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ASP.NET - Quick Guide

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ASP.NET - Introduction
What is ASP.NET?
ASP.NET is a web development platform, which provides a programming model, a
comprehensive software infrastructure and various services required to build up robust
web applications for PC, as well as mobile devices.

ASP.NET works on top of the HTTP protocol, and uses the HTTP commands and policies to
set a browser-to-server bilateral communication and cooperation.

ASP.NET is a part of Microsoft .Net platform. ASP.NET applications are compiled codes,
written using the extensible and reusable components or objects present in .Net
framework. These codes can use the entire hierarchy of classes in .Net framework.

The ASP.NET application codes can be written in any of the following languages:

C#

Visual Basic.Net

Jscript

J#

ASP.NET is used to produce interactive, data-driven web applications over the internet. It
consists of a large number of controls such as text boxes, buttons, and labels for
assembling, configuring, and manipulating code to create HTML pages.

ASP.NET Web Forms Model

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ASP.NET web forms extend the event-driven model of interaction to the web applications.
The browser submits a web form to the web server and the server returns a full markup
page or HTML page in response.

All client side user activities are forwarded to the server for stateful processing. The
server processes the output of the client actions and triggers the reactions.

Now, HTTP is a stateless protocol. ASP.NET framework helps in storing the information
regarding the state of the application, which consists of:

Page state

Session state

The page state is the state of the client, i.e., the content of various input fields in the
web form. The session state is the collective information obtained from various pages the
user visited and worked with, i.e., the overall session state. To clear the concept, let us
take an example of a shopping cart.

User adds items to a shopping cart. Items are selected from a page, say the items page,
and the total collected items and price are shown on a different page, say the cart page.
Only HTTP cannot keep track of all the information coming from various pages. ASP.NET
session state and server side infrastructure keeps track of the information collected
globally over a session.

The ASP.NET runtime carries the page state to and from the server across page requests
while generating ASP.NET runtime codes, and incorporates the state of the server side
components in hidden fields.

This way, the server becomes aware of the overall application state and operates in a
two-tiered connected way.

The ASP.NET Component Model

The ASP.NET component model provides various building blocks of ASP.NET pages.
Basically it is an object model, which describes:

Server side counterparts of almost all HTML elements or tags, such as <form>
and <input>.

Server controls, which help in developing complex user-interface. For example,

the Calendar control or the Gridview control.

ASP.NET is a technology, which works on the .Net framework that contains all web-
related functionalities. The .Net framework is made of an object-oriented hierarchy. An

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ASP.NET web application is made of pages. When a user requests an ASP.NET page, the
IIS delegates the processing of the page to the ASP.NET runtime system.

The ASP.NET runtime transforms the .aspx page into an instance of a class, which
inherits from the base class page of the .Net framework. Therefore, each ASP.NET page
is an object and all its components i.e., the server-side controls are also objects.

Components of .Net Framework 3.5

Before going to the next session on Visual Studio.Net, let us go through at the various
components of the .Net framework 3.5. The following table describes the components of
the .Net framework 3.5 and the job they perform:

Components and their Description

(1) Common Language Runtime or CLR

It performs memory management, exception handling, debugging, security checking,
thread execution, code execution, code safety, verification, and compilation. The code
that is directly managed by the CLR is called the managed code. When the managed
code is compiled, the compiler converts the source code into a CPU independent
intermediate language (IL) code. A Just In Time(JIT) compiler compiles the IL code
into native code, which is CPU specific.

(2) .Net Framework Class Library

It contains a huge library of reusable types. classes, interfaces, structures, and
enumerated values, which are collectively called types.

(3) Common Language Specification

It contains the specifications for the .Net supported languages and implementation of
language integration.

(4) Common Type System

It provides guidelines for declaring, using, and managing types at runtime, and cross-
language communication.

(5) Metadata and Assemblies

Metadata is the binary information describing the program, which is either stored in a
portable executable file (PE) or in the memory. Assembly is a logical unit consisting of
the assembly manifest, type metadata, IL code, and a set of resources like image files.

(6) Windows Forms

Windows Forms contain the graphical representation of any window displayed in the
application.

(7) ASP.NET and ASP.NET AJAX

ASP.NET is the web development model and AJAX is an extension of ASP.NET for
developing and implementing AJAX functionality. ASP.NET AJAX contains the

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components that allow the developer to update data on a website without a complete
reload of the page.

(8) ADO.NET
It is the technology used for working with data and databases. It provides access to
data sources like SQL server, OLE DB, XML etc. The ADO.NET allows connection to
data sources for retrieving, manipulating, and updating data.

(9) Windows Workflow Foundation (WF)

It helps in building workflow-based applications in Windows. It contains activities,
workflow runtime, workflow designer, and a rules engine.

(10)Windows Presentation Foundation

It provides a separation between the user interface and the business logic. It helps in
developing visually stunning interfaces using documents, media, two and three
dimensional graphics, animations, and more.

(11) Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)

It is the technology used for building and executing connected systems.

(12) Windows CardSpace

It provides safety for accessing resources and sharing personal information on the
internet.

(13) LINQ
It imparts data querying capabilities to .Net languages using a syntax which is similar
to the tradition query language SQL.

ASP.NET - Environment Setup

ASP.NET provides an abstraction layer on top of HTTP on which the web applications are
built. It provides high-level entities such as classes and components within an object-
oriented paradigm.

The key development tool for building ASP.NET applications and front ends is Visual
Studio. In this tutorial, we work with Visual Studio 2008.

Visual Studio is an integrated development environment for writing, compiling, and

debugging the code. It provides a complete set of development tools for building
ASP.NET web applications, web services, desktop applications, and mobile applications.

The Visual Studio IDE

The new project window allows choosing an application template from the available
templates.

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When you start a new web site, ASP.NET provides the starting folders and files for the
site, including two files for the first web form of the site.

The file named Default.aspx contains the HTML and asp code that defines the form, and
the file named Default.aspx.cs (for C# coding) or the file named Default.aspx.vb (for VB
coding) contains the code in the language you have chosen and this code is responsible
for the actions performed on a form.

The primary window in the Visual Studio IDE is the Web Forms Designer window. Other
supporting windows are the Toolbox, the Solution Explorer, and the Properties window.
You use the designer to design a web form, to add code to the control on the form so
that the form works according to your need, you use the code editor.

Working with Views and Windows

You can work with windows in the following ways:

To change the Web Forms Designer from one view to another, click on the Design
or source button.

To close a window, click on the close button on the upper right corner and to
redisplay, select it from the View menu.

To hide a window, click on its Auto Hide button. The window then changes into a
tab. To display again, click the Auto Hide button again.

To change the size of a window, just drag it.

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Adding Folders and Files to your Website

When a new web form is created, Visual Studio automatically generates the starting
HTML for the form and displays it in Source view of the web forms designer. The Solution
Explorer is used to add any other files, folders or any existing item on the web site.

To add a standard folder, right-click on the project or folder under which you are
going to add the folder in the Solution Explorer and choose New Folder.

To add an ASP.NET folder, right-click on the project in the Solution Explorer and
select the folder from the list.

To add an existing item to the site, right-click on the project or folder under which
you are going to add the item in the Solution Explorer and select from the dialog
box.

Projects and Solutions

A typical ASP.NET application consists of many items: the web content files (.aspx),
source files (.cs files), assemblies (.dll and .exe files), data source files (.mdb files),
references, icons, user controls and miscellaneous other files and folders. All these files
that make up the website are contained in a Solution.

When a new website is created. VB2008 automatically creates the solution and displays
it in the solution explorer.

Solutions may contain one or more projects. A project contains content files, source files,
and other files like data sources and image files. Generally, the contents of a project are
compiled into an assembly as an executable file (.exe) or a dynamic link library (.dll) file.

Typically a project contains the following content files:

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Page file (.aspx)

User control (.ascx)

Web service (.asmx)

Master page (.master)

Site map (.sitemap)

Website configuration file (.config)

Building and Running a Project

You can execute an application by:

Selecting Start

Selecting Start Without Debugging from the Debug menu,

pressing F5

Ctrl-F5

The program is built meaning, the .exe or the .dll files are generated by selecting a
command from the Build menu.

ASP.NET - Life Cycle

ASP.NET life cycle specifies, how:

ASP.NET processes pages to produce dynamic output

The application and its pages are instantiated and processed

ASP.NET compiles the pages dynamically

The ASP.NET life cycle could be divided into two groups:

Application Life Cycle

Page Life Cycle

ASP.NET Application Life Cycle

The application life cycle has the following stages:

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User makes a request for accessing application resource, a page. Browser sends
this request to the web server.
A unified pipeline receives the first request and the following events take place:

An object of the class ApplicationManager is created.

An object of the class HostingEnvironment is created to provide

information regarding the resources.

Top level items in the application are compiled.

Response objects are created. The application objects such as HttpContext,

HttpRequest and HttpResponse are created and initialized.

An instance of the HttpApplication object is created and assigned to the request.

The request is processed by the HttpApplication class. Different events are raised
by this class for processing the request.

ASP.NET Page Life Cycle

When a page is requested, it is loaded into the server memory, processed, and sent to
the browser. Then it is unloaded from the memory. At each of these steps, methods and
events are available, which could be overridden according to the need of the application.
In other words, you can write your own code to override the default code.

The Page class creates a hierarchical tree of all the controls on the page. All the
components on the page, except the directives, are part of this control tree. You can see
the control tree by adding trace= "true" to the page directive. We will cover page
directives and tracing under 'directives' and 'event handling'.

The page life cycle phases are:

Initialization

Instantiation of the controls on the page

Restoration and maintenance of the state

Execution of the event handler codes

Page rendering

Understanding the page cycle helps in writing codes for making some specific thing
happen at any stage of the page life cycle. It also helps in writing custom controls and
initializing them at right time, populate their properties with view-state data and run
control behavior code.

Following are the different stages of an ASP.NET page:

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Page request - When ASP.NET gets a page request, it decides whether to parse
and compile the page, or there would be a cached version of the page;
accordingly the response is sent.

Starting of page life cycle - At this stage, the Request and Response objects
are set. If the request is an old request or post back, the IsPostBack property of
the page is set to true. The UICulture property of the page is also set.

Page initialization - At this stage, the controls on the page are assigned unique
ID by setting the UniqueID property and the themes are applied. For a new
request, postback data is loaded and the control properties are restored to the
view-state values.

Page load - At this stage, control properties are set using the view state and
control state values.

Validation - Validate method of the validation control is called and on its

successful execution, the IsValid property of the page is set to true.

Postback event handling - If the request is a postback (old request), the

related event handler is invoked.

Page rendering - At this stage, view state for the page and all controls are
saved. The page calls the Render method for each control and the output of
rendering is written to the OutputStream class of the Response property of page.

Unload - The rendered page is sent to the client and page properties, such as
Response and Request, are unloaded and all cleanup done.

ASP.NET Page Life Cycle Events

At each stage of the page life cycle, the page raises some events, which could be coded.
An event handler is basically a function or subroutine, bound to the event, using
declarative attributes such as Onclick or handle.

Following are the page life cycle events:

PreInit - PreInit is the first event in page life cycle. It checks the IsPostBack
property and determines whether the page is a postback. It sets the themes and
master pages, creates dynamic controls, and gets and sets profile property
values. This event can be handled by overloading the OnPreInit method or
creating a Page_PreInit handler.

Init - Init event initializes the control property and the control tree is built. This
event can be handled by overloading the OnInit method or creating a Page_Init
handler.

InitComplete - InitComplete event allows tracking of view state. All the controls
turn on view-state tracking.

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LoadViewState - LoadViewState event allows loading view state information into

the controls.

LoadPostData - During this phase, the contents of all the input fields are
defined with the <form> tag are processed.

PreLoad - PreLoad occurs before the post back data is loaded in the controls.
This event can be handled by overloading the OnPreLoad method or creating a
Page_PreLoad handler.

Load - The Load event is raised for the page first and then recursively for all
child controls. The controls in the control tree are created. This event can be
handled by overloading the OnLoad method or creating a Page_Load handler.

LoadComplete - The loading process is completed, control event handlers are

run, and page validation takes place. This event can be handled by overloading
the OnLoadComplete method or creating a Page_LoadComplete handler

PreRender - The PreRender event occurs just before the output is rendered. By
handling this event, pages and controls can perform any updates before the
output is rendered.

PreRenderComplete - As the PreRender event is recursively fired for all child

controls, this event ensures the completion of the pre-rendering phase.

SaveStateComplete - State of control on the page is saved. Personalization,

control state and view state information is saved. The HTML markup is generated.
This stage can be handled by overriding the Render method or creating a
Page_Render handler.

UnLoad - The UnLoad phase is the last phase of the page life cycle. It raises the
UnLoad event for all controls recursively and lastly for the page itself. Final
cleanup is done and all resources and references, such as database connections,
are freed. This event can be handled by modifying the OnUnLoad method or
creating a Page_UnLoad handler.

ASP.NET - First Example

An ASP.NET page is made up of a number of server controls along with HTML controls,
text, and images. Sensitive data from the page and the states of different controls on the
page are stored in hidden fields that form the context of that page request.

ASP.NET runtime controls the association between a page instance and its state. An
ASP.NET page is an object of the Page or inherited from it.

All the controls on the pages are also objects of the related control class inherited from a
parent Control class. When a page is run, an instance of the object page is created along
with all its content controls.

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An ASP.NET page is also a server side file saved with the .aspx extension. It is modular
in nature and can be divided into the following core sections:

Page Directives

Code Section

Page Layout

Page Directives
The page directives set up the environment for the page to run. The @Page directive
defines page-specific attributes used by ASP.NET page parser and compiler. Page
directives specify how the page should be processed, and which assumptions need to be
taken about the page.

It allows importing namespaces, loading assemblies, and registering new controls with
custom tag names and namespace prefixes.

Code Section
The code section provides the handlers for the page and control events along with other
functions required. We mentioned that, ASP.NET follows an object model. Now, these
objects raise events when some events take place on the user interface, like a user clicks
a button or moves the cursor. The kind of response these events need to reciprocate is
coded in the event handler functions. The event handlers are nothing but functions
bound to the controls.

The code section or the code behind file provides all these event handler routines, and
other functions used by the developer. The page code could be precompiled and deployed
in the form of a binary assembly.

Page Layout
The page layout provides the interface of the page. It contains the server controls, text,
inline JavaScript, and HTML tags.

The following code snippet provides a sample ASP.NET page explaining Page directives,
code section and page layout written in C#:

<!-- directives -->

<% @Page Language="C#" %>

<!-- code section -->

<script runat="server">

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private void convertoupper(object sender, EventArgs e)

{
string str = mytext.Value;
changed_text.InnerHtml = str.ToUpper();
}
</script>

<!-- Layout -->

<html>
<head> <title> Change to Upper Case </title>
</head>
<body>
<h3> Conversion to Upper Case </h3>
<form runat="server">
<input runat="server" id="mytext" type="text" />
<input runat="server" id="button1" type="submit"
value="Enter..." OnServerClick="convertoupper"/>
<hr />
<h3> Results: </h3>
<span runat="server" id="changed_text" />
</form>
</body>
</html>

Copy this file to the web server root directory. Generally it is c:\iNETput\wwwroot. Open
the file from the browser to execute it and it generates following result:

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Using Visual Studio IDE

Let us develop the same example using Visual Studio IDE. Instead of typing the code,
you can just drag the controls into the design view:

The content file is automatically developed. All you need to add is the Button1_Click
routine, which is as follows:

protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{
string buf = TextBox1.Text;
changed_text.InnerHtml = buf.ToUpper();
}

The content file code is as given:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs"

Inherits="firstexample._Default" %>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >

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<head runat="server">
<title>
Untitled Page
</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
<asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server" style="width:224px">
</asp:TextBox>
<br />
<br />
<asp:Button ID="Button1" runat="server" Text="Enter..."
style="width:85px" onclick="Button1_Click" />
<hr />
<h3> Results: </h3>
<span runat="server" id="changed_text" />
</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>

Execute the example by right clicking on the design view and choosing 'View in Browser'
from the popup menu. This generates the following result:

ASP.NET - Event Handling

What is an Event?
An event is an action or occurrence such as a mouse click, a key press, mouse
movements, or any system-generated notification. A process communicates through

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events. For example, interrupts are system-generated events. When events occur, the
application should be able to respond to it and manage it.

Events in ASP.NET raised at the client machine, and handled at the server machine. For
example, a user clicks a button displayed in the browser. A Click event is raised. The
browser handles this client-side event by posting it to the server.

The server has a subroutine describing what to do when the event is raised; it is called
the event-handler. Therefore, when the event message is transmitted to the server, it
checks whether the Click event has an associated event handler. If it has, the event
handler is executed.

Event Arguments
ASP.NET event handlers generally take two parameters and return void. The first
parameter represents the object raising the event and the second parameter is event
argument.

The general syntax of an event is:

private void EventName (object sender, EventArgs e);

Application and Session Events

The most important application events are:

Application_Start - It is raised when the application/website is started.

Application_End - It is raised when the application/website is stopped.

Similarly, the most used Session events are:

Session_Start - It is raised when a user first requests a page from the

application.

Session_End - It is raised when the session ends.

Page and Control Events

Common page and control events are:

DataBinding - It is raised when a control binds to a data source.

Disposed - It is raised when the page or the control is released.

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Error - It is a page event, occurs when an unhandled exception is thrown.

Init - It is raised when the page or the control is initialized.

Load - It is raised when the page or a control is loaded.

PreRender - It is raised when the page or the control is to be rendered.

Unload - It is raised when the page or control is unloaded from memory.

Event Handling Using Controls

All ASP.NET controls are implemented as classes, and they have events which are fired
when a user performs a certain action on them. For example, when a user clicks a button
the 'Click' event is generated. For handling events, there are in-built attributes and event
handlers. Event handler is coded to respond to an event, and take appropriate action on
it.

By default, Visual Studio creates an event handler by including a Handles clause on the
Sub procedure. This clause names the control and event that the procedure handles.

The ASP tag for a button control:

<asp:Button ID="btnCancel" runat="server" Text="Cancel" />

The event handler for the Click event:

Protected Sub btnCancel_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As

System.EventArgs)
Handles btnCancel.Click
End Sub

An event can also be coded without Handles clause. Then, the handler must be named
according to the appropriate event attribute of the control.

The ASP tag for a button control:

<asp:Button ID="btnCancel" runat="server" Text="Cancel"

Onclick="btnCancel_Click" />

The event handler for the Click event:

Protected Sub btnCancel_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As

System.EventArgs)

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End Sub

The common control events are:

Event Attribute Controls

Button, image button, link

Click OnClick
button, image map

Command OnCommand Button, image button, link button

TextChanged OnTextChanged Text box

Drop-down list, list box, radio

SelectedIndexChanged OnSelectedIndexChanged
button list, check box list.

CheckedChanged OnCheckedChanged Check box, radio button

Some events cause the form to be posted back to the server immediately, these are
called the postback events. For example, the click event such as, Button.Click.

Some events are not posted back to the server immediately, these are called non-
postback events.

For example, the change events or selection events such as TextBox.TextChanged or

CheckBox.CheckedChanged. The nonpostback events could be made to post back
immediately by setting their AutoPostBack property to true.

Default Events
The default event for the Page object is Load event. Similarly, every control has a default
event. For example, default event for the button control is the Click event.

The default event handler could be created in Visual Studio, just by double clicking the
control in design view. The following table shows some of the default events for common
controls:

Control Default Event

AdRotator AdCreated

BulletedList Click

Button Click

Calender SelectionChanged

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CheckBox CheckedChanged

CheckBoxList SelectedIndexChanged

DataGrid SelectedIndexChanged

DataList SelectedIndexChanged

DropDownList SelectedIndexChanged

HyperLink Click

ImageButton Click

ImageMap Click

LinkButton Click

ListBox SelectedIndexChanged

Menu MenuItemClick

RadioButton CheckedChanged

RadioButtonList SelectedIndexChanged

Example
This example includes a simple page with a label control and a button control on it. As
the page events such as Page_Load, Page_Init, Page_PreRender etc. take place, it sends
a message, which is displayed by the label control. When the button is clicked, the
Button_Click event is raised and that also sends a message to be displayed on the label.

Create a new website and drag a label control and a button control on it from the control
tool box. Using the properties window, set the IDs of the controls as .lblmessage. and
.btnclick. respectively. Set the Text property of the Button control as 'Click'.

The markup file (.aspx):

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs"

Inherits="eventdemo._Default" %>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >

<head runat="server">

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<title>Untitled Page</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
<asp:Label ID="lblmessage" runat="server" >
</asp:Label>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<asp:Button ID="btnclick" runat="server" Text="Click"
onclick="btnclick_Click" />
</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>

Double click on the design view to move to the code behind file. The Page_Load event is
automatically created without any code in it. Write down the following self-explanatory
code lines:

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Data;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Xml.Linq;

namespace eventdemo
{
public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page{
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
lblmessage.Text += "Page load event handled. <br />";
if (Page.IsPostBack)
{

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lblmessage.Text += "Page post back event handled.<br/>";

}
}
protected void Page_Init(object sender, EventArgs e){
lblmessage.Text += "Page initialization event handled.<br/>";
}
protected void Page_PreRender(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
lblmessage.Text += "Page prerender event handled. <br/>";
}
protected void btnclick_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
lblmessage.Text += "Button click event handled. <br/>";
}
}
}

Execute the page. The label shows page load, page initialization and, the page pre-
render events. Click the button to see effect:

ASP.NET - Server Side

We have studied the page life cycle and how a page contains various controls. The page
itself is instantiated as a control object. All web forms are basically instances of the
ASP.NET Page class. The page class has the following extremely useful properties that
correspond to intrinsic objects:

Session

Application

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Cache

Request

Response

Server

User

Trace

We will discuss each of these objects in due time. In this tutorial we will explore the
Server object, the Request object, and the Response object.

Server Object
The Server object in Asp.NET is an instance of the System.Web.HttpServerUtility class.
The HttpServerUtility class provides numerous properties and methods to perform
various jobs.

Properties and Methods of the Server object

The methods and properties of the HttpServerUtility class are exposed through the
intrinsic Server object provided by ASP.NET.

The following table provides a list of the properties:

Property Description

MachineName Name of server computer

ScriptTimeOut Gets and sets the request time-out value in seconds.

The following table provides a list of some important methods:

Method Description

Creates an instance of the COM object identified by its

CreateObject(String)
ProgID (Programmatic ID).

Creates an instance of the COM object identified by its

CreateObject(Type)
Type.

