 raises the bar for high–quality, practical advice on learning and deploying Microsoft’s dynamic web solution.

This new edition is updated with everything you need to integrate Silverlight 2.0 and SQL Server 2008 into your ASP.NET applications. You will learn about Silverlight’s exciting new features so that your ASP projects can be rich in visual flair and compelling to the user.

Seasoned .NET professionals Matthew MacDonald and Mario Szpuszta explain how you can get the most from this groundbreaking new technology. They cover ASP.NET 3.5 as a whole, illustrating both the brand–new features and the functionality carried over from previous versions of ASP. This book will give you the knowledge you need to code real ASP.NET 3.5 applications in the best possible style.

This book will teach you ASP.NET 3.5 starting with core concepts before moving on to more advanced topics. You will learn

• Core concepts of ASP.NET 3.5. Why it’s special. What its fundamental principals are. The basics of Visual Studio. How ASP.NET 3.5 controls are created, and how they fit into ASP.NET 3.5 pages, ultimately creating full applications.
• Security. Once considered the Achilles heel of all Windows web applications, security has vastly improved and is a cornerstone of ASP.NET 3.5. This book explains the various forms of available security and how to best apply them.
• Taking things further using advanced user interface techniques. This includes user controls, customer server controls, client–side JavaScript, and GDI+.
• Web services. In an increasingly connected world, working with web services grows in importance. This book will show you how to work with them.
• ASP.NET AJAX, with an emphasis on contemporary web development techniques.
• Development using Internet Information Services 7, Microsoft’s premier web hosting platform.
• And much more…

About the Apress Pro Series

The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder.

You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard–won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.

ASP.NET 3.5 Unleashed is the most comprehensive book available on the Microsoft ASP.NET 3.5 Framework, covering all aspects of the ASP.NET 3.5 Framework--no matter how advanced.

 

This edition covers all the new features of ASP.NET 3.5. It explains Microsoft LINQ to SQL in detail. It includes a chapter on the two new data access controls introduced with the ASP.NET 3.5 Framework: ListView and DataPager. With its coverage of ASP.NET AJAX, this book shows you how to take advantage of Microsoft’s server-side AJAX framework to retrofit existing ASP.NET applications with AJAX functionality. It also demonstrates how to use Microsoft’s client-side AJAX framework to build the web applications of the future: pure client-side AJAX applications. All code samples are written in the C# programming language. (Visual Basic versions of all code samples are included on the CD-ROM that accompanies this book.)

 

• Take advantage of Microsoft’s new database query language, LINQ to SQL, to easily build database-driven web applications
• Learn how to use the new ListView and DataPager data access controls to build flexible user interfaces
• Take advantage of ASP.NET AJAX when building both server-side and client-side web applications
• Use the AJAX Control Toolkit to create auto-complete text fields, draggable panels, masked edit fields, and complex animations
• Design ASP.NET websites
• Secure your ASP.NET applications
• Create custom components
• Build highly interactive websites that can scale to handle thousands of simultaneous users
• Learn to build a complete ASP.NET 3.5 website from start to finish–the last chapter of the book includes a sample ASP.NET 3.5 web application written with LINQ to SQL and ASP.NET AJAX

 

CD-ROM includes all examples and source code presented in this book in both C# and Visual Basic.

 

"This book is by far the best computer programming book I have ever bought. You can go into my upstairs closet and find 20-30 books that I have purchased since the days of VB6.... All together, they could not add up to as much information as you have given me in the first 11 chapters of this book." (A developer's comment on the previous edition of Murach's ASP.NET)

Already know how to code Visual Basic 2008 desktop applications? Then, you're ready to master web programming with the 3.5 edition of this best-selling ASP.NET book from Murach Books.

It covers the 3.5 features that provide new functionality...like the ListView and DataPager data controls, LINQ data sources, new CSS-related tools, and ASP.NET AJAX...while it teaches you how to develop web applications from scratch. And it does that using all the same features that have made earlier editions such favorites among professional developers:

#1. It's concise, practical, and crystal-clear in telling you what you need to know

#2. It shows you how to get the most from Visual Studio 2008 as you code, test, debug, and deploy ASP.NET web applications

#3. It gives you a 7-chapter section on database programming...2 more chapters than in the previous edition because .NET continues to deliver new, powerful tools for this critical component of business applications

#4. It gives you solid training in the essential skills that you'll use every day, including data validation...state management...improving the user experience with easy site navigation and a standard look and feel...boosting user response time with ASP.NET AJAX...handling security...developing reusable controls...working with database data using SQL, object, and LINQ data sources...and more

#5. It gives you real-world application examples that guide you in applying what you're learning as you develop your own websites (you can download the applications for free from the Murach website)

#6. Its paired pages presentation makes for fast reading, instant reinforcement, and time-saving reference (to see how the paired pages work, you can download free chapters from the Murach website)

So if you need to learn ASP.NET 3.5 web programming, we hope you'll try this book first. We're convinced that it will deliver the training you need better and faster than any competing book.

This book was written to introduce you to the features and capabilities that ASP.NET 3.5 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 3.5: In C# and VB by Imar Spaanjaars (Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2008) 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 spends its time reviewing the 3.5 release of ASP.NET. Each major new feature included in ASP.NET 3.5 is covered in detail. The following list tells you something about the content of each chapter.

• Chapter 1, "Application and Page Frameworks." This chapter shows you how to build ASP.NET applications using IIS or the built-in Web server that comes with Visual Studio 2008. 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 2008.