Determines whether the specified Object is equal to the

Equals(Object)
current Object.

Executes the handler for the specified virtual path in

Execute(String)
the context of the current request.

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Executes the handler for the specified virtual path in

Execute(String, Boolean) the context of the current request and specifies
whether to clear the QueryString and Form collections.

GetLastError Returns the previous exception.

GetType Gets the Type of the current instance.

Changes an ordinary string into a string with legal

HtmlEncode
HTML characters.

HtmlDecode Converts an Html string into an ordinary string.

ToString Returns a String that represents the current Object.

For the current request, terminates execution of the

Transfer(String) current page and starts execution of a new page by
using the specified URL path of the page.

UrlDecode Converts an URL string into an ordinary string.

Works same as UrlEncode, but on a byte array that

UrlEncodeToken
contains Base64-encoded data.

Works same as UrlDecode, but on a byte array that

UrlDecodeToken
contains Base64-encoded data.

Return the physical path that corresponds to a specified

MapPath
virtual file path on the server.

Transfers execution to another web page in the current

Transfer
application.

Request Object
The request object is an instance of the System.Web.HttpRequest class. It represents the
values and properties of the HTTP request that makes the page loading into the browser.

The information presented by this object is wrapped by the higher level abstractions (the
web control model). However, this object helps in checking some information such as the
client browser and cookies.

Properties and Methods of the Request Object

The following table provides some noteworthy properties of the Request object:

Property Description

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Gets a string array of client-supported MIME accept

AcceptTypes
types.

Gets the ASP.NET application's virtual application root

ApplicationPath
path on the server.

Gets or sets information about the requesting client's

Browser
browser capabilities.

ContentEncoding Gets or sets the character set of the entity-body.

Specifies the length, in bytes, of content sent by the

ContentLength
client.

Gets or sets the MIME content type of the incoming

ContentType
request.

Cookies Gets a collection of cookies sent by the client.

FilePath Gets the virtual path of the current request.

Gets the collection of files uploaded by the client, in

Files
multipart MIME format.

Form Gets a collection of form variables.

Headers Gets a collection of HTTP headers.

Gets the HTTP data transfer method (such as GET,

HttpMethod
POST, or HEAD) used by the client.

InputStream Gets the contents of the incoming HTTP entity body.

Gets a value indicating whether the HTTP connection

IsSecureConnection
uses secure sockets (that is, HTTPS).

QueryString Gets the collection of HTTP query string variables.

RawUrl Gets the raw URL of the current request.

Gets or sets the HTTP data transfer method (GET or

RequestType
POST) used by the client.

ServerVariables Gets a collection of Web server variables.

TotalBytes Gets the number of bytes in the current input stream.

Url Gets information about the URL of the current request.

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Gets information about the URL of the client's previous

UrlReferrer
request that is linked to the current URL.

UserAgent Gets the raw user agent string of the client browser.

UserHostAddress Gets the IP host address of the remote client.

UserHostName Gets the DNS name of the remote client.

Gets a sorted string array of client language

UserLanguages
preferences.

The following table provides a list of some important methods:

Method Description

Performs a binary read of a specified number of bytes

BinaryRead
from the current input stream.

Determines whether the specified object is equal to the

Equals(Object)
current object. (Inherited from object.)

GetType Gets the Type of the current instance.

Maps an incoming image-field form parameter to

MapImageCoordinates
appropriate x-coordinate and y-coordinate values.

MapPath(String) Maps the specified virtual path to a physical path.

SaveAs Saves an HTTP request to disk.

ToString Returns a String that represents the current object.

Causes validation to occur for the collections accessed

ValidateInput through the Cookies, Form, and QueryString
properties.

Response Object
The Response object represents the server's response to the client request. It is an
instance of the System.Web.HttpResponse class.

In ASP.NET, the response object does not play any vital role in sending HTML text to the
client, because the server-side controls have nested, object oriented methods for
rendering themselves.

However, the HttpResponse object still provides some important functionalities, like the
cookie feature and the Redirect() method. The Response.Redirect() method allows

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transferring the user to another page, inside as well as outside the application. It
requires a round trip.

Properties and Methods of the Response Object

The following table provides some noteworthy properties of the Response object:

Property Description

Gets or sets a value indicating whether to buffer the

Buffer output and send it after the complete response is
finished processing.

Gets or sets a value indicating whether to buffer the

BufferOutput output and send it after the complete page is finished
processing.

Gets or sets the HTTP character set of the output

Charset
stream.

Gets or sets the HTTP character set of the output

ContentEncoding
stream.

ContentType Gets or sets the HTTP MIME type of the output stream.

Cookies Gets the response cookie collection.

Gets or sets the number of minutes before a page

Expires
cached on a browser expires.

Gets or sets the absolute date and time at which to

ExpiresAbsolute
remove cached information from the cache.

Gets or sets an encoding object that represents the

HeaderEncoding
encoding for the current header output stream.

Headers Gets the collection of response headers.

Gets a value indicating whether the client is still

IsClientConnected
connected to the server.

Enables output of text to the outgoing HTTP response

Output
stream.

Enables binary output to the outgoing HTTP content

OutputStream
body.

RedirectLocation Gets or sets the value of the Http Location header.

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Status Sets the status line that is returned to the client.

Gets or sets the HTTP status code of the output

StatusCode
returned to the client.

Gets or sets the HTTP status string of the output

StatusDescription
returned to the client.

Gets or sets a value qualifying the status code of the

SubStatusCode
response.

Gets or sets a value indicating whether to send HTTP

SuppressContent
content to the client.

The following table provides a list of some important methods:

Method Description

Adds an HTTP header to the output stream. AddHeader

AddHeader is provided for compatibility with earlier versions of
ASP.

Infrastructure adds an HTTP cookie to the intrinsic

AppendCookie
cookie collection.

AppendHeader Adds an HTTP header to the output stream.

Adds custom log information to the InterNET

AppendToLog
Information Services (IIS) log file.

Writes a string of binary characters to the HTTP output

BinaryWrite
stream.

ClearContent Clears all content output from the buffer stream.

Close Closes the socket connection to a client.

Sends all currently buffered output to the client, stops

End execution of the page, and raises the EndRequest
event.

Determines whether the specified object is equal to the

Equals(Object)
current object.

Flush Sends all currently buffered output to the client.

GetType Gets the Type of the current instance.

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Appends a HTTP PICS-Label header to the output

Pics
stream.

Redirects a request to a new URL and specifies the new

Redirect(String)
URL.

Redirects a client to a new URL. Specifies the new URL

Redirect(String, Boolean) and whether execution of the current page should
terminate.

SetCookie Updates an existing cookie in the cookie collection.

ToString Returns a String that represents the current Object.

Writes the specified file directly to an HTTP response

TransmitFile(String)
output stream, without buffering it in memory.

Write(Char) Writes a character to an HTTP response output stream.

Write(Object) Writes an object to an HTTP response stream.

Write(String) Writes a string to an HTTP response output stream.

Writes the contents of the specified file directly to an

WriteFile(String)
HTTP response output stream as a file block.

Writes the contents of the specified file directly to an

WriteFile(String, Boolean)
HTTP response output stream as a memory block.

Example
The following simple example has a text box control where the user can enter name, a
button to send the information to the server, and a label control to display the URL of the
client computer.

The content file:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs"

Inherits="server_side._Default" %>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >

<head runat="server">
<title>Untitled Page</title>

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</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
Enter your name:<br />
<asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>
<asp:Button ID="Button1" runat="server"
OnClick="Button1_Click" Text="Submit" />
<br />
<asp:Label ID="Label1" runat="server"/>

</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>

The code behind Button1_Click:

protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{
if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(TextBox1.Text))
{
// Access the HttpServerUtility methods through
// the intrinsic Server object.
Label1.Text = "Welcome, " + Server.HtmlEncode(TextBox1.Text) +
".<br/> The url is " + Server.UrlEncode(Request.Url.ToString())
}
}

Run the page to see the following result:

ASP.NET - Server Controls

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Controls are small building blocks of the graphical user interface, which include text
boxes, buttons, check boxes, list boxes, labels, and numerous other tools. Using these
tools, the users can enter data, make selections and indicate their preferences.

Controls are also used for structural jobs, like validation, data access, security, creating
master pages, and data manipulation.

ASP.NET uses five types of web controls, which are:

HTML controls

HTML Server controls

ASP.NET Server controls

ASP.NET Ajax Server controls

User controls and custom controls

ASP.NET server controls are the primary controls used in ASP.NET. These controls can be
grouped into the following categories:

Validation controls - These are used to validate user input and they work by
running client-side script.

Data source controls - These controls provides data binding to different data
sources.

Data view controls - These are various lists and tables, which can bind to data
from data sources for displaying.

Personalization controls - These are used for personalization of a page

according to the user preferences, based on user information.

Login and security controls - These controls provide user authentication.

Master pages - These controls provide consistent layout and interface

throughout the application.

Navigation controls - These controls help in navigation. For example, menus,

tree view etc.

Rich controls - These controls implement special features. For example,

AdRotator, FileUpload, and Calendar control.

The syntax for using server controls is:

<asp:controlType ID ="ControlID" runat="server"

Property1=value1 [Property2=value2] />

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In addition, visual studio has the following features, to help produce in error-free coding:

Dragging and dropping of controls in design view

IntelliSense feature that displays and auto-completes the properties

The properties window to set the property values directly

Properties of the Server Controls

ASP.NET server controls with a visual aspect are derived from the WebControl class and
inherit all the properties, events, and methods of this class.

The WebControl class itself and some other server controls that are not visually rendered
are derived from the System.Web.UI.Control class. For example, PlaceHolder control or
XML control.

ASP.Net server controls inherit all properties, events, and methods of the WebControl
and System.Web.UI.Control class.

The following table shows the inherited properties, common to all server controls:

Property Description

Pressing this key with the Alt key moves focus to the
AccessKey
control.

It is the collection of arbitrary attributes (for rendering

Attributes
only) that do not correspond to properties on the control.

BackColor Background color.

BindingContainer The control that contains this control's data binding.

BorderColor Border color.

BorderStyle Border style.

BorderWidth Border width.

CausesValidation Indicates if it causes validation.

It indicates whether the server control's child controls

ChildControlCreated
have been created.

ClientID Control ID for HTML markup.

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The HttpContext object associated with the server

Context
control.

Controls Collection of all controls contained within the control.

ControlStyle The style of the Web server control.

CssClass CSS class

Gets a reference to the naming container if the naming

DataItemContainer
container implements IDataItemContainer.

Gets a reference to the naming container if the naming

DataKeysContainer
container implements IDataKeysControl.

It indicates whether the control is being used on a design

DesignMode
surface.

Gets or sets the CSS class to apply to the rendered HTML

DisabledCssClass
element when the control is disabled.

Enabled Indicates whether the control is grayed out.

EnableTheming Indicates whether theming applies to the control.

Indicates whether the view state of the control is

EnableViewState
maintained.

Events Gets a list of event handler delegates for the control.

Font Font.

Forecolor Foreground color.

HasAttributes Indicates whether the control has attributes set.

Indicates whether the current server control's child

HasChildViewState
controls have any saved view-state settings.

Height Height in pixels or %.

ID Identifier for the control.

Indicates whether controls contained within this control

IsChildControlStateCleared
have control state.

IsEnabled Gets a value indicating whether the control is enabled.

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It indicates whether the server control is saving changes

IsTrackingViewState
to its view state.

IsViewStateEnabled It indicates whether view state is enabled for this control.

It indicates whether the control participates in loading its

LoadViewStateById
view state by ID instead of index.

Page Page containing the control.

Parent Parent control.

It specifies the ASP.NET version that the rendered HTML

RenderingCompatibility
will be compatible with.

The container that hosts the current control when

Site
rendered on a design surface.

SkinID Gets or sets the skin to apply to the control.

Gets a collection of text attributes that will be rendered

Style as a style attribute on the outer tag of the Web server
control.

TabIndex Gets or sets the tab index of the Web server control.

Gets the HtmlTextWriterTag value that corresponds to this

TagKey
Web server control.

TagName Gets the name of the control tag.

TemplateControl The template that contains this control.

Gets the virtual directory of the page or control

TemplateSourceDirectory
containing this control.

Gets or sets the text displayed when the mouse pointer

ToolTip
hovers over the web server control.

UniqueID Unique identifier.

Gets a dictionary of state information that saves and

ViewState restores the view state of a server control across multiple
requests for the same page.

It indicates whether the StateBag object is case-

ViewStateIgnoreCase
insensitive.

ViewStateMode Gets or sets the view-state mode of this control.

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Visible It indicates whether a server control is visible.

Width Gets or sets the width of the Web server control.

Methods of the Server Controls

The following table provides the methods of the server controls:

Method Description

Adds HTML attributes and styles that need to be

AddAttributesToRender
rendered to the specified HtmlTextWriterTag.

Called after a child control is added to the Controls

AddedControl
collection of the control object.

Notifies the server control that an element, either

AddParsedSubObject XML or HTML, was parsed, and adds the element to
the server control's control collection.

Applies the style properties defined in the page style

ApplyStyleSheetSkin
sheet to the control.

ClearCachedClientID Infrastructure. Sets the cached ClientID value to null.

Deletes the control-state information for the server

ClearChildControlState
control's child controls.

Deletes the view-state and control-state information

ClearChildState
for all the server control's child controls.

Deletes the view-state information for all the server

ClearChildViewState
control's child controls.

CreateChildControls Used in creating child controls.

Creates a new ControlCollection object to hold the

CreateControlCollection
child controls.

Creates the style object that is used to implement all

CreateControlStyle
style related properties.

Binds a data source to the server control and all its

DataBind
child controls.

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Binds a data source to the server control and all its

DataBind(Boolean) child controls with an option to raise the DataBinding
event.

Binds a data source to the server control's child

DataBindChildren
controls.

Enables a server control to perform final clean up

Dispose
before it is released from memory.

Determines whether the server control contains child

EnsureChildControls
controls. If it does not, it creates child controls.

Creates an identifier for controls that do not have an

EnsureID
identifier.

Determines whether the specified object is equal to

Equals(Object)
the current object.

Allows an object to attempt to free resources and

Finalize perform other cleanup operations before the object is
reclaimed by garbage collection.

Searches the current naming container for a server

FindControl(String)
control with the specified id parameter.

Searches the current naming container for a server

FindControl(String, Int32)
control with the specified id and an integer.

Focus Sets input focus to a control.

GetDesignModeState Gets design-time data for a control.

GetType Gets the type of the current instance.

Returns the prefixed portion of the UniqueID property

GetUniqueIDRelativeTo
of the specified control.

Determines if the server control contains any child

HasControls
controls.

Indicates whether events are registered for the

HasEvents
control or any child controls.

Determines if the server control holds only literal

IsLiteralContent
content.

LoadControlState Restores control-state information.

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LoadViewState Restores view-state information.

Retrieves the physical path that a virtual path, either

MapPathSecure
absolute or relative, maps to.

MemberwiseClone Creates a shallow copy of the current object.

Copies any nonblank elements of the specified style

MergeStyle to the web control, but does not overwrite any
existing style elements of the control.

Determines whether the event for the server control

OnBubbleEvent
is passed up the page's UI server control hierarchy.

OnDataBinding Raises the data binding event.

OnInit Raises the Init event.

OnLoad Raises the Load event.

OnPreRender Raises the PreRender event.

OnUnload Raises the Unload event.

OpenFile Gets a Stream used to read a file.

Called after a child control is removed from the

RemovedControl
controls collection of the control object.

Render Renders the control to the specified HTML writer.

Renders the HTML opening tag of the control to the

RenderBeginTag
specified writer.

Outputs the contents of a server control's children to

RenderChildren a provided HtmlTextWriter object, which writes the
contents to be rendered on the client.

Renders the contents of the control to the specified

RenderContents
writer.

Outputs server control content to a provided

RenderControl(HtmlTextWriter) HtmlTextWriter object and stores tracing information
about the control if tracing is enabled.

Renders the HTML closing tag of the control into the

RenderEndTag
specified writer.

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Gets the control adapter responsible for rendering

ResolveAdapter
the specified control.

Saves any server control state changes that have

SaveControlState occurred since the time the page was posted back to
the server.

Saves any state that was modified after the

SaveViewState
TrackViewState method was invoked.

SetDesignModeState Sets design-time data for a control.

ToString Returns a string that represents the current object.

Causes the control to track changes to its view state

TrackViewState so that they can be stored in the object's view state
property.

Example
Let us look at a particular server control - a tree view control. A Tree view control comes
under navigation controls. Other Navigation controls are: Menu control and SiteMapPath
control.

Add a tree view control on the page. Select Edit Nodes... from the tasks. Edit each of the
nodes using the Tree view node editor as shown:

Once you have created the nodes, it looks like the following in design view:

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The AutoFormat... task allows you to format the tree view as shown:

Add a label control and a text box control on the page and name them lblmessage and
txtmessage respectively.

Write a few lines of code to ensure that when a particular node is selected, the label
control displays the node text and the text box displays all child nodes under it, if any.
The code behind the file should look like this:

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Data;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;

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using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Xml.Linq;

namespace eventdemo
{
public partial class treeviewdemo : System.Web.UI.Page
{
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
txtmessage.Text = " ";
}
protected void TreeView1_SelectedNodeChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
txtmessage.Text = " ";
lblmessage.Text = "Selected node changed to: " +
TreeView1.SelectedNode.Text;
TreeNodeCollection childnodes = TreeView1.SelectedNode.ChildNodes;
if(childnodes != null)
{
txtmessage.Text = " ";
foreach (TreeNode t in childnodes)
{
txtmessage.Text += t.Value;
}
}
}
}
}

Execute the page to see the effects. You will be able to expand and collapse the nodes.

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ASP.NET - HTML Server

The HTML server controls are basically the standard HTML controls enhanced to enable
server side processing. The HTML controls such as the header tags, anchor tags, and
input elements are not processed by the server but are sent to the browser for display.

They are specifically converted to a server control by adding the attribute runat="server"
and adding an id attribute to make them available for server-side processing.

For example, consider the HTML input control:

<input type="text" size="40">

It could be converted to a server control, by adding the runat and id attribute:

<input type="text" id="testtext" size="40" runat="server">

Advantages of using HTML Server Controls

Although ASP.NET server controls can perform every job accomplished by the HTML
server controls, the later controls are useful in the following cases:

Using static tables for layout purposes.

Converting a HTML page to run under ASP.NET

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The following table describes the HTML server controls:

Control Name HTML tag

HtmlHead <head>element

HtmlInputButton <input type=button|submit|reset>

HtmlInputCheckbox <input type=checkbox>

HtmlInputFile <input type = file>

HtmlInputHidden <input type = hidden>

HtmlInputImage <input type = image>

HtmlInputPassword <input type = password>

HtmlInputRadioButton <input type = radio>

HtmlInputReset <input type = reset>

HtmlText <input type = text|password>

HtmlImage <img> element

HtmlLink <link> element

HtmlAnchor <a> element

HtmlButton <button> element

HtmlButton <button> element

HtmlForm <form> element

HtmlTable <table> element

HtmlTableCell <td> and <th>

HtmlTableRow <tr> element

HtmlTitle <title> element

HtmlSelect <select&t; element

HtmlGenericControl All HTML controls not listed

Example

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The following example uses a basic HTML table for layout. It uses some boxes for getting
input from the users such as name, address, city, state etc. It also has a button control,
which is clicked to get the user data displayed in the last row of the table.

The page should look like this in the design view:

The code for the content page shows the use of the HTML table element for layout.

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs"

Inherits="htmlserver._Default" %>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >

<head runat="server">
<title>Untitled Page</title>
<style type="text/css">
.style1
{
width: 156px;
}
.style2
{
width: 332px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
<table style="width: 54%;">
<tr>
<td class="style1">Name:</td>
<td class="style2">

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<asp:TextBox ID="txtname" runat="server"

style="width:230px">
</asp:TextBox>
</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td class="style1">Street</td>
<td class="style2">
<asp:TextBox ID="txtstreet" runat="server"
style="width:230px">
</asp:TextBox>
</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td class="style1">City</td>
<td class="style2">
<asp:TextBox ID="txtcity" runat="server"
style="width:230px">
</asp:TextBox>
</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td class="style1">State</td>
<td class="style2">
<asp:TextBox ID="txtstate" runat="server"
style="width:230px">
</asp:TextBox>
</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td class="style1"> </td>
<td class="style2"></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td class="style1"></td>
<td ID="displayrow" runat ="server" class="style2">
</td>

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</tr>
</table>
</div>
<asp:Button ID="Button1" runat="server" onclick="Button1_Click"
Text="Click" />
</form>
</body>
</html>

The code behind the button control:

protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{
string str = "";
str += txtname.Text + "<br />";
str += txtstreet.Text + "<br />";
str += txtcity.Text + "<br />";
str += txtstate.Text + "<br />";
displayrow.InnerHtml = str;
}

Observe the following:

The standard HTML tags have been used for the page layout.

The last row of the HTML table is used for data display. It needed server side
processing, so an ID attribute and the runat attribute has been added to it.

ASP.NET - Client Side

ASP.NET client side coding has two aspects:

Client side scripts : It runs on the browser and in turn speeds up the execution
of page. For example, client side data validation which can catch invalid data and
warn the user accordingly without making a round trip to the server.

Client side source code : ASP.NET pages generate this. For example, the HTML
source code of an ASP.NET page contains a number of hidden fields and
automatically injected blocks of JavaScript code, which keeps information like
view state or does other jobs to make the page work.

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Client Side Scripts

All ASP.NET server controls allow calling client side code written using JavaScript or
VBScript. Some ASP.NET server controls use client side scripting to provide response to
the users without posting back to the server. For example, the validation controls.

Apart from these scripts, the Button control has a property OnClientClick, which allows
executing client-side script, when the button is clicked.

The traditional and server HTML controls have the following events that can execute a
script when they are raised:

Event Description

onblur When the control loses focus

onfocus When the control receives focus

onclick When the control is clicked

onchange When the value of the control changes

onkeydown When the user presses a key

onkeypress When the user presses an alphanumeric key

onkeyup When the user releases a key

onmouseover When the user moves the mouse pointer over the control

It raises the ServerClick event of the control, when the

onserverclick
control is clicked

Client Side Source Code

We have already discussed that, ASP.NET pages are generally written in two files:

The content file or the markup file ( .aspx)

The code-behind file

The content file contains the HTML or ASP.NET control tags and literals to form the
structure of the page. The code behind file contains the class definition. At run-time, the
content file is parsed and transformed into a page class.

This class, along with the class definition in the code file, and system generated code,
together make the executable code (assembly) that processes all posted data, generates

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response, and sends it back to the client.

Consider the simple page:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs"

Inherits="clientside._Default" %>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >

<head runat="server">
<title>
Untitled Page
</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
<asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>
<asp:Button ID="Button1" runat="server" OnClick="Button1_Click"
Text="Click" />
</div>
<hr />
<h3><asp:Label ID="Msg" runat="server" Text=""></asp:Label>
</h3>
</form>
</body>
</html>

When this page is run on the browser, the View Source option shows the HTML page sent
to the browser by the ASP.Net runtime:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >

<head>
<title>
Untitled Page
</title>
</head>

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<body>
<form name="form1" method="post" action="Default.aspx" id="form1">
<div>
<input type="hidden" name="__VIEWSTATE" id="__VIEWSTATE"
value="/wEPDwUKMTU5MTA2ODYwOWRk31NudGDgvhhA7joJum9Qn5RxU2M=" />
</div>

<div>
<input type="hidden" name="__EVENTVALIDATION"
id="__EVENTVALIDATION"

value="/wEWAwKpjZj0DALs0bLrBgKM54rGBhHsyM61rraxE+KnBTCS8cd1QDJ/"/>
</div>

<div>
<input name="TextBox1" type="text" id="TextBox1" />
<input type="submit" name="Button1" value="Click" id="Button1" />
</div>

<hr />
<h3><span id="Msg"></span></h3>
</form>
</body>
</html>

If you go through the code properly, you can see that first two <div> tags contain the
hidden fields which store the view state and validation information.

ASP.NET - Basic Controls

In this chapter, we will discuss the basic controls available in ASP.NET.

Button Controls
ASP.NET provides three types of button control:

Button : It displays text within a rectangular area.

Link Button : It displays text that looks like a hyperlink.

Image Button : It displays an image.

When a user clicks a button, two events are raised: Click and Command.

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Basic syntax of button control:

<asp:Button ID="Button1" runat="server" onclick="Button1_Click" Text="Click" /

>

Common properties of the button control:

Property Description

The text displayed on the button. This is for button and link
Text
button controls only.

For image button control only. The image to be displayed

ImageUrl
for the button.

For image button control only. The text to be displayed if

AlternateText
the browser cannot display the image.

Determines whether page validation occurs when a user

CausesValidation
clicks the button. The default is true.

A string value that is passed to the command event when a

CommandName
user clicks the button.

A string value that is passed to the command event when a

CommandArgument
user clicks the button.

The URL of the page that is requested when the user clicks
PostBackUrl
the button.

Text Boxes and Labels

Text box controls are typically used to accept input from the user. A text box control can
accept one or more lines of text depending upon the settings of the TextMode attribute.

Label controls provide an easy way to display text which can be changed from one
execution of a page to the next. If you want to display text that does not change, you
use the literal text.

Basic syntax of text control:

<asp:TextBox ID="txtstate" runat="server" ></asp:TextBox>

Common Properties of the Text Box and Labels:

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Property Description

Specifies the type of text box. SingleLine creates a standard

text box, MultiLIne creates a text box that accepts more
TextMode than one line of text and the Password causes the
characters that are entered to be masked. The default is
SingleLine.

Text The text content of the text box.

The maximum number of characters that can be entered

MaxLength
into the text box.

It determines whether or not text wraps automatically for

Wrap
multi-line text box; default is true.

Determines whether the user can change the text in the

ReadOnly
box; default is false, i.e., the user can not change the text.

The width of the text box in characters. The actual width is

Columns determined based on the font that is used for the text
entry.

The height of a multi-line text box in lines. The default

Rows
value is 0, means a single line text box.

The mostly used attribute for a label control is 'Text', which implies the text displayed on
the label.

Check Boxes and Radio Buttons

A check box displays a single option that the user can either check or uncheck and radio
buttons present a group of options from which the user can select just one option.

To create a group of radio buttons, you specify the same name for the GroupName
attribute of each radio button in the group. If more than one group is required in a single
form, then specify a different group name for each group.

If you want check box or radio button to be selected when the form is initially displayed,
set its Checked attribute to true. If the Checked attribute is set to true for multiple radio
buttons in a group, then only the last one is considered as true.

Basic syntax of check box:

<asp:CheckBox ID= "chkoption" runat= "Server">

</asp:CheckBox>

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Basic syntax of radio button:

<asp:RadioButton ID= "rdboption" runat= "Server">

</asp: RadioButton>

Common properties of check boxes and radio buttons:

Property Description

Text The text displayed next to the check box or radio button.

Checked Specifies whether it is selected or not, default is false.

GroupName Name of the group the control belongs to.

List Controls
ASP.NET provides the following controls

Drop-down list,

List box,

Radio button list,

Check box list,

Bulleted list.

These control let a user choose from one or more items from the list. List boxes and
drop-down lists contain one or more list items. These lists can be loaded either by code
or by the ListItemCollection editor.

Basic syntax of list box control:

<asp:ListBox ID="ListBox1" runat="server" AutoPostBack="True"

OnSelectedIndexChanged="ListBox1_SelectedIndexChanged">
</asp:ListBox>

Basic syntax of drop-down list control:

<asp:DropDownList ID="DropDownList1" runat="server" AutoPostBack="True"

OnSelectedIndexChanged="DropDownList1_SelectedIndexChanged">
</asp:DropDownList>

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Common properties of list box and drop-down Lists:

Property Description

The collection of ListItem objects that represents the items

Items in the control. This property returns an object of type
ListItemCollection.

Specifies the number of items displayed in the box. If actual

Rows list contains more rows than displayed then a scroll bar is
added.

The index of the currently selected item. If more than one

SelectedIndex item is selected, then the index of the first selected item. If
no item is selected, the value of this property is -1.

The value of the currently selected item. If more than one

item is selected, then the value of the first selected item. If
SelectedValue
no item is selected, the value of this property is an empty
string ("").

Indicates whether a list box allows single selections or

SelectionMode
multiple selections.

Common properties of each list item objects:

Property Description

Text The text displayed for the item.

Selected Indicates whether the item is selected.

Value A string value associated with the item.

It is important to notes that:

To work with the items in a drop-down list or list box, you use the Items property
of the control. This property returns a ListItemCollection object which contains all
the items of the list.

The SelectedIndexChanged event is raised when the user selects a different item
from a drop-down list or list box.

The ListItemCollection

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The ListItemCollection object is a collection of ListItem objects. Each ListItem object

represents one item in the list. Items in a ListItemCollection are numbered from 0.

When the items into a list box are loaded using strings like: lstcolor.Items.Add("Blue"),
then both the Text and Value properties of the list item are set to the string value you
specify. To set it differently you must create a list item object and then add that item to
the collection.

The ListItemCollection Editor is used to add item to a drop-down list or list box. This is
used to create a static list of items. To display the collection editor, select edit item from
the smart tag menu, or select the control and then click the ellipsis button from the Item
property in the properties window.

Common properties of ListItemCollection:

Property Description

A ListItem object that represents the item at the specified

Item(integer)
index.

Count The number of items in the collection.

Common methods of ListItemCollection:

Methods Description

Adds a new item at the end of the collection and assigns

Add(string)
the string parameter to the Text property of the item.

Add(ListItem) Adds a new item at the end of the collection.

Inserts an item at the specified index location in the

Insert(integer, string) collection, and assigns string parameter to the text property
of the item.

Inserts the item at the specified index location in the

Insert(integer, ListItem)
collection.

Remove(string) Removes the item with the text value same as the string.

Remove(ListItem) Removes the specified item.

RemoveAt(integer) Removes the item at the specified index as the integer.

Clear Removes all the items of the collection.

FindByValue(string) Returns the item whose value is same as the string.

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FindByValue(Text) Returns the item whose text is same as the string.

Radio Button list and Check Box list

A radio button list presents a list of mutually exclusive options. A check box list presents
a list of independent options. These controls contain a collection of ListItem objects that
could be referred to through the Items property of the control.

Basic syntax of radio button list:

<asp:RadioButtonList ID="RadioButtonList1" runat="server" AutoPostBack="True"

OnSelectedIndexChanged="RadioButtonList1_SelectedIndexChanged">
</asp:RadioButtonList>

Basic syntax of check box list:

<asp:CheckBoxList ID="CheckBoxList1" runat="server" AutoPostBack="True"

OnSelectedIndexChanged="CheckBoxList1_SelectedIndexChanged">
</asp:CheckBoxList>

Common properties of check box and radio button lists:

Property Description

This attribute specifies whether the table tags or the normal

RepeatLayout html flow to use while formatting the list when it is
rendered. The default is Table.

It specifies the direction in which the controls to be

RepeatDirection repeated. The values available are Horizontal and Vertical.
Default is Vertical.

It specifies the number of columns to use when repeating

RepeatColumns
the controls; default is 0.

Bulleted lists and Numbered lists

The bulleted list control creates bulleted lists or numbered lists. These controls contain a
collection of ListItem objects that could be referred to through the Items property of the
control.

Basic syntax of a bulleted list:

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<asp:BulletedList ID="BulletedList1" runat="server">

</asp:BulletedList>

Common properties of the bulleted list:

Property Description

This property specifies the style and looks of the bullets, or

BulletStyle
numbers.

It specifies the direction in which the controls to be

RepeatDirection repeated. The values available are Horizontal and Vertical.
Default is Vertical.

It specifies the number of columns to use when repeating

RepeatColumns
the controls; default is 0.

HyperLink Control
The HyperLink control is like the HTML <a> element.

Basic syntax for a hyperlink control:

<asp:HyperLink ID="HyperLink1" runat="server">

HyperLink
</asp:HyperLink>

It has the following important properties:

Property Description

ImageUrl Path of the image to be displayed by the control.

NavigateUrl Target link URL.

Text The text to be displayed as the link.

Target The window or frame which loads the linked page.

Image Control
The image control is used for displaying images on the web page, or some alternative
text, if the image is not available.

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Basic syntax for an image control:

<asp:Image ID="Image1" runat="server">

It has the following important properties:

Property Description

AlternateText Alternate text to be displayed in absence of the image.

ImageAlign Alignment options for the control.

ImageUrl Path of the image to be displayed by the control.

ASP.NET - Directives
ASP.NET directives are instructions to specify optional settings, such as registering a
custom control and page language. These settings describe how the web forms (.aspx)
or user controls (.ascx) pages are processed by the .Net framework.

The syntax for declaring a directive is:

<%@ directive_name attribute=value [attribute=value] %>

In this section, we will just introduce the ASP.NET directives and we will use most of
these directives throughout the tutorials.

The Application Directive

The Application directive defines application-specific attributes. It is provided at the top
of the global.aspx file.

The basic syntax of Application directive is:

<%@ Application Language="C#" %>

The attributes of the Application directive are:

Attributes Description

Inherits The name of the class from which to inherit.

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The text description of the application. Parsers and

Description
compilers ignore this.

Language The language used in code blocks.

The Assembly Directive

The Assembly directive links an assembly to the page or the application at parse time.
This could appear either in the global.asax file for application-wide linking, in the page
file, a user control file for linking to a page or user control.

The basic syntax of Assembly directive is:

<%@ Assembly Name ="myassembly" %>

The attributes of the Assembly directive are:

Attributes Description

Name The name of the assembly to be linked.

The path to the source file to be linked and compiled

Src
dynamically.

The Control Directive

The control directive is used with the user controls and appears in the user control
(.ascx) files.

The basic syntax of Control directive is:

<%@ Control Language="C#" EnableViewState="false" %>

The attributes of the Control directive are:

Attributes Description

The Boolean value that enables or disables automatic

AutoEventWireup
association of events to handlers.

ClassName The file name for the control.

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The Boolean value that enables or disables compiling with

Debug
debug symbols.

The text description of the control page, ignored by

Description
compiler.

The Boolean value that indicates whether view state is

EnableViewState
maintained across page requests.

For VB language, tells the compiler to use option explicit

Explicit
mode.

Inherits The class from which the control page inherits.

Language The language for code and script.

Src The filename for the code-behind class.

For VB language, tells the compiler to use the option strict

Strict
mode.

The Implements Directive

The Implement directive indicates that the web page, master page or user control page
must implement the specified .Net framework interface.

The basic syntax for implements directive is:

<%@ Implements Interface="interface_name" %>

The Import Directive

The Import directive imports a namespace into a web page, user control page of
application. If the Import directive is specified in the global.asax file, then it is applied to
the entire application. If it is in a page of user control page, then it is applied to that
page or control.

The basic syntax for import directive is:

<%@ namespace="System.Drawing" %>

The Master Directive

The Master directive specifies a page file as being the mater page.

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The basic syntax of sample MasterPage directive is:

<%@ MasterPage Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true"

CodeFile="SiteMater.master.cs" Inherits="SiteMaster" %>

The MasterType Directive

The MasterType directive assigns a class name to the Master property of a page, to make
it strongly typed.

The basic syntax of MasterType directive is:

<%@ MasterType attribute="value"[attribute="value" ...] %>

The OutputCache Directive

The OutputCache directive controls the output caching policies of a web page or a user
control.

The basic syntax of OutputCache directive is:

<%@ OutputCache Duration="15" VaryByParam="None" %>

The Page Directive

The Page directive defines the attributes specific to the page file for the page parser and
the compiler.

The basic syntax of Page directive is:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs"

Inherits="_Default" Trace="true" %>

The attributes of the Page directive are:

Attributes Description

The Boolean value that enables or disables page events that

AutoEventWireup are being automatically bound to methods; for example,
Page_Load.

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The Boolean value that enables or disables HTTP response

Buffer
buffering.

ClassName The class name for the page.

The browser for which the server controls should render

ClientTarget
content.

CodeFile The name of the code behind file.

The Boolean value that enables or disables compilation with

Debug
debug symbols.

Description The text description of the page, ignored by the parser.

EnableSessionState It enables, disables, or makes session state read-only.

The Boolean value that enables or disables view state

EnableViewState
across page requests.

ErrorPage URL for redirection if an unhandled page exception occurs.

Inherits The name of the code behind or other class.

Language The programming language for code.

Src The file name of the code behind class.

Trace It enables or disables tracing.

It indicates how trace messages are displayed, and sorted

TraceMode
by time or category.

Transaction It indicates if transactions are supported.

The Boolean value that indicates whether all input data is

ValidateRequest
validated against a hardcoded list of values.

The PreviousPageType Directive

The PreviousPageType directive assigns a class to a page, so that the page is strongly
typed.

The basic syntax for a sample PreviousPagetype directive is:

<%@ PreviousPageType attribute="value"[attribute="value" ...] %>

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The Reference Directive

The Reference directive indicates that another page or user control should be compiled
and linked to the current page.

The basic syntax of Reference directive is:

<%@ Reference Page ="somepage.aspx" %>

The Register Directive

The Register derivative is used for registering the custom server controls and user
controls.

The basic syntax of Register directive is:

<%@ Register Src="~/footer.ascx" TagName="footer" TagPrefix="Tfooter" %>

ASP.NET - Managing State

Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a stateless protocol. When the client disconnects
from the server, the ASP.NET engine discards the page objects. This way, each web
application can scale up to serve numerous requests simultaneously without running out
of server memory.

However, there needs to be some technique to store the information between requests
and to retrieve it when required. This information i.e., the current value of all the
controls and variables for the current user in the current session is called the State.

ASP.NET manages four types of states:

View State

Control State

Session State

Application State

View State
The view state is the state of the page and all its controls. It is automatically maintained
across posts by the ASP.NET framework.

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When a page is sent back to the client, the changes in the properties of the page and its
controls are determined, and stored in the value of a hidden input field named
_VIEWSTATE. When the page is again posted back, the _VIEWSTATE field is sent to the
server with the HTTP request.

The view state could be enabled or disabled for:

The entire application by setting the EnableViewState property in the <pages>

section of web.config file.

A page by setting the EnableViewState attribute of the Page directive, as <%@

Page Language="C#" EnableViewState="false" %>

A control by setting the Control.EnableViewState property.

It is implemented using a view state object defined by the StateBag class which defines
a collection of view state items. The state bag is a data structure containing attribute
value pairs, stored as strings associated with objects.

The StateBag class has the following properties:

Properties Description

The value of the view state item with the specified name.
Item(name)
This is the default property of the StateBag class.

Count The number of items in the view state collection.

Keys Collection of keys for all the items in the collection.

Values Collection of values for all the items in the collection.

The StateBag class has the following methods:

Methods Description

Adds an item to the view state collection and existing item

Add(name, value)
is updated.

Clear Removes all the items from the collection.

Determines whether the specified object is equal to the

Equals(Object)
current object.

Allows it to free resources and perform other cleanup

Finalize
operations.

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Returns an enumerator that iterates over all the key/value

GetEnumerator pairs of the StateItem objects stored in the StateBag
object.

GetType Gets the type of the current instance.

Checks a StateItem object stored in the StateBag object to

IsItemDirty
evaluate whether it has been modified.

Remove(name) Removes the specified item.

Sets the state of the StateBag object as well as the Dirty

SetDirty
property of each of the StateItem objects contained by it.

Sets the Dirty property for the specified StateItem object in

SetItemDirty
the StateBag object.

ToString Returns a string representing the state bag object.

Example
The following example demonstrates the concept of storing view state. Let us keep a
counter, which is incremented each time the page is posted back by clicking a button on
the page. A label control shows the value in the counter.

The markup file code is as follows:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs"

Inherits="statedemo._Default" %>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >

<head runat="server">
<title>
Untitled Page
</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
<h3>View State demo</h3>

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Page Counter:
<asp:Label ID="lblCounter" runat="server" />
<asp:Button ID="btnIncrement" runat="server" Text="Add Count"
onclick="btnIncrement_Click" />
</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>

The code behind file for the example is shown here:

public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page

{
public int counter
{
get
{
if (ViewState["pcounter"] != null)
{
return ((int)ViewState["pcounter"]);
}
else
{
return 0;
}
}
set
{
ViewState["pcounter"] = value;
}
}

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

{
lblCounter.Text = counter.ToString();
counter++;
}
}

It would produce the following result:

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Control State
Control state cannot be modified, accessed directly, or disabled.

Session State
When a user connects to an ASP.NET website, a new session object is created. When
session state is turned on, a new session state object is created for each new request.
This session state object becomes part of the context and it is available through the
page.

Session state is generally used for storing application data such as inventory, supplier
list, customer record, or shopping cart. It can also keep information about the user and
his preferences, and keep the track of pending operations.

Sessions are identified and tracked with a 120-bit SessionID, which is passed from client
to server and back as cookie or a modified URL. The SessionID is globally unique and
random.

The session state object is created from the HttpSessionState class, which defines a
collection of session state items.

The HttpSessionState class has the following properties:

Properties Description

SessionID The unique session identifier.

The value of the session state item with the specified name.
Item(name)
This is the default property of the HttpSessionState class.

Count The number of items in the session state collection.

Gets and sets the amount of time, in minutes, allowed

TimeOut between requests before the session-state provider
terminates the session.

The HttpSessionState class has the following methods:

Methods Description

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Add(name, value) Adds an item to the session state collection.

Clear Removes all the items from session state collection.

Removes the specified item from the session state

Remove(name)
collection.

Removes all keys and values from the session-state

RemoveAll
collection.

Deletes an item at a specified index from the session-state

RemoveAt
collection.

The session state object is a name-value pair to store and retrieve some information
from the session state object. You could use the following code for the same:

void StoreSessionInfo()
{
String fromuser = TextBox1.Text;
Session["fromuser"] = fromuser;
}
void RetrieveSessionInfo()
{
String fromuser = Session["fromuser"];
Label1.Text = fromuser;
}

The above code stores only strings in the Session dictionary object, however, it can store
all the primitive data types and arrays composed of primitive data types, as well as the
DataSet, DataTable, HashTable, and Image objects, as well as any user-defined class
that inherits from the ISerializable object.

Example
The following example demonstrates the concept of storing session state. There are two
buttons on the page, a text box to enter string and a label to display the text stored from
last session.

The mark up file code is as follows:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs"

Inherits="_Default" %>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"

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"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >

<head runat="server">
<title>
Untitled Page
</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
<table style="width: 568px; height: 103px">
<tr>
<td style="width: 209px">
<asp:Label ID="lblstr" runat="server" Text="Enter a
String" style="width:94px">
</asp:Label>
</td>

<td style="width: 317px">

<asp:TextBox ID="txtstr" runat="server"
style="width:227px">
</asp:TextBox>
</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td style="width: 209px"></td>
<td style="width: 317px"></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td style="width: 209px">
<asp:Button ID="btnnrm" runat="server"
Text="No action button" style="width:128px" />
</td>

<td style="width: 317px">

<asp:Button ID="btnstr" runat="server"
OnClick="btnstr_Click" Text="Submit the String" />
</td>

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</tr>

<tr>
<td style="width: 209px">
</td>

<td style="width: 317px">

</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td style="width: 209px">
<asp:Label ID="lblsession" runat="server"
style="width:231px" >
</asp:Label>
</td>

<td style="width: 317px">

</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td style="width: 209px">
<asp:Label ID="lblshstr" runat="server">
</asp:Label>
</td>

<td style="width: 317px">

</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>

It should look like the following in design view:

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The code behind file is given here:

public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page

{
String mystr;
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
this.lblshstr.Text = this.mystr;
this.lblsession.Text = (String)this.Session["str"];
}
protected void btnstr_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
this.mystr = this.txtstr.Text;
this.Session["str"] = this.txtstr.Text;
this.lblshstr.Text = this.mystr;
this.lblsession.Text = (String)this.Session["str"];
}
}

Execute the file and observe how it works:

Application State
The ASP.NET application is the collection of all web pages, code and other files within a
single virtual directory on a web server. When information is stored in application state,
it is available to all the users.

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To provide for the use of application state, ASP.NET creates an application state object
for each application from the HTTPApplicationState class and stores this object in server
memory. This object is represented by class file global.asax.

Application State is mostly used to store hit counters and other statistical data, global
application data like tax rate, discount rate etc. and to keep the track of users visiting
the site.

The HttpApplicationState class has the following properties:

Properties Description

The value of the application state item with the specified

Item(name) name. This is the default property of the
HttpApplicationState class.

Count The number of items in the application state collection.

The HttpApplicationState class has the following methods:

Methods Description

Add(name, value) Adds an item to the application state collection.

Clear Removes all the items from the application state collection.