• Chapters 2, 3, and 4.These three chapters are grouped here 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 5, "Working with Master Pages."Master pages are a great capability found in ASP.NET. They provide a means of creating templated pages that enable you to work with the entire application, as opposed to single pages.

• Chapter 6, "Themes and Skins.” 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 in ASP.NET 3.5.” One of the more important tasks of ASP.NET is presenting data, and this chapter shows you how to do that with ASP.NET controls.

• 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." 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 use this new feature in web applications today.

• Chapter 10, "Working with XML and LINQ to XML." This chapter looks at the XML technologies built into ASP.NET and the underlying .NET Framework to help you easily extract, create, manipulate, and store XML..

• Chapter 11, "IIS7." Probably the most substantial release of IIS in its history, IIS 7.0 will change the way you host and work with your ASP.NET applications.

• Chapter 12, "Introduction to the Provider Model." A number of systems are built into ASP.NET that make the lives of developers so much easier and more productive than ever before. These systems are built upon an architecture called a provider model, which is rather extensible. This chapter gives an overview of this provider model and how it is used throughout ASP.NET 3.5.

• Chapter 13, "Extending the Provider Model." This chapter looks at some of the ways to extend the provider model found in ASP.NET 3.5. This chapter also reviews a couple of sample extensions to the provider model.

• Chapter 14, "Site Navigation." Many developers do not simply develop single pages—they build applications. One of the application capabilities provided by ASP.NET 3.5 is the site navigation system covered in this chapter.

• Chapter 15, "Personalization.". The ASP.NET team developed a way to store end user information—the ASP.NET personalization system.

• Chapter 16, "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 17, "Portal Frameworks and Web Parts." This chapter explains Web Parts—a way of encapsulating pages into smaller and more manageable objects.

• Chapter 18, "HTML and CSS Design with ASP.NET." A lot of focus on building a CSS-based Web application was placed on Visual Studio 2008. This chapter takes a close look at how you can effectively work with HTML and CSS design for your ASP.NET applications.

• Chapter 19, "ASP.NET AJAX."AJAX signifies the capability to build applications that make use of the XMLHttpRequest object. New to Visual Studio 2008 is the ability to build AJAX-enabled ASP.NET applications from the default install of the IDE.

• Chapter 20, "ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit." This chapter takes a good look at the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit, a series of new controls that are now available to make AJAX web development rather simple.

• Chapter 21, "Security." This security chapter discusses security beyond the membership and role management features provided by ASP.NET 3.5. 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 22, "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 23 , "Caching." Because of the request-response nature of ASP.NET, caching on the server becomes 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 3.5.

• Chapter 24, "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 25, "File I/O and Streams." More often than not, you want your ASP.NET applications to work with items that are outside the base application. This chapter takes a close look at working with various file types and streams that might come into your ASP.NET applications.

• Chapter 26, "User and Server Controls." This chapter describes building your own server controls and how to use them within your applications.

• Chapter 27, "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 can be powerful tools for creating web applications.

• Chapter 28, "Using Business Objects." You are going to have components created with previous technologies that you do not want to rebuild but that you do want to integrate into new ASP.NET applications. Beyond showing you how to integrate your COM components into your applications, this chapter shows you how to build newer style .NET components instead of turning to the previous COM component architecture.

• Chapter 29, "Building and Consuming Services." This chapter reveals the ease not only of building XML Web services, but consuming them in an ASP.NET application. This chapter then ventures further by describing how to build XML Web services that utilize SOAP headers and how to consume this particular type of service.

• Chapter 30, "Localization." ASP.NET provides an outstanding way to address the internationalization of Web applications. This chapter looks at some of the important items to consider when building your Web applications for the world.

• Chapter 31, "Configuration." This chapter teaches you to modify the capabilities and behaviors of ASP.NET using the various configuration files at your disposal.

• Chapter 32, "Instrumentation." The ASP.NET framework includes performance counters, the capability to work with the Windows Event Tracing system, possibilities for application tracing , and the most exciting part of this discussion—a health monitoring system that allows you to log a number of different events over an application's lifetime.

• Chapter 33, "Administration and Management." This chapter provides an overview of the new GUI tools that come with APS.NET that enable you to manage your Web applications easily and effectively.

• Chapter 34, "Packaging and Deploying ASP.NET Applications." This chapter takes ...

Ace your preparation for the skills measured by MCTS Exam 70-562—and on the job. Work at your own pace through a series of lessons and reviews that fully cover each exam objective. Then, reinforce and apply what you’ve learned through real-world case scenarios and practice exercises. This official Microsoft study guide is designed to help you make the most of your study time.

Maximize your performance on the exam by learning to:

• Program a new application; add and configure server controls
• Manage data input, user state, and security
• Implement data source controls and data-bound controls
• Use AJAX-enabled forms and scripts
• Create and consume XML Web services and WFC services
• Design for accessibility, globalization, and mobility
• Debug, deploy, monitor, and troubleshoot applications
• Assess your skills with the practice tests on CD.

You can work through hundreds of questions using multiple testing modes to meet your specific learning needs. You get detailed explanations for right and wrong answers—including a customized learning path that describes how and where to focus your studies.

Your kit includes:

• 15% exam discount from Microsoft. Offer expires 12/31/13. Details inside.
• Official self-paced study guide.
• Practice tests with multiple, customizable testing options and a learning plan based on your results.
• 325 practice and review questions.
• Code samples in Microsoft Visual Basic and Visual C# on CD.
• 90-day trial of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition.
• Case scenarios, exercises, and best practices.
• Fully searchable eBook of this guide, plus sample chapters from related books.