Removes the specified item from the application state

Remove(name)
collection.

RemoveAll Removes all objects from an HttpApplicationState collection.

Removes an HttpApplicationState object from a collection

RemoveAt
by index.

Locks the application state collection so only the current

Lock()
user can access it.

Unlocks the application state collection so all the users can

Unlock()
access it.

Application state data is generally maintained by writing handlers for the events:

Application_Start

Application_End

Application_Error

Session_Start

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Session_End

The following code snippet shows the basic syntax for storing application state
information:

Void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)

{
Application["startMessage"] = "The application has started.";
}
Void Application_End(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Application["endtMessage"] = "The application has ended.";
}

ASP.NET - Validators
ASP.NET validation controls validate the user input data to ensure that useless,
unauthenticated, or contradictory data don't get stored.

ASP.NET provides the following validation controls:

RequiredFieldValidator

RangeValidator

CompareValidator

RegularExpressionValidator

CustomValidator

ValidationSummary

BaseValidator Class
The validation control classes are inherited from the BaseValidator class hence they
inherit its properties and methods. Therefore, it would help to take a look at the
properties and the methods of this base class, which are common for all the validation
controls:

Members Description

ControlToValidate Indicates the input control to validate.

Display Indicates how the error message is shown.

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EnableClientScript Indicates whether client side validation will take.

Enabled Enables or disables the validator.

ErrorMessage Indicates error string.

Text Error text to be shown if validation fails.

IsValid Indicates whether the value of the control is valid.

It indicates whether in case of an invalid control, the focus

SetFocusOnError
should switch to the related input control.

The logical group of multiple validators, where this control

ValidationGroup
belongs.

This method revalidates the control and updates the IsValid

Validate()
property.

RequiredFieldValidator Control
The RequiredFieldValidator control ensures that the required field is not empty. It is
generally tied to a text box to force input into the text box.

The syntax of the control is as given:

<asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="rfvcandidate"
runat="server" ControlToValidate ="ddlcandidate"
ErrorMessage="Please choose a candidate"
InitialValue="Please choose a candidate">
</asp:RequiredFieldValidator>

RangeValidator Control
The RangeValidator control verifies that the input value falls within a predetermined
range.

It has three specific properties:

Properties Description

It defines the type of the data. The available values are:

Type
Currency, Date, Double, Integer, and String.

MinimumValue It specifies the minimum value of the range.

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MaximumValue It specifies the maximum value of the range.

The syntax of the control is as given:

<asp:RangeValidator ID="rvclass" runat="server" ControlToValidate="txtclass"

ErrorMessage="Enter your class (6 - 12)" MaximumValue="12"
MinimumValue="6" Type="Integer">
</asp:RangeValidator>

CompareValidator Control
The CompareValidator control compares a value in one control with a fixed value or a
value in another control.

It has the following specific properties:

Properties Description

Type It specifies the data type.

ControlToCompare It specifies the value of the input control to compare with.

ValueToCompare It specifies the constant value to compare with.

It specifies the comparison operator, the available values

Operator are: Equal, NotEqual, GreaterThan, GreaterThanEqual,
LessThan, LessThanEqual, and DataTypeCheck.

The basic syntax of the control is as follows:

<asp:CompareValidator ID="CompareValidator1" runat="server"

ErrorMessage="CompareValidator">
</asp:CompareValidator>

RegularExpressionValidator
The RegularExpressionValidator allows validating the input text by matching against a
pattern of a regular expression. The regular expression is set in the ValidationExpression
property.

The following table summarizes the commonly used syntax constructs for regular
expressions:

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Character Escapes Description

\b Matches a backspace.

\t Matches a tab.

\r Matches a carriage return.

\v Matches a vertical tab.

\f Matches a form feed.

\n Matches a new line.

\ Escape character.

Apart from single character match, a class of characters could be specified that can be
matched, called the metacharacters.

Metacharacters Description

. Matches any character except \n.

[abcd] Matches any character in the set.

[^abcd] Excludes any character in the set.

[2-7a-mA-M] Matches any character specified in the range.

\w Matches any alphanumeric character and underscore.

\W Matches any non-word character.

Matches whitespace characters like, space, tab, new line

\s
etc.

\S Matches any non-whitespace character.

\d Matches any decimal character.

\D Matches any non-decimal character.

Quantifiers could be added to specify number of times a character could appear.

Quantifier Description

* Zero or more matches.

+ One or more matches.

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? Zero or one matches.

{N} N matches.

{N,} N or more matches.

{N,M} Between N and M matches.

The syntax of the control is as given:

<asp:RegularExpressionValidator ID="string" runat="server"

ErrorMessage="string"
ValidationExpression="string" ValidationGroup="string">
</asp:RegularExpressionValidator>

CustomValidator
The CustomValidator control allows writing application specific custom validation routines
for both the client side and the server side validation.

The client side validation is accomplished through the ClientValidationFunction property.

The client side validation routine should be written in a scripting language, such as
JavaScript or VBScript, which the browser can understand.

The server side validation routine must be called from the control's ServerValidate event
handler. The server side validation routine should be written in any .Net language, like
C# or VB.Net.

The basic syntax for the control is as given:

<asp:CustomValidator ID="CustomValidator1" runat="server"

ClientValidationFunction=.cvf_func. ErrorMessage="CustomValidator">
</asp:CustomValidator>

ValidationSummary
The ValidationSummary control does not perform any validation but shows a summary of
all errors in the page. The summary displays the values of the ErrorMessage property of
all validation controls that failed validation.

The following two mutually inclusive properties list out the error message:

ShowSummary : shows the error messages in specified format.

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ShowMessageBox : shows the error messages in a separate window.

The syntax for the control is as given:

<asp:ValidationSummary ID="ValidationSummary1" runat="server"

DisplayMode = "BulletList" ShowSummary = "true" HeaderText="Errors:" />

Validation Groups
Complex pages have different groups of information provided in different panels. In such
situation, a need might arise for performing validation separately for separate group.
This kind of situation is handled using validation groups.

To create a validation group, you should put the input controls and the validation controls
into the same logical group by setting their ValidationGroup property.

Example
The following example describes a form to be filled up by all the students of a school,
divided into four houses, for electing the school president. Here, we use the validation
controls to validate the user input.

This is the form in design view:

The content file code is as given:

<form id="form1" runat="server">

<table style="width: 66%;">
<tr>
<td class="style1" colspan="3" align="center">
<asp:Label ID="lblmsg"
Text="President Election Form : Choose your president"

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runat="server" />
</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td class="style3">
Candidate:
</td>

<td class="style2">
<asp:DropDownList ID="ddlcandidate" runat="server"
style="width:239px">
<asp:ListItem>Please Choose a Candidate</asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem>M H Kabir</asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem>Steve Taylor</asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem>John Abraham</asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem>Venus Williams</asp:ListItem>
</asp:DropDownList>
</td>

<td>
<asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="rfvcandidate"
runat="server" ControlToValidate ="ddlcandidate"
ErrorMessage="Please choose a candidate"
InitialValue="Please choose a candidate">
</asp:RequiredFieldValidator>
</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td class="style3">
House:
</td>

<td class="style2">
<asp:RadioButtonList ID="rblhouse" runat="server"
RepeatLayout="Flow">
<asp:ListItem>Red</asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem>Blue</asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem>Yellow</asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem>Green</asp:ListItem>
</asp:RadioButtonList>

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</td>

<td>
<asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="rfvhouse" runat="server"
ControlToValidate="rblhouse" ErrorMessage="Enter your house
name" >
</asp:RequiredFieldValidator>
<br />
</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td class="style3">
Class:
</td>

<td class="style2">
<asp:TextBox ID="txtclass" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>
</td>

<td>
<asp:RangeValidator ID="rvclass"
runat="server" ControlToValidate="txtclass"
ErrorMessage="Enter your class (6 - 12)" MaximumValue="12"
MinimumValue="6" Type="Integer">
</asp:RangeValidator>
</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td class="style3">
Email:
</td>

<td class="style2">
<asp:TextBox ID="txtemail" runat="server" style="width:250px">
</asp:TextBox>
</td>

<td>
<asp:RegularExpressionValidator ID="remail" runat="server"
ControlToValidate="txtemail" ErrorMessage="Enter your email"

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ValidationExpression="\w+([-+.']\w+)*@\w+([-.]\w+)*\.\w+
([-.]\w+)*">
</asp:RegularExpressionValidator>
</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td class="style3" align="center" colspan="3">
<asp:Button ID="btnsubmit" runat="server"
onclick="btnsubmit_Click"
style="text-align: center" Text="Submit" style="width:140px" />
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<asp:ValidationSummary ID="ValidationSummary1" runat="server"
DisplayMode ="BulletList" ShowSummary ="true" HeaderText="Errors:" />
</form>

The code behind the submit button:

protected void btnsubmit_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{
if (Page.IsValid)
{
lblmsg.Text = "Thank You";
}
else
{
lblmsg.Text = "Fill up all the fields";
}
}

ASP.NET - Database Access

ASP.NET allows the following sources of data to be accessed and used:

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Databases (e.g., Access, SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL)

XML documents

Business Objects

Flat files

ASP.NET hides the complex processes of data access and provides much higher level of
classes and objects through which data is accessed easily. These classes hide all complex
coding for connection, data retrieving, data querying, and data manipulation.

ADO.NET is the technology that provides the bridge between various ASP.NET control
objects and the backend data source. In this tutorial, we will look at data access and
working with the data in brief.

Retrieve and display data

It takes two types of data controls to retrieve and display data in ASP.NET:

A data source control - It manages the connection to the data, selection of

data, and other jobs such as paging and caching of data etc.

A data view control - It binds and displays the data and allows data
manipulation.

We will discuss the data binding and data source controls in detail later. In this section,
we will use a SqlDataSource control to access data and a GridView control to display and
manipulate data in this chapter.

We will also use an Access database, which contains the details about .Net books
available in the market. Name of our database is ASPDotNetStepByStep.mdb and we will
use the data table DotNetReferences.

The table has the following columns: ID, Title, AuthorFirstName, AuthorLastName, Topic,
and Publisher.

Here is a snapshot of the data table:

Let us directly move to action, take the following steps:

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(1) Create a web site and add a SqlDataSourceControl on the web form.

(2) Click on the Configure Data Source option.

(3) Click on the New Connection button to establish connection with a database.

(4) Once the connection is set up, you may save it for further use. At the next step, you
are asked to configure the select statement:

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(5) Select the columns and click next to complete the steps. Observe the WHERE,
ORDER BY, and the Advanced buttons. These buttons allow you to provide the where
clause, order by clause, and specify the insert, update, and delete commands of SQL
respectively. This way, you can manipulate the data.

(6) Add a GridView control on the form. Choose the data source and format the control
using AutoFormat option.

(7) After this the formatted GridView control displays the column headings, and the
application is ready to execute.

(8) Finally execute the application.

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The content file code is as given:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="dataaccess.aspx.cs"

Inherits="datacaching.WebForm1" %>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >

<head runat="server">
<title>
Untitled Page
</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
<asp:SqlDataSource ID="SqlDataSource1" runat="server"
ConnectionString= "<%$ ConnectionStrings:ASPDotNetStepByStepConn
ProviderName= "<%$ ConnectionStrings:
ASPDotNetStepByStepConnectionString.ProviderName %>"
SelectCommand="SELECT [Title], [AuthorLastName],
[AuthorFirstName], [Topic] FROM [DotNetReferences]">
</asp:SqlDataSource>
<asp:GridView ID="GridView1" runat="server"
AutoGenerateColumns="False" CellPadding="4"
DataSourceID="SqlDataSource1" ForeColor="#333333"
GridLines="None">
<RowStyle BackColor="#F7F6F3" ForeColor="#333333" />

<Columns>
<asp:BoundField DataField="Title" HeaderText="Title"
SortExpression="Title" />
<asp:BoundField DataField="AuthorLastName"

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HeaderText="AuthorLastName" SortExpression="AuthorLastName"
<asp:BoundField DataField="AuthorFirstName"
HeaderText="AuthorFirstName" SortExpression="AuthorFirstName
<asp:BoundField DataField="Topic"
HeaderText="Topic" SortExpression="Topic" />
</Columns>
<FooterStyle BackColor="#5D7B9D"
Font-Bold="True" ForeColor="White" />
<PagerStyle BackColor="#284775"
ForeColor="White" HorizontalAlign="Center" />
<SelectedRowStyle BackColor="#E2DED6"
Font-Bold="True" ForeColor="#333333" />
<HeaderStyle BackColor="#5D7B9D" Font-Bold="True"
ForeColor="White" />
<EditRowStyle BackColor="#999999" />
<AlternatingRowStyle BackColor="White" ForeColor="#284775" />
</asp:GridView>
</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>

ADO.NET
ADO.NET provides a bridge between the front end controls and the back end database.
The ADO.NET objects encapsulate all the data access operations and the controls interact
with these objects to display data, thus hiding the details of movement of data.

The following figure shows the ADO.NET objects at a glance:

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The DataSet Class

The dataset represents a subset of the database. It does not have a continuous
connection to the database. To update the database a reconnection is required. The
DataSet contains DataTable objects and DataRelation objects. The DataRelation objects
represent the relationship between two tables.

Following table shows some important properties of the DataSet class:

Properties Description

Indicates whether string comparisons within the data tables

CaseSensitive
are case-sensitive.

Container Gets the container for the component.

DataSetName Gets or sets the name of the current data set.

DefaultViewManager Returns a view of data in the data set.

Indicates whether the component is currently in design

DesignMode
mode.

Indicates whether constraint rules are followed when

EnforceConstraints
attempting any update operation.

Gets the list of event handlers that are attached to this

Events
component.

Gets the collection of customized user information

ExtendedProperties
associated with the DataSet.

HasErrors Indicates if there are any errors.

IsInitialized Indicates whether the DataSet is initialized.

Gets or sets the locale information used to compare strings

Locale
within the table.

Namespace Gets or sets the namespace of the DataSet.

Gets or sets an XML prefix that aliases the namespace of

Prefix
the DataSet.

Relations Returns the collection of DataRelation objects.

Tables Returns the collection of DataTable objects.

The following table shows some important methods of the DataSet class:

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Methods Description

Accepts all changes made since the

AcceptChanges DataSet was loaded or this method
was called.

Begins the initialization of the

BeginInit DataSet. The initialization occurs at
run time.

Clear Clears data.

Copies the structure of the DataSet,

including all DataTable schemas,
Clone
relations, and constraints. Does not
copy any data.

Copy Copies both structure and data.

Returns a DataTableReader with one

result set per DataTable, in the same
CreateDataReader()
sequence as the tables appear in the
Tables collection.

Returns a DataTableReader with one

CreateDataReader(DataTable[])
result set per DataTable.

EndInit Ends the initialization of the data set.

Determines whether the specified

Equals(Object)
Object is equal to the current Object.

Free resources and perform other

Finalize
cleanups.

Returns a copy of the DataSet with all

changes made since it was loaded or
GetChanges
the AcceptChanges method was
called.

Gets a copy of DataSet with all

changes made since it was loaded or
GetChanges(DataRowState)
the AcceptChanges method was
called, filtered by DataRowState.

Gets a copy of XmlSchemaSet for the

GetDataSetSchema
DataSet.

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Populates a serialization information

GetObjectData object with the data needed to
serialize the DataSet.

GetType Gets the type of the current instance.

Returns the XML representation of

GetXML
the data.

Returns the XSD schema for the XML

GetXMLSchema
representation of the data.

Gets a value indicating whether the

HasChanges() DataSet has changes, including new,
deleted, or modified rows.

Gets a value indicating whether the

DataSet has changes, including new,
HasChanges(DataRowState)
deleted, or modified rows, filtered by
DataRowState.

Inspects the format of the serialized

IsBinarySerialized
representation of the DataSet.

Fills a DataSet with values from a

data source using the supplied
Load(IDataReader, LoadOption, DataTable[]) IDataReader, using an array of
DataTable instances to supply the
schema and namespace information.

Fills a DataSet with values from a

data source using the supplied
Load(IDataReader, LoadOption, String[]) IDataReader, using an array of strings
to supply the names for the tables
within the DataSet.

Merges the data with data from

Merge() another DataSet. This method has
different overloaded forms.

Reads an XML schema and data into

ReadXML() the DataSet. This method has
different overloaded forms.

Reads an XML schema into the

ReadXMLSchema(0) DataSet. This method has different
overloaded forms.

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Rolls back all changes made since the

RejectChanges
last call to AcceptChanges.

Writes an XML schema and data from

WriteXML() the DataSet. This method has
different overloaded forms.

Writes the structure of the DataSet

WriteXMLSchema() as an XML schema. This method has
different overloaded forms.

The DataTable Class

The DataTable class represents the tables in the database. It has the following important
properties; most of these properties are read only properties except the PrimaryKey
property:

Properties Description

ChildRelations Returns the collection of child relationship.

Columns Returns the Columns collection.

Constraints Returns the Constraints collection.

DataSet Returns the parent DataSet.

DefaultView Returns a view of the table.

ParentRelations Returns the ParentRelations collection.

Gets or sets an array of columns as the primary key for the

PrimaryKey
table.

Rows Returns the Rows collection.

The following table shows some important methods of the DataTable class:

Methods Description

AcceptChanges Commits all changes since the last AcceptChanges.

Clear Clears all data from the table.

Returns a copy of the DataTable with all changes made

GetChanges
since the AcceptChanges method was called.

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GetErrors Returns an array of rows with errors.

ImportRows Copies a new row into the table.

Finds and updates a specific row, or creates a new one, if

LoadDataRow
not found any.

Merge Merges the table with another DataTable.

NewRow Creates a new DataRow.

Rolls back all changes made since the last call to

RejectChanges
AcceptChanges.

Reset Resets the table to its original state.

Select Returns an array of DataRow objects.

The DataRow Class

The DataRow object represents a row in a table. It has the following important
properties:

Properties Description

HasErrors Indicates if there are any errors.

Items Gets or sets the data stored in a specific column.

ItemArrays Gets or sets all the values for the row.

Table Returns the parent table.

The following table shows some important methods of the DataRow class:

Methods Description

AcceptChanges Accepts all changes made since this method was called.

BeginEdit Begins edit operation.

CancelEdit Cancels edit operation.

Delete Deletes the DataRow.

EndEdit Ends the edit operation.

GetChildRows Gets the child rows of this row.

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GetParentRow Gets the parent row.

GetParentRows Gets parent rows of DataRow object.

Rolls back all changes made since the last call to

RejectChanges
AcceptChanges.

The DataAdapter Object

The DataAdapter object acts as a mediator between the DataSet object and the
database. This helps the Dataset to contain data from multiple databases or other data
source.

The DataReader Object

The DataReader object is an alternative to the DataSet and DataAdapter combination.
This object provides a connection oriented access to the data records in the database.
These objects are suitable for read-only access, such as populating a list and then
breaking the connection.

DbCommand and DbConnection Objects

The DbConnection object represents a connection to the data source. The connection
could be shared among different command objects.

The DbCommand object represents the command or a stored procedure sent to the
database from retrieving or manipulating data.

Example
So far, we have used tables and databases already existing in our computer. In this
example, we will create a table, add column, rows and data into it and display the table
using a GridView object.

The source file code is as given:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs"

Inherits="createdatabase._Default" %>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >

<head runat="server">

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<title>
Untitled Page
</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
<asp:GridView ID="GridView1" runat="server">
</asp:GridView>
</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>

The code behind file is as given:

namespace createdatabase
{
public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page
{
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (!IsPostBack)
{
DataSet ds = CreateDataSet();
GridView1.DataSource = ds.Tables["Student"];
GridView1.DataBind();
}
}
private DataSet CreateDataSet()
{
//creating a DataSet object for tables
DataSet dataset = new DataSet();

// creating the student table

DataTable Students = CreateStudentTable();
dataset.Tables.Add(Students);
return dataset;
}
private DataTable CreateStudentTable()
{
DataTable Students = new DataTable("Student");

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// adding columns
AddNewColumn(Students, "System.Int32", "StudentID");
AddNewColumn(Students, "System.String", "StudentName");
AddNewColumn(Students, "System.String", "StudentCity");

// adding rows
AddNewRow(Students, 1, "M H Kabir", "Kolkata");
AddNewRow(Students, 1, "Shreya Sharma", "Delhi");
AddNewRow(Students, 1, "Rini Mukherjee", "Hyderabad");
AddNewRow(Students, 1, "Sunil Dubey", "Bikaner");
AddNewRow(Students, 1, "Rajat Mishra", "Patna");

return Students;
}

private void AddNewColumn(DataTable table, string columnType, string

columnName)
{
DataColumn column = table.Columns.Add(columnName,
Type.GetType(columnType));
}

//adding data into the table

private void AddNewRow(DataTable table, int id, string name, string
city)
{
DataRow newrow = table.NewRow();
newrow["StudentID"] = id;
newrow["StudentName"] = name;
newrow["StudentCity"] = city;
table.Rows.Add(newrow);
}
}
}

When you execute the program, observe the following:

The application first creates a data set and binds it with the grid view control
using the DataBind() method of the GridView control.

The Createdataset() method is a user defined function, which creates a new

DataSet object and then calls another user defined method CreateStudentTable()

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to create the table and add it to the Tables collection of the data set.

The CreateStudentTable() method calls the user defined methods

AddNewColumn() and AddNewRow() to create the columns and rows of the table
as well as to add data to the rows.

When the page is executed, it returns the rows of the table as shown:

ASP.NET - File Uploading

ASP.NET has two controls that allow users to upload files to the web server. Once the
server receives the posted file data, the application can save it, check it, or ignore it. The
following controls allow the file uploading:

HtmlInputFile - an HTML server control

FileUpload - and ASP.NET web control

Both controls allow file uploading, but the FileUpload control automatically sets the
encoding of the form, whereas the HtmlInputFile does not do so.

In this tutorial, we use the FileUpload control. The FileUpload control allows the user to
browse for and select the file to be uploaded, providing a browse button and a text box
for entering the filename.

Once, the user has entered the filename in the text box by typing the name or browsing,
the SaveAs method of the FileUpload control can be called to save the file to the disk.

The basic syntax of FileUpload is:

<asp:FileUpload ID= "Uploader" runat = "server" />

The FileUpload class is derived from the WebControl class, and inherits all its members.
Apart from those, the FileUpload class has the following read-only properties:

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Properties Description

FileBytes Returns an array of the bytes in a file to be uploaded.

Returns the stream object pointing to the file to be

FileContent
uploaded.

FileName Returns the name of the file to be uploaded.

HasFile Specifies whether the control has a file to upload.

PostedFile Returns a reference to the uploaded file.

The posted file is encapsulated in an object of type HttpPostedFile, which could be

accessed through the PostedFile property of the FileUpload class.

The HttpPostedFile class has the following frequently used properties:

Properties Description

ContentLength Returns the size of the uploaded file in bytes.

ContentType Returns the MIME type of the uploaded file.

FileName Returns the full filename.

InputStream Returns a stream object pointing to the uploaded file.

Example
The following example demonstrates the FileUpload control and its properties. The form
has a FileUpload control along with a save button and a label control for displaying the
file name, file type, and file length.

In the design view, the form looks as follows:

The content file code is as given:

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<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
<h3> File Upload:</h3>
<br />
<asp:FileUpload ID="FileUpload1" runat="server" />
<br /><br />
<asp:Button ID="btnsave" runat="server" onclick="btnsave_Click"
Text="Save" style="width:85px" />
<br /><br />
<asp:Label ID="lblmessage" runat="server" />
</div>
</form>
</body>

The code behind the save button is as given:

protected void btnsave_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
if (FileUpload1.HasFile)
{
try
{
sb.AppendFormat(" Uploading file: {0}", FileUpload1.FileName);

//saving the file

FileUpload1.SaveAs("<c:\\SaveDirectory>" + FileUpload1.FileName);

//Showing the file information

sb.AppendFormat("<br/> Save As: {0}",
FileUpload1.PostedFile.FileName);
sb.AppendFormat("<br/> File type: {0}",
FileUpload1.PostedFile.ContentType);
sb.AppendFormat("<br/> File length: {0}",
FileUpload1.PostedFile.ContentLength);
sb.AppendFormat("<br/> File name: {0}",
FileUpload1.PostedFile.FileName);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{

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sb.Append("<br/> Error <br/>");

sb.AppendFormat("Unable to save file <br/> {0}", ex.Message);
}
}
else
{
lblmessage.Text = sb.ToString();
}
}

Note the following:

The StringBuilder class is derived from System.IO namespace, so it needs to be

included.

The try and catch blocks are used for catching errors, and display the error
message.

ASP.NET - Ad Rotator
The AdRotator control randomly selects banner graphics from a list, which is specified in
an external XML schedule file. This external XML schedule file is called the advertisement
file.

The AdRotator control allows you to specify the advertisement file and the type of
window that the link should follow in the AdvertisementFile and the Target property
respectively.

The basic syntax of adding an AdRotator is as follows:

<asp:AdRotator runat = "server" AdvertisementFile = "adfile.xml" Target =

"_blank" />

Before going into the details of the AdRotator control and its properties, let us look into
the construction of the advertisement file.

The Advertisement File

The advertisement file is an XML file, which contains the information about the
advertisements to be displayed.

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a W3C standard for text document markup. It is a
text-based markup language that enables you to store data in a structured format by

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using meaningful tags. The term 'extensible' implies that you can extend your ability to
describe a document by defining meaningful tags for the application.

XML is not a language in itself, like HTML, but a set of rules for creating new markup
languages. It is a meta-markup language. It allows developers to create custom tag sets
for special uses. It structures, stores, and transports the information.

Following is an example of XML file:

<BOOK>
<NAME> Learn XML </NAME>
<AUTHOR> Samuel Peterson </AUTHOR>
<PUBLISHER> NSS Publications </PUBLISHER>
<PRICE> $30.00</PRICE>
</BOOK>

Like all XML files, the advertisement file needs to be a structured text file with well-
defined tags delineating the data. There are the following standard XML elements that
are commonly used in the advertisement file:

Element Description

Advertisements Encloses the advertisement file.

Ad Delineates separate ad.

ImageUrl The path of image that will be displayed.

NavigateUrl The link that will be followed when the user clicks the ad.

The text that will be displayed instead of the picture if it

AlternateText
cannot be displayed.

Keyword identifying a group of advertisements. This is used

Keyword
for filtering.

The number indicating how often an advertisement will

Impressions
appear.

Height Height of the image to be displayed.

Width Width of the image to be displayed.

Apart from these tags, customs tags with custom attributes could also be included. The
following code illustrates an advertisement file ads.xml:

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<Advertisements>
<Ad>
<ImageUrl>rose1.jpg</ImageUrl>
<NavigateUrl>http://www.1800flowers.com</NavigateUrl>
<AlternateText>
Order flowers, roses, gifts and more
</AlternateText>
<Impressions>20</Impressions>
<Keyword>flowers</Keyword>
</Ad>

<Ad>
<ImageUrl>rose2.jpg</ImageUrl>
<NavigateUrl>http://www.babybouquets.com.au</NavigateUrl>
<AlternateText>Order roses and flowers</AlternateText>
<Impressions>20</Impressions>
<Keyword>gifts</Keyword>
</Ad>

<Ad>
<ImageUrl>rose3.jpg</ImageUrl>
<NavigateUrl>http://www.flowers2moscow.com</NavigateUrl>
<AlternateText>Send flowers to Russia</AlternateText>
<Impressions>20</Impressions>
<Keyword>russia</Keyword>
</Ad>

<Ad>
<ImageUrl>rose4.jpg</ImageUrl>
<NavigateUrl>http://www.edibleblooms.com</NavigateUrl>
<AlternateText>Edible Blooms</AlternateText>
<Impressions>20</Impressions>
<Keyword>gifts</Keyword>
</Ad>
</Advertisements>

Properties and Events of the AdRotator Class

The AdRotator class is derived from the WebControl class and inherits its properties.
Apart from those, the AdRotator class has the following properties:

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Properties Description

AdvertisementFile The path to the advertisement file.

The element name of the field where alternate text is

AlternateTextFeild
provided. The default value is AlternateText.

The name of the specific list of data to be bound when

DataMember
advertisement file is not used.

DataSource Control from where it would retrieve data.

DataSourceID Id of the control from where it would retrieve data.

Specifies the font properties associated with the

Font
advertisement banner control.

The element name of the field where the URL for the image
ImageUrlField
is provided. The default value is ImageUrl.

KeywordFilter For displaying the keyword based ads only.

The element name of the field where the URL to navigate to

NavigateUrlField
is provided. The default value is NavigateUrl.

The browser window or frame that displays the content of

Target
the page linked.

Obtains the unique, hierarchically qualified identifier for the

UniqueID
AdRotator control.

Following are the important events of the AdRotator class:

Events Description

It is raised once per round trip to the server after creation

AdCreated
of the control, but before the page is rendered

DataBinding Occurs when the server control binds to a data source.

DataBound Occurs after the server control binds to a data source.

Occurs when a server control is released from memory,

Disposed which is the last stage of the server control lifecycle when
an ASP.NET page is requested

Occurs when the server control is initialized, which is the

Init
first step in its lifecycle.

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Occurs when the server control is loaded into the Page

Load
object.

Occurs after the Control object is loaded but prior to

PreRender
rendering.

Unload Occurs when the server control is unloaded from memory.

Working with AdRotator Control

Create a new web page and place an AdRotator control on it.

<form id="form1" runat="server">

<div>
<asp:AdRotator ID="AdRotator1" runat="server" AdvertisementFile
="~/ads.xml" onadcreated="AdRotator1_AdCreated" />
</div>
</form>

The ads.xml file and the image files should be located in the root directory of the web
site.

Try to execute the above application and observe that each time the page is reloaded,
the ad is changed.

ASP.NET - Calendars
The calendar control is a functionally rich web control, which provides the following
capabilities:

Displaying one month at a time

Selecting a day, a week or a month

Selecting a range of days

Moving from month to month

Controlling the display of the days programmatically

The basic syntax of a calendar control is:

<asp:Calender ID = "Calendar1" runat = "server">

</asp:Calender>

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Properties and Events of the Calendar Control

The calendar control has many properties and events, using which you can customize the
actions and display of the control. The following table provides some important
properties of the Calendar control:

Properties Description

Caption Gets or sets the caption for the calendar control.

CaptionAlign Gets or sets the alignment for the caption.

Gets or sets the number of spaces between the data and

CellPadding
the cell border.

CellSpacing Gets or sets the space between cells.

Gets the style properties for the section that displays the
DayHeaderStyle
day of the week.

DayNameFormat Gets or sets format of days of the week.

Gets the style properties for the days in the displayed

DayStyle
month.

FirstDayOfWeek Gets or sets the day of week to display in the first column.

Gets or sets the text for next month navigation control. The
NextMonthText
default value is >.

Gets or sets the format of the next and previous month

NextPrevFormat
navigation control.

Gets the style properties for the days on the Calendar

OtherMonthDayStyle
control that are not in the displayed month.

Gets or sets the text for previous month navigation control.

PrevMonthText
The default value is <.

SelectedDate Gets or sets the selected date.

Gets a collection of DateTime objects representing the

SelectedDates
selected dates.

SelectedDayStyle Gets the style properties for the selected dates.

Gets or sets the selection mode that specifies whether the

SelectionMode
user can select a single day, a week or an entire month.

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Gets or sets the text for the month selection element in the
SelectMonthText
selector column.

Gets the style properties for the week and month selector
SelectorStyle
column.

Gets or sets the text displayed for the week selection

SelectWeekText
element in the selector column.

Gets or sets the value indicating whether the heading for

ShowDayHeader
the days of the week is displayed.

Gets or sets the value indicating whether the gridlines

ShowGridLines
would be shown.

Gets or sets a value indicating whether next and previous

ShowNextPrevMonth
month navigation elements are shown in the title section.

Gets or sets a value indicating whether the title section is

ShowTitle
displayed.

TitleFormat Gets or sets the format for the title section.

Get the style properties of the title heading for the Calendar
Titlestyle
control.

Gets the style properties for today's date on the Calendar

TodayDayStyle
control.

TodaysDate Gets or sets the value for today's date.

Gets or sets a value that indicates whether to render the

UseAccessibleHeader table header <th> HTML element for the day headers
instead of the table data <td> HTML element.

VisibleDate Gets or sets the date that specifies the month to display.

Gets the style properties for the weekend dates on the

WeekendDayStyle
Calendar control.

The Calendar control has the following three most important events that allow the
developers to program the calendar control. They are:

Events Description

It is raised when a day, a week or an entire month is

SelectionChanged
selected.

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It is raised when each data cell of the calendar control is

DayRender
rendered.

VisibleMonthChanged It is raised when user changes a month.

Working with the Calendar Control

Putting a bare-bone calendar control without any code behind file provides a workable
calendar to a site, which shows the months and days of the year. It also allows
navigation to next and previous months.

Calendar controls allow the users to select a single day, a week, or an entire month. This
is done by using the SelectionMode property. This property has the following values:

Properties Description

Day To select a single day.

DayWeek To select a single day or an entire week.

DayWeekMonth To select a single day, a week, or an entire month.

None Nothing can be selected.

The syntax for selecting days:

<asp:Calender ID = "Calendar1" runat = "server" SelectionMode="DayWeekMonth">

</asp:Calender>

When the selection mode is set to the value DayWeekMonth, an extra column with the >
symbol appears for selecting the week, and a >> symbol appears to the left of the days
name for selecting the month.

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Example
The following example demonstrates selecting a date and displays the date in a label:

The content file code is as follows:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs"

Inherits="calendardemo._Default" %>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >

<head runat="server">
<title>
Untitled Page
</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
<h3> Your Birthday:</h3>
<asp:Calendar ID="Calendar1" runat="server
SelectionMode="DayWeekMonth" onselectionchanged="Calendar1_SelectionChanged">
</asp:Calendar>
</div>
<p>Todays date is:
<asp:Label ID="lblday" runat="server"></asp:Label>
</p>

<p>Your Birday is:

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<asp:Label ID="lblbday" runat="server"></asp:Label>

</p>
</form>
</body>
</html>

The event handler for the event SelectionChanged:

protected void Calendar1_SelectionChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)

{
lblday.Text = Calendar1.TodaysDate.ToShortDateString();
lblbday.Text = Calendar1.SelectedDate.ToShortDateString();
}

When the file is run, it should produce the following output:

ASP.NET - Multi Views

MultiView and View controls allow you to divide the content of a page into different
groups, displaying only one group at a time. Each View control manages one group of
content and all the View controls are held together in a MultiView control.

The MultiView control is responsible for displaying one View control at a time. The View
displayed is called the active view.

The syntax of MultiView control is:

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<asp:MultView ID= "MultiView1" runat= "server">

</asp:MultiView>

The syntax of View control is:

<asp:View ID= "View1" runat= "server">

</asp:View>

However, the View control cannot exist on its own. It would render error if you try to use
it stand-alone. It is always used with a Multiview control as:

<asp:MultView ID= "MultiView1" runat= "server">

<asp:View ID= "View1" runat= "server"> </asp:View>
</asp:MultiView>

Properties of View and MultiView Controls

Both View and MultiView controls are derived from Control class and inherit all its
properties, methods, and events. The most important property of the View control is
Visible property of type Boolean, which sets the visibility of a view.

The MultiView control has the following important properties:

Properties Description

Views Collection of View controls within the MultiView.

A zero based index that denotes the active view. If no view

ActiveViewIndex
is active, then the index is -1.

The CommandName attribute of the button control associated with the navigation of the
MultiView control are associated with some related field of the MultiView control.

For example, if a button control with CommandName value as NextView is associated

with the navigation of the multiview, it automatically navigates to the next view when
the button is clicked.

The following table shows the default command names of the above properties:

Properties Description

NextViewCommandName NextView

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PreviousViewCommandName PrevView

SwitchViewByIDCommandName SwitchViewByID

SwitchViewByIndexCommandName SwitchViewByIndex

The important methods of the multiview control are:

Methods Description

SetActiveview Sets the active view

GetActiveview Retrieves the active view

Every time a view is changed, the page is posted back to the server and a number of
events are raised. Some important events are:

Events Description

ActiveViewChanged Raised when a view is changed

Activate Raised by the active view

Deactivate Raised by the inactive view

Apart from the above mentioned properties, methods and events, multiview control
inherits the members of the control and object class.

Example
The example page has three views. Each view has two button for navigating through the
views.

The content file code is as follows:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs"

Inherits="multiviewdemo._Default" %>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >

<head runat="server">
<title>
Untitled Page

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</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
<h2>MultiView and View Controls</h2>
<asp:DropDownList ID="DropDownList1" runat="server"
onselectedindexchanged="DropDownList1_SelectedIndexChanged">
</asp:DropDownList>
<hr />
<asp:MultiView ID="MultiView1" runat="server" ActiveViewIndex="2"
onactiveviewchanged="MultiView1_ActiveViewChanged" >
<asp:View ID="View1" runat="server">
<h3>This is view 1</h3>
<br />
<asp:Button CommandName="NextView" ID="btnnext1"
runat="server" Text = "Go To Next" />
<asp:Button CommandArgument="View3"
CommandName="SwitchViewByID" ID="btnlast" runat="server"
Text ="Go To Last" />
</asp:View>

<asp:View ID="View2" runat="server">

<h3>This is view 2</h3>
<asp:Button CommandName="NextView" ID="btnnext2"
runat="server" Text = "Go To Next" />
<asp:Button CommandName="PrevView" ID="btnprevious2"
runat="server" Text = "Go To Previous View" />
</asp:View>

<asp:View ID="View3" runat="server">

<h3> This is view 3</h3>
<br />
<asp:Calendar ID="Calender1" runat="server"></asp:Calendar>
<br />
<asp:Button CommandArgument="0"
CommandName="SwitchViewByIndex" ID="btnfirst"
runat="server" Text = "Go To Next" />
<asp:Button CommandName="PrevView" ID="btnprevious"
runat="server" Text = "Go To Previous View" />
</asp:View>
</asp:MultiView>

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</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>

Observe the following:

The MultiView.ActiveViewIndex determines which view will be shown. This is the only
view rendered on the page. The default value for the ActiveViewIndex is -1, when no
view is shown. Since the ActiveViewIndex is defined as 2 in the example, it shows the
third view, when executed.

ASP.NET - Panel Controls

The Panel control works as a container for other controls on the page. It controls the
appearance and visibility of the controls it contains. It also allows generating controls
programmatically.

The basic syntax of panel control is as follows:

<asp:Panel ID= "Panel1" runat = "server">

</asp:Panel>

The Panel control is derived from the WebControl class. Hence it inherits all the
properties, methods and events of the same. It does not have any method or event of its

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own. However it has the following properties of its own:

Properties Description

BackImageUrl URL of the background image of the panel.

Gets or sets the identifier for the default button that is

DefaultButton
contained in the Panel control.

Direction Text direction in the panel.

GroupingText Allows grouping of text as a field.

HorizontalAlign Horizontal alignment of the content in the panel.

Specifies visibility and location of scrollbars within the

ScrollBars
panel.

Wrap Allows text wrapping.

Working with the Panel Control

Let us start with a simple scrollable panel of specific height and width and a border style.
The ScrollBars property is set to both the scrollbars, hence both the scrollbars are
rendered.

The source file has the following code for the panel tag:

<asp:Panel ID="Panel1" runat="server" BorderColor="#990000"

BorderStyle="Solid"
Borderstyle="width:1px" Height="116px" ScrollBars="Both"
style="width:278px">

This is a scrollable panel.

<br />
<br />

<asp:Button ID="btnpanel" runat="server" Text="Button" style="width:82px"

/>
</asp:Panel>

The panel is rendered as follows:

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Example
The following example demonstrates dynamic content generation. The user provides the
number of label controls and textboxes to be generated on the panel. The controls are
generated programmatically.

Change the properties of the panel using the properties window. When you select a
control on the design view, the properties window displays the properties of that
particular control and allows you to make changes without typing.

The source file for the example is as follows:

<form id="form1" runat="server">

<div>
<asp:Panel ID="pnldynamic" runat="server" BorderColor="#990000"
BorderStyle="Solid" Borderstyle="width:1px" Height="150px"
ScrollBars="Auto" style="width:60%" BackColor="#CCCCFF" Font-Names="Courier"
HorizontalAlign="Center">

This panel shows dynamic control generation:

<br />
<br />
</asp:Panel>

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</div>

<table style="width: 51%;">

<tr>
<td class="style2">No of Labels:</td>
<td class="style1">
<asp:DropDownList ID="ddllabels" runat="server">
<asp:ListItem>0</asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem>1</asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem>2</asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem>3</asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem>4</asp:ListItem>
</asp:DropDownList>
</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td class="style2"> </td>
<td class="style1"> </td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td class="style2">No of Text Boxes :</td>
<td class="style1">
<asp:DropDownList ID="ddltextbox" runat="server">
<asp:ListItem>0</asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem Value="1"></asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem>2</asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem>3</asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem Value="4"></asp:ListItem>
</asp:DropDownList>
</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td class="style2"> </td>
<td class="style1"> </td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td class="style2">
<asp:CheckBox ID="chkvisible" runat="server"

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Text="Make the Panel Visible" />

</td>

<td class="style1">
<asp:Button ID="btnrefresh" runat="server" Text="Refresh Panel"
style="width:129px" />
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>

The code behind the Page_Load event is responsible for generating the controls
dynamically:

public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page

{
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
//make the panel visible
pnldynamic.Visible = chkvisible.Checked;

//generating the lable controls:

int n = Int32.Parse(ddllabels.SelectedItem.Value);
for (int i = 1; i <= n; i++)
{
Label lbl = new Label();
lbl.Text = "Label" + (i).ToString();
pnldynamic.Controls.Add(lbl);
pnldynamic.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("<br />"));
}

//generating the text box controls:

int m = Int32.Parse(ddltextbox.SelectedItem.Value);
for (int i = 1; i <= m; i++)
{
TextBox txt = new TextBox();
txt.Text = "Text Box" + (i).ToString();
pnldynamic.Controls.Add(txt);
pnldynamic.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("<br />"));
}

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}
}

When executed, the panel is rendered as:

ASP.NET - Ajax Control

AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. This is a cross platform technology
which speeds up response time. The AJAX server controls add script to the page which is
executed and processed by the browser.

However like other ASP.NET server controls, these AJAX server controls also can have
methods and event handlers associated with them, which are processed on the server
side.

The control toolbox in the Visual Studio IDE contains a group of controls called the 'AJAX
Extensions'

The ScriptManager Control

The ScriptManager control is the most important control and must be present on the
page for other controls to work.

It has the basic syntax:

<asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager1" runat="server">

</asp:ScriptManager>

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If you create an 'Ajax Enabled site' or add an 'AJAX Web Form' from the 'Add Item' dialog
box, the web form automatically contains the script manager control. The ScriptManager
control takes care of the client-side script for all the server side controls.

The UpdatePanel Control

The UpdatePanel control is a container control and derives from the Control class. It acts
as a container for the child controls within it and does not have its own interface. When a
control inside it triggers a post back, the UpdatePanel intervenes to initiate the post
asynchronously and update just that portion of the page.

For example, if a button control is inside the update panel and it is clicked, only the
controls within the update panel will be affected, the controls on the other parts of the
page will not be affected. This is called the partial post back or the asynchronous post
back.

Example
Add an AJAX web form in your application. It contains the script manager control by
default. Insert an update panel. Place a button control along with a label control within
the update panel control. Place another set of button and label outside the panel.

The design view looks as follows:

The source file is as follows:

<form id="form1" runat="server">

<div>
<asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager1" runat="server" />
</div>
<asp:UpdatePanel ID="UpdatePanel1" runat="server">
<ContentTemplate>

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<asp:Button ID="btnpartial" runat="server"

onclick="btnpartial_Click" Text="Partial PostBack"/>
<br />
<br />
<asp:Label ID="lblpartial" runat="server"></asp:Label>
</ContentTemplate>
</asp:UpdatePanel>
<p> </p>
<p>Outside the Update Panel</p>
<p>
<asp:Button ID="btntotal" runat="server"
onclick="btntotal_Click" Text="Total PostBack" />
</p>
<asp:Label ID="lbltotal" runat="server"></asp:Label>
</form>

Both the button controls have same code for the event handler:

string time = DateTime.Now.ToLongTimeString();

lblpartial.Text = "Showing time from panel" + time;
lbltotal.Text = "Showing time from outside" + time;

Observe that when the page is executed, if the total post back button is clicked, it
updates time in both the labels but if the partial post back button is clicked, it only
updates the label within the update panel.

A page can contain multiple update panels with each panel containing other controls like
a grid and displaying different part of data.

When a total post back occurs, the update panel content is updated by default. This
default mode could be changed by changing the UpdateMode property of the control. Let
us look at other properties of the update panel.

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Properties of the UpdatePanel Control

The following table shows the properties of the update panel control:

Properties Description

This property indicates whether the post backs are

ChildrenAsTriggers coming from the child controls, which cause the update
panel to refresh.

It is the content template and defines what appears in the

ContentTemplate
update panel when it is rendered.

Retrieves the dynamically created template container

ContentTemplateContainer object and used for adding child controls
programmatically.

Indicates whether the panel is being updated as part of

IsInPartialRendering
the partial post back.

Shows the render modes. The available modes are Block

RenderMode
and Inline.

Gets or sets the rendering mode by determining some

UpdateMode
conditions.

Defines the collection trigger objects each corresponding

Triggers
to an event causing the panel to refresh automatically.

Methods of the UpdatePanel Control

The following table shows the methods of the update panel control:

Methods Description

Creates a Control object that acts as a container

CreateContentTemplateContainer for child controls that define the UpdatePanel
control's content.

Returns the collection of all controls that are

CreateControlCollection
contained in the UpdatePanel control.

Initializes the UpdatePanel control trigger collection

Initialize
if partial-page rendering is enabled.

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Causes an update of the content of an UpdatePanel

Update
control.

The behavior of the update panel depends upon the values of the UpdateMode property
and ChildrenAsTriggers property.

UpdateMode ChildrenAsTriggers Effect

Always False Illegal parameters.

UpdatePanel refreshes if whole page

Always True refreshes or a child control on it
posts back.

UpdatePanel refreshes if whole page

Conditional False refreshes or a triggering control
outside it initiates a refresh.

UpdatePanel refreshes if whole page

refreshes or a child control on it
Conditional True
posts back or a triggering control
outside it initiates a refresh.

The UpdateProgress Control

The UpdateProgress control provides a sort of feedback on the browser while one or
more update panel controls are being updated. For example, while a user logs in or waits
for server response while performing some database oriented job.

It provides a visual acknowledgement like "Loading page...", indicating the work is in

progress.

The syntax for the UpdateProgress control is:

<asp:UpdateProgress ID="UpdateProgress1" runat="server" DynamicLayout="true"

AssociatedUpdatePanelID="UpdatePanel1" >
<ProgressTemplate>
Loading...
</ProgressTemplate>
</asp:UpdateProgress>

The above snippet shows a simple message within the ProgressTemplate tag. However, it
could be an image or other relevant controls. The UpdateProgress control displays for

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every asynchronous postback unless it is assigned to a single update panel using the
AssociatedUpdatePanelID property.

Properties of the UpdateProgress Control

The following table shows the properties of the update progress control:

Properties Description

Gets and sets the ID of the update panel with which this
AssociatedUpdatePanelID
control is associated.

Gets or sets the cascading style sheet (CSS) attributes of

Attributes
the UpdateProgress control.

Gets and sets the time in milliseconds after which the

DisplayAfter
progress template is displayed. The default is 500.

Indicates whether the progress template is dynamically

DynamicLayout
rendered.

Indicates the template displayed during an asynchronous

ProgressTemplate post back which takes more time than the DisplayAfter
time.

Methods of the UpdateProgress Control

The following table shows the methods of the update progress control:

Methods Description

Returns a list of components, behaviors, and client controls

GetScriptDescriptors that are required for the UpdateProgress control's client
functionality.

Returns a list of client script library dependencies for the

GetScriptReferences
UpdateProgress control.

The Timer Control

The timer control is used to initiate the post back automatically. This could be done in
two ways:

(1) Setting the Triggers property of the UpdatePanel control:

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<Triggers>
<asp:AsyncPostBackTrigger ControlID="btnpanel2" EventName="Click" />
</Triggers>

(2) Placing a timer control directly inside the UpdatePanel to act as a child control trigger.
A single timer can be the trigger for multiple UpdatePanels.

<asp:UpdatePanel ID="UpdatePanel1" runat="server" UpdateMode="Always">

<ContentTemplate>
<asp:Timer ID="Timer1" runat="server" Interval="1000">
</asp:Timer>
<asp:Label ID="Label1" runat="server" Height="101px" style="width:304px"
>
</asp:Label>
</ContentTemplate>
</asp:UpdatePanel>

ASP.NET - Data Sources

A data source control interacts with the data-bound controls and hides the complex data
binding processes. These are the tools that provide data to the data bound controls and
support execution of operations like insertions, deletions, sorting, and updates.

Each data source control wraps a particular data provider-relational databases, XML
documents, or custom classes and helps in:

Managing connection

Selecting data
Managing presentation aspects like paging, caching, etc.

Manipulating data

There are many data source controls available in ASP.NET for accessing data from SQL
Server, from ODBC or OLE DB servers, from XML files, and from business objects.

Based on type of data, these controls could be divided into two categories:

Hierarchical data source controls

Table-based data source controls

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The data source controls used for hierarchical data are:

XMLDataSource - It allows binding to XML files and strings with or without

schema information.

SiteMapDataSource - It allows binding to a provider that supplies site map

information.

The data source controls used for tabular data are:

Data source controls Description

It represents a connection to an ADO.NET data provider

SqlDataSource that returns SQL data, including data sources accessible via
OLEDB and ODBC.

It allows binding to a custom .Net business object that

ObjectDataSource
returns data.

It allows binding to the results of a Linq-to-SQL query

LinqdataSource
(supported by ASP.NET 3.5 only).

AccessDataSource It represents connection to a Microsoft Access database.

Data Source Views

Data source views are objects of the DataSourceView class. Which represent a
customized view of data for different data operations such as sorting, filtering, etc.

The DataSourceView class serves as the base class for all data source view classes,
which define the capabilities of data source controls.

The following table provides the properties of the DataSourceView class:

Properties Description

Indicates whether deletion is allowed on the underlying

CanDelete
data source.

Indicates whether insertion is allowed on the underlying

CanInsert
data source.

Indicates whether paging is allowed on the underlying

CanPage
data source.

CanRetrieveTotalRowCount Indicates whether total row count information is available.

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CanSort Indicates whether the data could be sorted.

Indicates whether updates are allowed on the underlying

CanUpdate
data source.

Gets a list of event-handler delegates for the data source

Events
view.

Name Name of the view.

The following table provides the methods of the DataSourceView class:

Methods Description

Determines whether the specified command can

CanExecute
be executed.

ExecuteCommand Executes the specific command.

Performs a delete operation on the list of data

ExecuteDelete
that the DataSourceView object represents.

Performs an insert operation on the list of data

ExecuteInsert
that the DataSourceView object represents.

Gets a list of data from the underlying data

ExecuteSelect
storage.

Performs an update operation on the list of data

ExecuteUpdate
that the DataSourceView object represents.

Performs a delete operation on the data

Delete
associated with the view.

Performs an insert operation on the data

Insert
associated with the view.

Select Returns the queried data.

Performs an update operation on the data

Update
associated with the view.

OnDataSourceViewChanged Raises the DataSourceViewChanged event.

Called by the RaiseUnsupportedCapabilitiesError

method to compare the capabilities requested for
RaiseUnsupportedCapabilitiesError
an ExecuteSelect operation against those that the
view supports.

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The SqlDataSource Control

The SqlDataSource control represents a connection to a relational database such as SQL
Server or Oracle database, or data accessible through OLEDB or Open Database
Connectivity (ODBC). Connection to data is made through two important properties
ConnectionString and ProviderName.

The following code snippet provides the basic syntax of the control:

<asp:SqlDataSource runat="server" ID="MySqlSource"

ProviderName='<%$ ConnectionStrings:LocalNWind.ProviderName %>'
ConnectionString='<%$ ConnectionStrings:LocalNWind %>'
SelectionCommand= "SELECT * FROM EMPLOYEES" />

<asp:GridView ID="GridView1" runat="server" DataSourceID="MySqlSource" />

Configuring various data operations on the underlying data depends upon the various
properties (property groups) of the data source control.

The following table provides the related sets of properties of the SqlDataSource control,
which provides the programming interface of the control:

Property Group Description

DeleteCommand,
Gets or sets the SQL statement, parameters, and type for
DeleteParameters,
deleting rows in the underlying data.
DeleteCommandType

FilterExpression,
Gets or sets the data filtering string and parameters.
FilterParameters

InsertCommand,
Gets or sets the SQL statement, parameters, and type for
InsertParameters,
inserting rows in the underlying database.
InsertCommandType

SelectCommand,
Gets or sets the SQL statement, parameters, and type for
SelectParameters,
retrieving rows from the underlying database.
SelectCommandType

Gets or sets the name of an input parameter that the

SortParameterName
command's stored procedure will use to sort data.

UpdateCommand,
Gets or sets the SQL statement, parameters, and type for
UpdateParameters,
updating rows in the underlying data store.
UpdateCommandType

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The following code snippet shows a data source control enabled for data manipulation:

<asp:SqlDataSource runat="server" ID= "MySqlSource"

ProviderName='<%$ ConnectionStrings:LocalNWind.ProviderName %>'
ConnectionString=' <%$ ConnectionStrings:LocalNWind %>'
SelectCommand= "SELECT * FROM EMPLOYEES"
UpdateCommand= "UPDATE EMPLOYEES SET LASTNAME=@lame"
DeleteCommand= "DELETE FROM EMPLOYEES WHERE EMPLOYEEID=@eid"
FilterExpression= "EMPLOYEEID > 10">
.....
.....
</asp:SqlDataSource>

The ObjectDataSource Control

The ObjectDataSource Control enables user-defined classes to associate the output of
their methods to data bound controls. The programming interface of this class is almost
same as the SqlDataSource control.

Following are two important aspects of binding business objects:

The bindable class should have a default constructor, it should be stateless, and
have methods that can be mapped to select, update, insert, and delete
semantics.

The object must update one item at a time, batch operations are not supported.

Let us go directly to an example to work with this control. The student class is the class
to be used with an object data source. This class has three properties: a student id,
name, and city. It has a default constructor and a GetStudents method for retrieving
data.

The student class:

public class Student

{
public int StudentID { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
public string City { get; set; }
public Student()
{ }
public DataSet GetStudents()
{

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DataSet ds = new DataSet();

DataTable dt = new DataTable("Students");
dt.Columns.Add("StudentID", typeof(System.Int32));
dt.Columns.Add("StudentName", typeof(System.String));
dt.Columns.Add("StudentCity", typeof(System.String));
dt.Rows.Add(new object[] { 1, "M. H. Kabir", "Calcutta" });
dt.Rows.Add(new object[] { 2, "Ayan J. Sarkar", "Calcutta" });
ds.Tables.Add(dt);
return ds;
}
}

Take the following steps to bind the object with an object data source and retrieve data:

Create a new web site.

Add a class (Students.cs) to it by right clicking the project from the Solution
Explorer, adding a class template, and placing the above code in it.
Build the solution so that the application can use the reference to the class.

Place an object data source control in the web form.

Configure the data source by selecting the object.

Select a data method(s) for different operations on data. In this example, there is
only one method.

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Place a data bound control such as grid view on the page and select the object
data source as its underlying data source.

At this stage, the design view should look like the following:

Run the project, it retrieves the hard coded tuples from the students class.

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The AccessDataSource Control

The AccessDataSource control represents a connection to an Access database. It is based
on the SqlDataSource control and provides simpler programming interface. The following
code snippet provides the basic syntax for the data source:

<asp:AccessDataSource ID="AccessDataSource1 runat="server"

DataFile="~/App_Data/ASPDotNetStepByStep.mdb" SelectCommand="SELECT * FROM
[DotNetReferences]">
</asp:AccessDataSource>

The AccessDataSource control opens the database in read-only mode. However, it can
also be used for performing insert, update, or delete operations. This is done using the
ADO.NET commands and parameter collection.

Updates are problematic for Access databases from within an ASP.NET application
because an Access database is a plain file and the default account of the ASP.NET
application might not have the permission to write to the database file.

ASP.NET - Data Binding

Every ASP.NET web form control inherits the DataBind method from its parent Control
class, which gives it an inherent capability to bind data to at least one of its properties.
This is known as simple data binding or inline data binding.

Simple data binding involves attaching any collection (item collection) which implements
the IEnumerable interface, or the DataSet and DataTable classes to the DataSource
property of the control.

On the other hand, some controls can bind records, lists, or columns of data into their
structure through a DataSource control. These controls derive from the
BaseDataBoundControl class. This is called declarative data binding.

The data source controls help the data-bound controls implement functionalities such as,
sorting, paging, and editing data collections.

The BaseDataBoundControl is an abstract class, which is inherited by two more abstract

classes:

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DataBoundControl

HierarchicalDataBoundControl

The abstract class DataBoundControl is again inherited by two more abstract classes:

ListControl
CompositeDataBoundControl

The controls capable of simple data binding are derived from the ListControl abstract
class and these controls are:

BulletedList

CheckBoxList

DropDownList
ListBox

RadioButtonList

The controls capable of declarative data binding (a more complex data binding) are
derived from the abstract class CompositeDataBoundControl. These controls are:

DetailsView

FormView

GridView

RecordList

Simple Data Binding

Simple data binding involves the read-only selection lists. These controls can bind to an
array list or fields from a database. Selection lists takes two values from the database or
the data source; one value is displayed by the list and the other is considered as the
value corresponding to the display.

Let us take up a small example to understand the concept. Create a web site with a
bulleted list and a SqlDataSource control on it. Configure the data source control to
retrieve two values from your database (we use the same DotNetReferences table as in
the previous chapter).

Choosing a data source for the bulleted list control involves:

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Selecting the data source control

Selecting a field to display, which is called the data field

Selecting a field for the value

When the application is executed, check that the entire title column is bound to the
bulleted list and displayed.

Declarative Data Binding

We have already used declarative data binding in the previous tutorial using GridView
control. The other composite data bound controls capable of displaying and manipulating
data in a tabular manner are the DetailsView, FormView, and RecordList control.

In the next tutorial, we will look into the technology for handling database, i.e, ADO.NET.

However, the data binding involves the following objects:

A dataset that stores the data retrieved from the database.

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The data provider, which retrieves data from the database by using a command
over a connection.
The data adapter that issues the select statement stored in the command object;
it is also capable of update the data in a database by issuing Insert, Delete, and
Update statements.

Relation between the data binding objects:

Example
Let us take the following steps:

Step (1) : Create a new website. Add a class named booklist by right clicking on the
solution name in the Solution Explorer and choosing the item 'Class' from the 'Add Item'
dialog box. Name it as booklist.cs.

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Xml.Linq;

namespace databinding
{
public class booklist

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{
protected String bookname;
protected String authorname;
public booklist(String bname, String aname)
{
this.bookname = bname;
this.authorname = aname;

}
public String Book
{
get
{
return this.bookname;
}
set
{
this.bookname = value;
}
}
public String Author
{
get
{
return this.authorname;
}
set
{
this.authorname = value;
}
}
}
}

Step (2) : Add four list controls on the page a list box control, a radio button list, a
check box list, and a drop down list and four labels along with these list controls. The
page should look like this in design view:

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The source file should look as the following:

<form id="form1" runat="server">

<div>
<table style="width: 559px">
<tr>
<td style="width: 228px; height: 157px;">
<asp:ListBox ID="ListBox1" runat="server" AutoPostBack="True"
OnSelectedIndexChanged="ListBox1_SelectedIndexChanged">
</asp:ListBox>
</td>

<td style="height: 157px">

<asp:DropDownList ID="DropDownList1" runat="server"
AutoPostBack="True"
OnSelectedIndexChanged="DropDownList1_SelectedIndexChanged">
</asp:DropDownList>
</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td style="width: 228px; height: 40px;">
<asp:Label ID="lbllistbox" runat="server"></asp:Label>
</td>

<td style="height: 40px">

<asp:Label ID="lbldrpdown" runat="server">
</asp:Label>
</td>

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</tr>

<tr>
<td style="width: 228px; height: 21px">
</td>

<td style="height: 21px">

</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td style="width: 228px; height: 21px">
<asp:RadioButtonList ID="RadioButtonList1" runat="server"
AutoPostBack="True"
OnSelectedIndexChanged="RadioButtonList1_SelectedIndexChanged">
</asp:RadioButtonList>
</td>

<td style="height: 21px">

<asp:CheckBoxList ID="CheckBoxList1" runat="server"
AutoPostBack="True"
OnSelectedIndexChanged="CheckBoxList1_SelectedIndexChanged">
</asp:CheckBoxList>
</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td style="width: 228px; height: 21px">
<asp:Label ID="lblrdlist" runat="server">
</asp:Label>
</td>

<td style="height: 21px">

<asp:Label ID="lblchklist" runat="server">
</asp:Label>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
</form>

Step (3) : Finally, write the following code behind routines of the application:

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public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page

{
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
IList bklist = createbooklist();
if (!this.IsPostBack)
{
this.ListBox1.DataSource = bklist;
this.ListBox1.DataTextField = "Book";
this.ListBox1.DataValueField = "Author";
this.DropDownList1.DataSource = bklist;
this.DropDownList1.DataTextField = "Book";
this.DropDownList1.DataValueField = "Author";
this.RadioButtonList1.DataSource = bklist;
this.RadioButtonList1.DataTextField = "Book";
this.RadioButtonList1.DataValueField = "Author";
this.CheckBoxList1.DataSource = bklist;
this.CheckBoxList1.DataTextField = "Book";
this.CheckBoxList1.DataValueField = "Author";
this.DataBind();
}
}
protected IList createbooklist()
{
ArrayList allbooks = new ArrayList();
booklist bl;
bl = new booklist("UNIX CONCEPTS", "SUMITABHA DAS");
allbooks.Add(bl);
bl = new booklist("PROGRAMMING IN C", "RICHI KERNIGHAN");
allbooks.Add(bl);
bl = new booklist("DATA STRUCTURE", "TANENBAUM");
allbooks.Add(bl);
bl = new booklist("NETWORKING CONCEPTS", "FOROUZAN");
allbooks.Add(bl);
bl = new booklist("PROGRAMMING IN C++", "B. STROUSTROUP");
allbooks.Add(bl);
bl = new booklist("ADVANCED JAVA", "SUMITABHA DAS");
allbooks.Add(bl);
return allbooks;
}
protected void ListBox1_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{

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this.lbllistbox.Text = this.ListBox1.SelectedValue;
}
protected void DropDownList1_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs
e)
{
this.lbldrpdown.Text = this.DropDownList1.SelectedValue;
}
protected void RadioButtonList1_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender,
EventArgs e)
{
this.lblrdlist.Text = this.RadioButtonList1.SelectedValue;
}
protected void CheckBoxList1_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs
e)
{
this.lblchklist.Text = this.CheckBoxList1.SelectedValue;
}
}

Observe the following:

The booklist class has two properties: bookname and authorname.

The createbooklist method is a user defined method that creates an array of
booklist objects named allbooks.
The Page_Load event handler ensures that a list of books is created. The list is of
IList type, which implements the IEnumerable interface and capable of being
bound to the list controls. The page load event handler binds the IList object
'bklist' with the list controls. The bookname property is to be displayed and the
authorname property is considered as the value.

When the page is run, if the user selects a book, its name is selected and
displayed by the list controls whereas the corresponding labels display the author
name, which is the corresponding value for the selected index of the list control.

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ASP.NET - Custom Controls

User Controls
User controls behaves like miniature ASP.NET pages or web forms, which could be used
by many other pages. These are derived from the System.Web.UI.UserControl class.
These controls have the following characteristics:

They have an .ascx extension.

They may not contain any <html>, <body>, or <form> tags.

They have a Control directive instead of a Page directive.

To understand the concept, let us create a simple user control, which will work as footer
for the web pages. To create and use the user control, take the following steps:

Create a new web application.

Right click on the project folder on the Solution Explorer and choose Add New
Item.

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Select Web User Control from the Add New Item dialog box and name it
footer.ascx. Initially, the footer.ascx contains only a Control directive.

<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true"

CodeBehind="footer.ascx.cs"
Inherits="customcontroldemo.footer" %>

Add the following code to the file:

<table>
<tr>
<td align="center"> Copyright ©2010 TutorialPoints Ltd.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td align="center"> Location: Hyderabad, A.P </td>
</tr>
</table>

To add the user control to your web page, you must add the Register directive and an
instance of the user control to the page. The following code shows the content file:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs"

Inherits="customcontroldemo._Default" %>
<%@ Register Src="~/footer.ascx" TagName="footer" TagPrefix="Tfooter" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >

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<head runat="server">
<title>
Untitled Page
</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
<asp:Label ID="Label1" runat="server"
Text="Welcome to ASP.Net Tutorials "></asp:Label>
<br />
<br />
<asp:Button ID="Button1" runat="server"
onclick="Button1_Click" Text="Copyright Info" />
</div>
<Tfooter:footer ID="footer1" runat="server" />
</form>
</body>
</html>

When executed, the page shows the footer and this control could be used in all the pages
of your website.

Observe the following:

(1) The Register directive specifies a tag name as well as tag prefix for the control.

<%@ Register Src="~/footer.ascx" TagName="footer" TagPrefix="Tfooter" %>

(2) The following tag name and prefix should be used while adding the user control on
the page:

<Tfooter:footer ID="footer1" runat="server" />

Custom Controls

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Custom controls are deployed as individual assemblies. They are compiled into a
Dynamic Link Library (DLL) and used as any other ASP.NET server control. They could be
created in either of the following way:

By deriving a custom control from an existing control

By composing a new custom control combing two or more existing controls.

By deriving from the base control class.

To understand the concept, let us create a custom control, which will simply render a
text message on the browser. To create this control, take the following steps:

Create a new website. Right click the solution (not the project) at the top of the tree in
the Solution Explorer.

In the New Project dialog box, select ASP.NET Server Control from the project templates.

The above step adds a new project and creates a complete custom control to the
solution, called ServerControl1. In this example, let us name the project
CustomControls. To use this control, this must be added as a reference to the web site
before registering it on a page. To add a reference to the existing project, right click on
the project (not the solution), and click Add Reference.

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Select the CustomControls project from the Projects tab of the Add Reference dialog box.
The Solution Explorer should show the reference.

To use the control on a page, add the Register directive just below the @Page directive:

<%@ Register Assembly="CustomControls" Namespace="CustomControls"

TagPrefix="ccs" %>

Further, you can use the control, similar to any other controls.

<form id="form1" runat="server">

<div>
<ccs:ServerControl1 runat="server"
Text = "I am a Custom Server Control" />
</div>
</form>

When executed, the Text property of the control is rendered on the browser as shown:

Working with Custom Controls

In the previous example, the value for the Text property of the custom control was set.
ASP.NET added this property by default, when the control was created. The following
code behind file of the control reveals this.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Web;

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using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

namespace CustomControls
{
[DefaultProperty("Text")]
[ToolboxData("<{0}:ServerControl1 runat=server></{0}:ServerControl1 >")]
public class ServerControl1 : WebControl
{
[Bindable(true)]
[Category("Appearance")]
[DefaultValue("")]
[Localizable(true)]
public string Text
{
get
{
String s = (String)ViewState["Text"];
return ((s == null) ? "[" + this.ID + "]" : s);
}
set
{
ViewState["Text"] = value;
}
}
protected override void RenderContents(HtmlTextWriter output)
{
output.Write(Text);
}
}
}

The above code is automatically generated for a custom control. Events and methods
could be added to the custom control class.

Example

Let us expand the previous custom control named SeverControl1. Let us give it a method
named checkpalindrome, which gives it a power to check for palindromes.

Palindromes are words/literals that spell the same when reversed. For example,
Malayalam, madam, saras, etc.

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Extend the code for the custom control, which should look as:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

namespace CustomControls
{
[DefaultProperty("Text")]
[ToolboxData("<{0}:ServerControl1 runat=server></{0}:ServerControl1 >")]
public class ServerControl1 : WebControl
{
[Bindable(true)]
[Category("Appearance")]
[DefaultValue("")]
[Localizable(true)]
public string Text
{
get
{
String s = (String)ViewState["Text"];
return ((s == null) ? "[" + this.ID + "]" : s);
}
set
{
ViewState["Text"] = value;
}
}
protected override void RenderContents(HtmlTextWriter output)
{
if (this.checkpanlindrome())
{
output.Write("This is a palindrome: <br />");
output.Write("<FONT size=5 color=Blue>");
output.Write("<B>");
output.Write(Text);
output.Write("</B>");

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output.Write("</FONT>");
}
else
{
output.Write("This is not a palindrome: <br />");
output.Write("<FONT size=5 color=red>");
output.Write("<B>");
output.Write(Text);
output.Write("</B>");
output.Write("</FONT>");
}
}
protected bool checkpanlindrome()
{
if (this.Text != null)
{
String str = this.Text;
String strtoupper = Text.ToUpper();
char[] rev = strtoupper.ToCharArray();
Array.Reverse(rev);
String strrev = new String(rev);
if (strtoupper == strrev)
{
return true;
}
else
{
return false;
}
}
else
{
return false;
}
}
}
}

When you change the code for the control, you must build the solution by clicking Build -
-> Build Solution, so that the changes are reflected in your project. Add a text box and a
button control to the page, so that the user can provide a text, it is checked for
palindrome, when the button is clicked.

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<form id="form1" runat="server">

<div>
Enter a word:
<br />
<asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server" style="width:198px">
</asp:TextBox>
<br />
<br />
<asp:Button ID="Button1" runat="server onclick="Button1_Click"
Text="Check Palindrome" style="width:132px" />
<br />
<br />
<ccs:ServerControl1 ID="ServerControl11" runat="server" Text = "" />
</div>
</form>

The Click event handler for the button simply copies the text from the text box to the
text property of the custom control.

protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{
this.ServerControl11.Text = this.TextBox1.Text;
}

When executed, the control successfully checks palindromes.

Observe the following:

(1) When you add a reference to the custom control, it is added to the toolbox and you
can directly use it from the toolbox similar to any other control.

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(2) The RenderContents method of the custom control class is overridden here, as you
can add your own methods and events.

(3) The RenderContents method takes a parameter of HtmlTextWriter type, which is

responsible for rendering on the browser.

ASP.NET - Personalization
Web sites are designed for repeated visits from the users. Personalization allows a site to
remember the user identity and other information details, and it presents an
individualistic environment to each user.

ASP.NET provides services for personalizing a web site to suit a particular client's taste
and preference.

Understanding Profiles
ASP.NET personalization service is based on user profile. User profile defines the kind of
information about the user that the site needs. For example, name, age, address, date of
birth, and phone number.

This information is defined in the web.config file of the application and ASP.NET runtime
reads and uses it. This job is done by the personalization providers.

The user profiles obtained from user data is stored in a default database created by
ASP.NET. You can create your own database for storing profiles. The profile data
definition is stored in the configuration file web.config.

Example
Let us create a sample site, where we want our application to remember user details like
name, address, date of birth etc. Add the profile details in the web.config file within the
<system.web> element.

<configuration>
<system.web>
<profile>
<properties>

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<add name="Name" type ="String"/>

<add name="Birthday" type ="System.DateTime"/>
<group name="Address">
<add name="Street"/>
<add name="City"/>
<add name="State"/>
<add name="Zipcode"/>
</group>
</properties>
</profile>
</system.web>
</configuration>

When the profile is defined in the web.config file, the profile could be used through the
Profile property found in the current HttpContext and also available via page.

Add the text boxes to take the user input as defined in the profile and add a button for
submitting the data:

Update Page_load to display profile information:

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.UI;

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using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;

public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page

{
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (!this.IsPostBack)
{
ProfileCommon pc=this.Profile.GetProfile(Profile.UserName);
if (pc != null)
{
this.txtname.Text = pc.Name;
this.txtaddr.Text = pc.Address.Street;
this.txtcity.Text = pc.Address.City;
this.txtstate.Text = pc.Address.State;
this.txtzip.Text = pc.Address.Zipcode;
this.Calendar1.SelectedDate = pc.Birthday;
}
}
}
}

Write the following handler for the Submit button, for saving the user data into the
profile:

protected void btnsubmit_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{
ProfileCommon pc=this.Profile.GetProfile(Profile.UserName);
if (pc != null)
{
pc.Name = this.txtname.Text;
pc.Address.Street = this.txtaddr.Text;
pc.Address.City = this.txtcity.Text;
pc.Address.State = this.txtstate.Text;
pc.Address.Zipcode = this.txtzip.Text;
pc.Birthday = this.Calendar1.SelectedDate;
pc.Save();
}
}

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When the page is executed for the first time, the user needs to enter the information.
However, next time the user details would be automatically loaded.

Attributes for the <add> Element

Apart from the name and type attributes that we have used, there are other attributes to
the <add> element. Following table illustrates some of these attributes:

Attributes Description

name The name of the property.

By default the type is string but it allows any fully qualified

type
class name as data type.

serializeAs The format to use when serializing this value.

A read only profile value cannot be changed, by default this

readOnly
property is false.

A default value that is used if the profile does not exist or

defaultValue
does not have information.

A Boolean value indicating whether this property can be

allowAnonymous
used with the anonymous profiles.

The profiles provider that should be used to manage just

Provider
this property.

Anonymous Personalization
Anonymous personalization allows the user to personalize the site before identifying
themselves. For example, Amazon.com allows the user to add items in the shopping cart
before they log in. To enable this feature, the web.config file could be configured as:

<anonymousIdentification enabled ="true" cookieName=".ASPXANONYMOUSUSER"

cookieTimeout="120000" cookiePath="/" cookieRequiresSSL="false"
cookieSlidingExpiration="true" cookieprotection="Encryption"
coolieless="UseDeviceProfile"/>

ASP.NET - Error Handling

Error handling in ASP.NET has three aspects:

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Tracing - tracing the program execution at page level or application level.

Error handling - handling standard errors or custom errors at page level or

application level.

Debugging - stepping through the program, setting break points to analyze the
code

In this chapter, we will discuss tracing and error handling and in this chapter, we will
discuss debugging.

To understand the concepts, create the following sample application. It has a label
control, a dropdown list, and a link. The dropdown list loads an array list of famous
quotes and the selected quote is shown in the label below. It also has a hyperlink which
has points to a nonexistent link.

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs"

Inherits="errorhandling._Default" %>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >

<head runat="server">
<title>
Tracing, debugging and error handling
</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
<asp:Label ID="lblheading" runat="server" Text="Tracing, Debuggin
and Error Handling">
</asp:Label>
<br />
<br />
<asp:DropDownList ID="ddlquotes" runat="server"
AutoPostBack="True"
onselectedindexchanged="ddlquotes_SelectedIndexChanged">
</asp:DropDownList>
<br />
<br />
<asp:Label ID="lblquotes" runat="server">
</asp:Label>

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<br />
<br />
<asp:HyperLink ID="HyperLink1" runat="server"
NavigateUrl="mylink.htm">Link to:</asp:HyperLink>
</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>

The code behind file:

public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page

{
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (!IsPostBack)
{
string[,] quotes =
{
{"Imagination is more important than Knowledge.", "Albert
Einsten"},
{"Assume a virtue, if you have it not" "Shakespeare"},
{"A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval", "Mark
Twain"},
{"Beware the young doctor and the old barber", "Benjamin
Franklin"},
{"Whatever begun in anger ends in shame", "Benjamin Franklin"}
};
for (int i=0; i<quotes.GetLength(0); i++)
ddlquotes.Items.Add(new ListItem(quotes[i,0], quotes[i,1]));
}
}
protected void ddlquotes_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (ddlquotes.SelectedIndex != -1)
{
lblquotes.Text = String.Format("{0}, Quote: {1}",
ddlquotes.SelectedItem.Text, ddlquotes.SelectedValue);
}
}
}

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Tracing
To enable page level tracing, you need to modify the Page directive and add a Trace
attribute as shown:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs"

Inherits="errorhandling._Default" Trace ="true" %>

Now when you execute the file, you get the tracing information:

It provides the following information at the top:

Session ID

Status Code
Time of Request

Type of Request

Request and Response Encoding

The status code sent from the server, each time the page is requested shows the name
and time of error if any. The following table shows the common HTTP status codes:

Number Description

Informational (100 - 199)

100 Continue

101 Switching protocols

Successful (200 - 299)

200 OK

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204 No content

Redirection (300 - 399)

301 Moved permanently

305 Use proxy

307 Temporary redirect

Client Errors (400 - 499)

400 Bad request

402 Payment required

404 Not found

408 Request timeout

417 Expectation failed

Server Errors (500 - 599)

500 Internal server error

503 Service unavailable

505 HTTP version not supported

Under the top level information, there is Trace log, which provides details of page life
cycle. It provides elapsed time in seconds since the page was initialized.

The next section is control tree, which lists all controls on the page in a hierarchical
manner:

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Last in the Session and Application state summaries, cookies, and headers collections
followed by list of all server variables.

The Trace object allows you to add custom information to the trace output. It has two
methods to accomplish this: the Write method and the Warn method.

Change the Page_Load event handler to check the Write method:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

{
Trace.Write("Page Load");
if (!IsPostBack)
{
Trace.Write("Not Post Back, Page Load");
string[,] quotes =
.......................
}
}

Run to observe the effects:

To check the Warn method, let us forcibly enter some erroneous code in the selected
index changed event handler:

try
{
int a = 0;

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int b = 9 / a;
}
catch (Exception e)
{
Trace.Warn("UserAction", "processing 9/a", e);
}

Try-Catch is a C# programming construct. The try block holds any code that may or may
not produce error and the catch block catches the error. When the program is run, it
sends the warning in the trace log.

Application level tracing applies to all the pages in the web site. It is implemented by
putting the following code lines in the web.config file:

<system.web>
<trace enabled="true" />
</system.web>

Error Handling
Although ASP.NET can detect all runtime errors, still some subtle errors may still be
there. Observing the errors by tracing is meant for the developers, not for the users.

Hence, to intercept such occurrence, you can add error handing settings in the
web.config file of the application. It is application-wide error handling. For example, you
can add the following lines in the web.config file:

<configuration>
<system.web>
<customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" defaultRedirect="GenericErrorPage.htm">
<error statusCode="403" redirect="NoAccess.htm" />
<error statusCode="404" redirect="FileNotFound.htm" />
</customErrors>
</system.web>
<configuration>

The <customErrors> section has the possible attributes:

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Mode : It enables or disables custom error pages. It has the three possible
values:

On : displays the custom pages.

Off : displays ASP.NET error pages (yellow pages)

remoteOnly : It displays custom errors to client, display ASP.NET errors

locally.

defaultRedirect : It contains the URL of the page to be displayed in case of

unhandled errors.

To put different custom error pages for different type of errors, the <error> sub tags are
used, where different error pages are specified, based on the status code of the errors.

To implement page level error handling, the Page directive could be modified:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs"

Inherits="errorhandling._Default" Trace ="true" ErrorPage="PageError.htm"
%>

Because ASP.NET Debugging is an important subject in itself, so we would discuss it in

the next chapter separately.

ASP.NET - Debugging
Debugging allows the developers to see how the code works in a step-by-step manner,
how the values of the variables change, how the objects are created and destroyed, etc.

When the site is executed for the first time, Visual Studio displays a prompt asking
whether it should be enabled for debugging:

When debugging is enabled, the following lines of codes are shown in the web.config:

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<system.web>
<compilation debug="true">
<assemblies>
..............
</assemblies>
</compilation>
</system.web>

The Debug toolbar provides all the tools available for debugging:

Breakpoints
Breakpoints specifies the runtime to run a specific line of code and then stop execution
so that the code could be examined and perform various debugging jobs such as,
changing the value of the variables, step through the codes, moving in and out of
functions and methods etc.

To set a breakpoint, right click on the code and choose insert break point. A red dot
appears on the left margin and the line of code is highlighted as shown:

Next when you execute the code, you can observe its behavior.

At this stage, you can step through the code, observe the execution flow and examine
the value of the variables, properties, objects, etc.

You can modify the properties of the breakpoint from the Properties menu obtained by
right clicking the breakpoint glyph:

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The location dialog box shows the location of the file, line number and the character
number of the selected code. The condition menu item allows you to enter a valid
expression, which is evaluated when the program execution reaches the breakpoint:

The Hit Count menu item displays a dialog box that shows the number of times the break
point has been executed.

Clicking on any option presented by the drop down list opens an edit field where a target
hit count is entered. This is particularly helpful in analyzing loop constructs in code.

The Filter menu item allows setting a filter for specifying machines, processes, or threads
or any combination, for which the breakpoint will be effective.

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The When Hit menu item allows you to specify what to do when the break point is hit.

The Debug Windows

Visual Studio provides the following debug windows, each of which shows some program
information. The following table lists the windows:

Window Description

Immediate Displays variables and expressions.

Displays all variables in the current and previous

Autos
statements.

Locals Displays all variables in the current context.

Watch Displays up to four different sets of variables.

Call Stack Displays all methods in the call stack.

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Threads Displays and control threads.

ASP.NET - LINQ
Most applications are data-centric, however most of the data repositories are relational
databases. Over the years, designers and developers have designed applications based
on object models.

The objects are responsible for connecting to the data access components - called the
Data Access Layer (DAL). Here we have three points to consider:

All the data needed in an application are not stored in the same source. The
source could be a relation database, some business object, XML file, or a web
service.

Accessing in-memory object is simpler and less expensive than accessing data
from a database or XML file.

The data accessed are not used directly, but needs to be sorted, ordered,
grouped, altered etc.

Hence if there is one tool that makes all kind of data access easy that allows joining data
from such disparate data sources and perform standard data processing operations, in
few lines of codes, it would be of great help.

LINQ or Language-Integrated Query is such a tool. LINQ is set of extensions to the .Net
Framework 3.5 and its managed languages that set the query as an object. It defines a
common syntax and a programming model to query different types of data using a
common language.

The relational operators like Select, Project, Join, Group, Partition, Set operations etc.,
are implemented in LINQ and the C# and VB compilers in the .Net framework 3.5, which
support the LINQ syntax makes it possible to work with a configured data store without
resorting to ADO.NET.

For example, querying the Customers table in the Northwind database, using LINQ query
in C#, the code would be:

var data = from c in dataContext.Customers

where c.Country == "Spain"
select c;

Where:

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The 'from' keyword logically loops through the contents of the collection.

The expression with the 'where' keyword is evaluated for each object in the
collection.

The 'select' statement selects the evaluated object to add to the list being
returned.

The 'var' keyword is for variable declaration. Since the exact type of the returned
object is not known, it indicates that the information will be inferred dynamically.

LINQ query can be applied to any data-bearing class that inherits from IEnumerable<T>,
here T is any data type, for example, List<Book>.

Let us look at an example to understand the concept. The example uses the following
class: Books.cs

public class Books

{
public string ID {get; set;}
public string Title { get; set; }
public decimal Price { get; set; }
public DateTime DateOfRelease { get; set; }

public static List<Books> GetBooks()

{
List<Books> list = new List<Books>();
list.Add(new Books { ID = "001",
Title = "Programming in C#",
Price = 634.76m,
DateOfRelease = Convert.ToDateTime("2010-02-05") });

list.Add(new Books { ID = "002",

Title = "Learn Java in 30 days",
Price = 250.76m,
DateOfRelease = Convert.ToDateTime("2011-08-15") });

list.Add(new Books { ID = "003",

Title = "Programming in ASP.Net 4.0",
Price = 700.00m,
DateOfRelease = Convert.ToDateTime("2011-02-05") });

list.Add(new Books { ID = "004",

Title = "VB.Net Made Easy",
Price = 500.99m,

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DateOfRelease = Convert.ToDateTime("2011-12-31") });

list.Add(new Books { ID = "005",

Title = "Programming in C",
Price = 314.76m,
DateOfRelease = Convert.ToDateTime("2010-02-05") });

list.Add(new Books { ID = "006",

Title = "Programming in C++",
Price = 456.76m,
DateOfRelease = Convert.ToDateTime("2010-02-05") });

list.Add(new Books { ID = "007",

Title = "Datebase Developement",
Price = 1000.76m,
DateOfRelease = Convert.ToDateTime("2010-02-05") });
return list;
}
}

The web page using this class has a simple label control, which displays the titles of the
books. The Page_Load event creates a list of books and returns the titles by using LINQ
query:

public partial class simplequery : System.Web.UI.Page

{
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
List<Books> books = Books.GetBooks();
var booktitles = from b in books select b.Title;

foreach (var title in booktitles)

lblbooks.Text += String.Format("{0} <br />", title);
}
}

When the page is executed, the label displays the results of the query:

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The above LINQ expression:

var booktitles =
from b in books
select b.Title;

Is equivalent to the following SQL query:

SELECT Title from Books

LINQ Operators
Apart from the operators used so far, there are several other operators, which implement
all query clauses. Let us look at some of the operators and clauses.

The Join clause

The 'join clause' in SQL is used for joining two data tables and displays a data set
containing columns from both the tables. LINQ is also capable of that. To check this, add
another class named Saledetails.cs in the previous project:

public class Salesdetails

{
public int sales { get; set; }
public int pages { get; set; }
public string ID {get; set;}

public static IEnumerable<Salesdetails> getsalesdetails()

{
Salesdetails[] sd =
{
new Salesdetails { ID = "001", pages=678, sales = 110000},

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new Salesdetails { ID = "002", pages=789, sales = 60000},

new Salesdetails { ID = "003", pages=456, sales = 40000},
new Salesdetails { ID = "004", pages=900, sales = 80000},
new Salesdetails { ID = "005", pages=456, sales = 90000},
new Salesdetails { ID = "006", pages=870, sales = 50000},
new Salesdetails { ID = "007", pages=675, sales = 40000},
};
return sd.OfType<Salesdetails>();
}
}

Add the codes in the Page_Load event handler to query on both the tables using the join
clause:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

{
IEnumerable<Books> books = Books.GetBooks();
IEnumerable<Salesdetails> sales = Salesdetails.getsalesdetails();
var booktitles = from b in books join s in sales on b.ID equals s.ID
select new { Name = b.Title, Pages = s.pages };
foreach (var title in booktitles)
lblbooks.Text += String.Format("{0} <br />", title);
}

The resulting page is as shown:

The Where clause

The 'where clause' allows adding some conditional filters to the query. For example, if
you want to see the books, where the number of pages are more than 500, change the
Page_Load event handler to:

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var booktitles = from b in books join s in sales on b.ID equals s.ID

where s.pages > 500 select new { Name = b.Title, Pages = s.pages };

The query returns only those rows, where the number of pages is more than 500:

Orderby and Orderbydescending Clauses

These clauses allow sorting the query results. To query the titles, number of pages and
price of the book, sorted by the price, write the following code in the Page_Load event
handler:

var booktitles = from b in books join s in sales on b.ID equals s.ID

orderby b.Price select new { Name = b.Title, Pages = s.pages, Price =
b.Price};

The returned tuples are:

The Let clause

The let clause allows defining a variable and assigning it a value calculated from the data
values. For example, to calculate the total sale from the above two sales, you need to
calculate:

TotalSale = Price of the Book * Sales

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To achieve this, add the following code snippets in the Page_Load event handler:

The let clause allows defining a variable and assigning it a value calculated from the data
values. For example, to calculate the total sale from the above two sales, you need to
calculate:

var booktitles = from b in book join s in sales on b.ID equals s.ID

let totalprofit = (b.Price * s.sales)
select new { Name = b.Title, TotalSale = totalprofit};

The resulting query page is as shown:

ASP.NET - Security
Implementing security in a site has the following aspects:

Authentication : It is the process of ensuring the user's identity and

authenticity. ASP.NET allows four types of authentications:

Windows Authentication
Forms Authentication

Passport Authentication

Custom Authentication

Authorization : It is the process of defining and allotting specific roles to specific

users.

Confidentiality : It involves encrypting the channel between the client browser

and the web server.

Integrity : It involves maintaining the integrity of data. For example,

implementing digital signature.

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Forms-Based Authentication
Traditionally, forms-based authentication involves editing the web.config file and adding a
login page with appropriate authentication code.

The web.config file could be edited and the following codes written on it:

<configuration>
<system.web>
<authentication mode="Forms">
<forms loginUrl ="login.aspx"/>
</authentication>
<authorization>
<deny users="?"/>
</authorization>
</system.web>
...
...
</configuration>

The login.aspx page mentioned in the above code snippet could have the following code
behind file with the usernames and passwords for authentication hard coded into it.

protected bool authenticate(String uname, String pass)

{
if(uname == "Tom")
{
if(pass == "tom123")
return true;
}
if(uname == "Dick")
{
if(pass == "dick123")
return true;
}
if(uname == "Harry")
{
if(pass == "har123")
return true;
}
return false;
}

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public void OnLogin(Object src, EventArgs e)

{
if (authenticate(txtuser.Text, txtpwd.Text))
{
FormsAuthentication.RedirectFromLoginPage(txtuser.Text, chkrem.Checked);
}
else
{
Response.Write("Invalid user name or password");
}
}

Observe that the FormsAuthentication class is responsible for the process of

authentication.

However, Visual Studio allows you to implement user creation, authentication, and
authorization with seamless ease without writing any code, through the Web Site
Administration tool. This tool allows creating users and roles.

Apart from this, ASP.NET comes with readymade login controls set, which has controls
performing all the jobs for you.

Implementing Forms-Based Security

To set up forms-based authentication, you need the following:

A database of users to support the authentication process

A website that uses the database

User accounts

Roles
Restriction of users and group activities

A default page, to display the login status of the users and other information.

A login page, to allow users to log in, retrieve password, or change password

To create users, take the following steps:

Step (1) : Choose Website -> ASP.NET Configuration to open the Web Application
Administration Tool.

Step (2) : Click on the Security tab.

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Step (3) : Select the authentication type to 'Forms based authentication' by selecting
the 'From the Internet' radio button.

Step (4) : Click on 'Create Users' link to create some users. If you already had created
roles, you could assign roles to the user, right at this stage.

Step (5) : Create a web site and add the following pages:

Welcome.aspx

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Login.aspx

CreateAccount.aspx

PasswordRecovery.aspx

ChangePassword.aspx

Step (6) : Place a LoginStatus control on the Welcome.aspx from the login section of
the toolbox. It has two templates: LoggedIn and LoggedOut.

In LoggedOut template, there is a login link and in the LoggedIn template, there is a
logout link on the control. You can change the login and logout text properties of the
control from the Properties window.

Step (7) : Place a LoginView control from the toolbox below the LoginStatus control.
Here, you can put texts and other controls (hyperlinks, buttons etc.), which are
displayed based on whether the user is logged in or not.

This control has two view templates: Anonymous template and LoggedIn template.
Select each view and write some text for the users to be displayed for each template.
The text should be placed on the area marked red.

Step (8) : The users for the application are created by the developer. You might want to
allow a visitor to create a user account. For this, add a link beneath the LoginView
control, which should link to the CreateAccount.aspx page.

Step (9) : Place a CreateUserWizard control on the create account page. Set the
ContinueDestinationPageUrl property of this control to Welcome.aspx.

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Step (10) : Create the Login page. Place a Login control on the page. The LoginStatus
control automatically links to the Login.aspx. To change this default, make the following
changes in the web.config file.

For example, if you want to name your log in page as signup.aspx, add the following
lines to the <authentication> section of the web.config:

<configuration>
<system.web>
<authentication mode="Forms">
<forms loginUrl ="signup.aspx" defaultUrl = Welcome.aspx />
</authentication>
</system.web>
</configuration>

Step (11) : Users often forget passwords. The PasswordRecovery control helps the user
gain access to the account. Select the Login control. Open its smart tag and click
'Convert to Template'.

Customize the UI of the control to place a hyperlink control under the login button, which
should link to the PassWordRecovery.aspx.

Step (12) : Place a PasswordRecovery control on the password recovery page. This
control needs an email server to send the passwords to the users.

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Step (13) : Create a link to the ChangePassword.aspx page in the LoggedIn template of
the LoginView control in Welcome.aspx.

Step (14) : Place a ChangePassword control on the change password page. This control
also has two views.

Now run the application and observe different security operations.

To create roles, go back to the Web Application Administration Tools and click on the
Security tab. Click on 'Create Roles' and create some roles for the application.

Click on the 'Manage Users' link and assign roles to the users.

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IIS Authentication: SSL

The Secure Socket Layer or SSL is the protocol used to ensure a secure connection. With
SSL enabled, the browser encrypts all data sent to the server and decrypts all data
coming from the server. At the same time, the server encrypts and decrypts all data to
and from browser.

The URL for a secure connection starts with HTTPS instead of HTTP. A small lock is
displayed by a browser using a secure connection. When a browser makes an initial
attempt to communicate with a server over a secure connection using SSL, the server
authenticates itself by sending its digital certificate.

To use the SSL, you need to buy a digital secure certificate from a trusted Certification
Authority (CA) and install it in the web server. Following are some of the trusted and
reputed certification authorities:

www.verisign.com
www.geotrust.com

www.thawte.com

SSL is built into all major browsers and servers. To enable SSL, you need to install the
digital certificate. The strength of various digital certificates varies depending upon the
length of the key generated during encryption. More the length, more secure is the
certificate, hence the connection.

Strength Description

40 bit Supported by most browsers but easy to break.

56 bit Stronger than 40-bit.

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Extremely difficult to break but all the browsers do not

128 bit
support it.

ASP.NET - Data Caching

What is Caching?
Caching is a technique of storing frequently used data/information in memory, so that,
when the same data/information is needed next time, it could be directly retrieved from
the memory instead of being generated by the application.

Caching is extremely important for performance boosting in ASP.NET, as the pages and
controls are dynamically generated here. It is especially important for data related
transactions, as these are expensive in terms of response time.

Caching places frequently used data in quickly accessed media such as the random
access memory of the computer. The ASP.NET runtime includes a key-value map of CLR
objects called cache. This resides with the application and is available via the
HttpContext and System.Web.UI.Page.

In some respect, caching is similar to storing the state objects. However, the storing
information in state objects is deterministic, i.e., you can count on the data being stored
there, and caching of data is nondeterministic.

The data will not be available in the following cases:

If its lifetime expires,

If the application releases its memory,

If caching does not take place for some reason.

You can access items in the cache using an indexer and may control the lifetime of
objects in the cache and set up links between the cached objects and their physical
sources.

Caching in ASP.Net
ASP.NET provides the following different types of caching:

Output Caching : Output cache stores a copy of the finally rendered HTML
pages or part of pages sent to the client. When the next client requests for this
page, instead of regenerating the page, a cached copy of the page is sent, thus
saving time.

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Data Caching : Data caching means caching data from a data source. As long as
the cache is not expired, a request for the data will be fulfilled from the cache.
When the cache is expired, fresh data is obtained by the data source and the
cache is refilled.

Object Caching : Object caching is caching the objects on a page, such as data-
bound controls. The cached data is stored in server memory.

Class Caching : Web pages or web services are compiled into a page class in the
assembly, when run for the first time. Then the assembly is cached in the server.
Next time when a request is made for the page or service, the cached assembly
is referred to. When the source code is changed, the CLR recompiles the
assembly.

Configuration Caching : Application wide configuration information is stored in

a configuration file. Configuration caching stores the configuration information in
the server memory.

In this tutorial, we will consider output caching, data caching, and object caching.

Output Caching
Rendering a page may involve some complex processes such as, database access,
rendering complex controls etc. Output caching allows bypassing the round trips to
server by caching data in memory. Even the whole page could be cached.

The OutputCache directive is responsible of output caching. It enables output caching

and provides certain control over its behaviour.

Syntax for OutputCache directive:

<%@ OutputCache Duration="15" VaryByParam="None" %>

Put this directive under the page directive. This tells the environment to cache the page
for 15 seconds. The following event handler for page load would help in testing that the
page was really cached.

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

{
Thread.Sleep(10000);
Response.Write("This page was generated and cache at:" +
DateTime.Now.ToString());
}

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The Thread.Sleep() method stops the process thread for the specified time. In this
example, the thread is stopped for 10 seconds, so when the page is loaded for first time,
it takes 10 seconds. However, next time you refresh the page it does not take any time,
as the page is retrieved from the cache without being loaded.

The OutputCache directive has the following attributes, which helps in controlling the
behaviour of the output cache:

Attribute Values Description

Specifies that output could be

DiskCacheable true/false
written to a disk based cache.

Specifies that the "no store"

NoStore true/false cache control header is sent or
not.

Name of a cache profile as to be

CacheProfile String name
stored in web.config.

Semicolon delimited list of string

None
specifies query string values in a
VaryByParam *
GET request or variable in a
Param- name
POST request.

Semicolon delimited list of

*
VaryByHeader strings specifies headers that
Header names
might be submitted by a client.

Tells ASP.NET to vary the output

Browser
VaryByCustom cache by browser name and
Custom string
version or by a custom string.

Any: page may be cached

anywhere.
Client: cached content remains
Any
at browser.
Client
Downstream: cached content
Location Downstream
stored in downstream and server
Server
both.
None
Server: cached content saved
only on server.
None: disables caching.

Number of seconds the page or

Duration Number
control is cached.

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Let us add a text box and a button to the previous example and add this event handler
for the button.

protected void btnmagic_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{
Response.Write("<br><br>");
Response.Write("<h2> Hello, " + this.txtname.Text + "</h2>");
}

Change the OutputCache directive:

<%@ OutputCache Duration="60" VaryByParam="txtname" %>

When the program is executed, ASP.NET caches the page on the basis of the name in the
text box.

Data Caching
The main aspect of data caching is caching the data source controls. We have already
discussed that the data source controls represent data in a data source, like a database
or an XML file. These controls derive from the abstract class DataSourceControl and have
the following inherited properties for implementing caching:

CacheDuration - It sets the number of seconds for which the data source will
cache data.

CacheExpirationPolicy - It defines the cache behavior when the data in cache

has expired.

CacheKeyDependency - It identifies a key for the controls that auto-expires the

content of its cache when removed.

EnableCaching - It specifies whether or not to cache the data.

Example
To demonstrate data caching, create a new website and add a new web form on it. Add a
SqlDataSource control with the database connection already used in the data access
tutorials.

For this example, add a label to the page, which would show the response time for the
page.

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<asp:Label ID="lbltime" runat="server"></asp:Label>

Apart from the label, the content page is same as in the data access tutorial. Add an
event handler for the page load event:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

{
lbltime.Text = String.Format("Page posted at: {0}",
DateTime.Now.ToLongTimeString());
}

The designed page should look as shown:

When you execute the page for the first time, nothing different happens, the label shows
that, each time you refresh the page, the page is reloaded and the time shown on the
label changes.

Next, set the EnableCaching attribute of the data source control to be 'true' and set the
Cacheduration attribute to '60'. It will implement caching and the cache will expire every
60 seconds.

The timestamp changes with every refresh, but if you change the data in the table within
these 60 seconds, it is not shown before the cache expires.

<asp:SqlDataSource ID="SqlDataSource1" runat="server"

ConnectionString="<%$ ConnectionStrings:
ASPDotNetStepByStepConnectionString %>"
ProviderName="<%$ ConnectionStrings:
ASPDotNetStepByStepConnectionString.ProviderName %>"
SelectCommand="SELECT * FROM [DotNetReferences]"

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EnableCaching="true" CacheDuration = "60">

</asp:SqlDataSource>

Object Caching
Object caching provides more flexibility than other cache techniques. You can use object
caching to place any object in the cache. The object can be of any type - a data type, a
web control, a class, a dataset object, etc. The item is added to the cache simply by
assigning a new key name, shown as follows Like:

Cache["key"] = item;

ASP.NET also provides the Insert() method for inserting an object to the cache. This
method has four overloaded versions. Let us see them:

Overload Description

Cache.Insert((key, Inserts an item into the cache with the key name and value
value); with default priority and expiration.

Inserts an item into the cache with key, value, default

Cache.Insert(key, value, priority, expiration and a CacheDependency name that links
dependencies); to other files or items so that when these change the cache
item remains no longer valid.

Cache.Insert(key, value,
dependencies, This indicates an expiration policy along with the above
absoluteExpiration, issues.
slidingExpiration);

Cache.Insert(key, value,
dependencies,
This along with the parameters also allows you to set a
absoluteExpiration,
priority for the cache item and a delegate that, points to a
slidingExpiration,
method to be invoked when the item is removed.
priority,
onRemoveCallback);

Sliding expiration is used to remove an item from the cache when it is not used for the
specified time span. The following code snippet stores an item with a sliding expiration of
10 minutes with no dependencies.

Cache.Insert("my_item", obj, null, DateTime.MaxValue,

TimeSpan.FromMinutes(10));

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Example
Create a page with just a button and a label. Write the following code in the page load
event:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

{
if (this.IsPostBack)
{
lblinfo.Text += "Page Posted Back.<br/>";
}
else
{
lblinfo.Text += "page Created.<br/>";
}
if (Cache["testitem"] == null)
{
lblinfo.Text += "Creating test item.<br/>";
DateTime testItem = DateTime.Now;
lblinfo.Text += "Storing test item in cache ";
lblinfo.Text += "for 30 seconds.<br/>";
Cache.Insert("testitem", testItem, null,
DateTime.Now.AddSeconds(30), TimeSpan.Zero);
}
else
{
lblinfo.Text += "Retrieving test item.<br/>";
DateTime testItem = (DateTime)Cache["testitem"];
lblinfo.Text += "Test item is: " + testItem.ToString();
lblinfo.Text += "<br/>";
}
lblinfo.Text += "<br/>";
}

When the page is loaded for the first time, it says:

Page Created.
Creating test item.
Storing test item in cache for 30 seconds.

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If you click on the button again within 30 seconds, the page is posted back but the label
control gets its information from the cache as shown:

Page Posted Back.

Retrieving test item.
Test item is: 14-07-2010 01:25:04

ASP.NET - Web Services

A web service is a web-based functionality accessed using the protocols of the web to be
used by the web applications. There are three aspects of web service development:

Creating the web service

Creating a proxy

Consuming the web service

Creating a Web Service

A web service is a web application which is basically a class consisting of methods that
could be used by other applications. It also follows a code-behind architecture such as
the ASP.NET web pages, although it does not have a user interface.

To understand the concept let us create a web service to provide stock price information.
The clients can query about the name and price of a stock based on the stock symbol. To
keep this example simple, the values are hardcoded in a two-dimensional array. This web
service has three methods:

A default HelloWorld method

A GetName Method

A GetPrice Method

Take the following steps to create the web service:

Step (1) : Select File -> New -> Web Site in Visual Studio, and then select ASP.NET Web
Service.

Step (2) : A web service file called Service.asmx and its code behind file, Service.cs is
created in the App_Code directory of the project.

Step (3) : Change the names of the files to StockService.asmx and StockService.cs.

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Step (4) : The .asmx file has simply a WebService directive on it:

<%@ WebService Language="C#" CodeBehind="~/App_Code/StockService.cs"

Class="StockService" %>

Step (5) : Open the StockService.cs file, the code generated in it is the basic Hello
World service. The default web service code behind file looks like the following:

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Services;
using System.Web.Services.Protocols;
using System.Xml.Linq;
namespace StockService
{
// <summary>
// Summary description for Service1
// <summary>
[WebService(Namespace = "http://tempuri.org/")]
[WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo = WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)]
[ToolboxItem(false)]
// To allow this Web Service to be called from script,
// using ASP.NET AJAX, uncomment the following line.
// [System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptService]
public class Service1 : System.Web.Services.WebService
{
[WebMethod]
public string HelloWorld()
{
return "Hello World";
}
}
}

Step (6) : Change the code behind file to add the two dimensional array of strings for
stock symbol, name and price and two web methods for getting the stock information.

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using System;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Services;
using System.Web.Services.Protocols;
using System.Xml.Linq;

[WebService(Namespace = "http://tempuri.org/")]
[WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo = WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)]
// To allow this Web Service to be called from script,
// using ASP.NET AJAX, uncomment the following line.
// [System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptService]
public class StockService : System.Web.Services.WebService
{
public StockService () {
//Uncomment the following if using designed components
//InitializeComponent();
}
string[,] stocks =
{
{"RELIND", "Reliance Industries", "1060.15"},
{"ICICI", "ICICI Bank", "911.55"},
{"JSW", "JSW Steel", "1201.25"},
{"WIPRO", "Wipro Limited", "1194.65"},
{"SATYAM", "Satyam Computers", "91.10"}
};

[WebMethod]
public string HelloWorld() {
return "Hello World";
}
[WebMethod]
public double GetPrice(string symbol)
{
//it takes the symbol as parameter and returns price
for (int i = 0; i < stocks.GetLength(0); i++)
{
if (String.Compare(symbol, stocks[i, 0], true) == 0)
return Convert.ToDouble(stocks[i, 2]);
}
return 0;
}

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[WebMethod]
public string GetName(string symbol)
{
// It takes the symbol as parameter and
// returns name of the stock
for (int i = 0; i < stocks.GetLength(0); i++)
{
if (String.Compare(symbol, stocks[i, 0], true) == 0)
return stocks[i, 1];
}
return "Stock Not Found";
}
}

Step (7) : Running the web service application gives a web service test page, which
allows testing the service methods.

Step (8) : Click on a method name, and check whether it runs properly.

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Step (9) : For testing the GetName method, provide one of the stock symbols, which
are hard coded, it returns the name of the stock

Consuming the Web Service

For using the web service, create a web site under the same solution. This could be done
by right clicking on the Solution name in the Solution Explorer. The web page calling the
web service should have a label control to display the returned results and two button
controls one for post back and another for calling the service.

The content file for the web application is as follows:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs"

Inherits="wsclient._Default" %>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >

<head runat="server">
<title>
Untitled Page
</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
<h3>Using the Stock Service</h3>
<br />
<br />
<asp:Label ID="lblmessage" runat="server"></asp:Label>
<br />
<br />
<asp:Button ID="btnpostback" runat="server"
onclick="Button1_Click"
Text="Post Back" style="width:132px" />

<asp:Button ID="btnservice" runat="server

onclick="btnservice_Click" Text="Get Stock" style="width:99px"

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/>
</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>

The code behind file for the web application is as follows:

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Data;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Xml.Linq;

//this is the proxy

using localhost;

namespace wsclient
{
public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page
{
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (!IsPostBack)
{
lblmessage.Text = "First Loading Time: " +
DateTime.Now.ToLongTimeString
}
else
{
lblmessage.Text = "PostBack at: " +
DateTime.Now.ToLongTimeString();
}
}
protected void btnservice_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

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{
StockService proxy = new StockService();
lblmessage.Text = String.Format("Current SATYAM Price:{0}",
proxy.GetPrice("SATYAM").ToString());
}
}
}

Creating the Proxy

A proxy is a stand-in for the web service codes. Before using the web service, a proxy
must be created. The proxy is registered with the client application. Then the client
application makes the calls to the web service as it were using a local method.

The proxy takes the calls, wraps it in proper format and sends it as a SOAP request to
the server. SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol. This protocol is used for
exchanging web service data.

When the server returns the SOAP package to the client, the proxy decodes everything
and presents it to the client application.

Before calling the web service using the btnservice_Click, a web reference should be
added to the application. This creates a proxy class transparently, which is used by the
btnservice_Click event.

protected void btnservice_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{
StockService proxy = new StockService();
lblmessage.Text = String.Format("Current SATYAM Price: {0}",
proxy.GetPrice("SATYAM").ToString());
}

Take the following steps for creating the proxy:

Step (1) : Right click on the web application entry in the Solution Explorer and click on
'Add Web Reference'.

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Step (2) : Select 'Web Services in this solution'. It returns the StockService reference.

Step (3) : Clicking on the service opens the test web page. By default the proxy created
is called 'localhost', you can rename it. Click on 'Add Reference' to add the proxy to the
client application.

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Include the proxy in the code behind file by adding:

using localhost;

ASP.NET - Multi Threading

A thread is defined as the execution path of a program. Each thread defines a unique
flow of control. If your application involves complicated and time consuming operations
such as database access or some intense I/O operations, then it is often helpful to set
different execution paths or threads, with each thread performing a particular job.

Threads are lightweight processes. One common example of use of thread is

implementation of concurrent programming by modern operating systems. Use of
threads saves wastage of CPU cycle and increases efficiency of an application.

So far we compiled programs where a single thread runs as a single process which is the
running instance of the application. However, this way the application can perform one
job at a time. To make it execute multiple tasks at a time, it could be divided
Chapters into smaller
Categories
threads.

In .Net, the threading is handled through the 'System.Threading' namespace. Creating a

variable of the System.Threading.Thread type allows you to create a new thread to start
working with. It allows you to create and access individual threads in a program.

Creating Thread
A thread is created by creating a Thread object, giving its constructor a ThreadStart
reference.

ThreadStart childthreat = new ThreadStart(childthreadcall);

Thread Life Cycle

The life cycle of a thread starts when an object of the System.Threading.Thread class is
created and ends when the thread is terminated or completes execution.

Following are the various states in the life cycle of a thread:

The Unstarted State : It is the situation when the instance of the thread is
created but the Start method is not called.

The Ready State : It is the situation when the thread is ready to execute and
waiting CPU cycle.

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The Not Runnable State : a thread is not runnable, when:

Sleep method has been called

Wait method has been called

Blocked by I/O operations

The Dead State : It is the situation when the thread has completed execution or
has been aborted.

Thread Priority
The Priority property of the Thread class specifies the priority of one thread with respect
to other. The .Net runtime selects the ready thread with the highest priority.

The priorities could be categorized as:

Above normal
Below normal

Highest

Lowest

Normal

Once a thread is created, its priority is set using the Priority property of the thread class.

NewThread.Priority = ThreadPriority.Highest;

Thread Properties & Methods

The Thread class has the following important properties:

Property Description

CurrentContext Gets the current context in which the thread is executing.

CurrentCulture Gets or sets the culture for the current thread.

Gets or sets the thread's current principal for role-based

CurrentPrinciple
security.

CurrentThread Gets the currently running thread.

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Gets or sets the current culture used by the Resource

CurrentUICulture
Manager to look up culture-specific resources at run time.

Gets an ExecutionContext object that contains information

ExecutionContext
about the various contexts of the current thread.

Gets a value indicating the execution status of the current

IsAlive
thread.

Gets or sets a value indicating whether or not a thread is a

IsBackground
background thread.

Gets a value indicating whether or not a thread belongs to

IsThreadPoolThread
the managed thread pool.

ManagedThreadId Gets a unique identifier for the current managed thread.

Name Gets or sets the name of the thread.

Gets or sets a value indicating the scheduling priority of a

Priority
thread.

ThreadState Gets a value containing the states of the current thread.

The Thread class has the following important methods:

Methods Description

Raises a ThreadAbortException in the thread on which it is

Abort invoked, to begin the process of terminating the thread.
Calling this method usually terminates the thread.

Allocates an unnamed data slot on all the threads. For

AllocateDataSlot better performance, use fields that are marked with the
ThreadStaticAttribute attribute instead.

Allocates a named data slot on all threads. For better

AllocateNamedDataSlot performance, use fields that are marked with the
ThreadStaticAttribute attribute instead.

Notifies a host that execution is about to enter a region of

code in which the effects of a thread abort or unhandled
BeginCriticalRegion
exception might endanger other tasks in the application
domain.

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Notifies a host that managed code is about to execute

BeginThreadAffinity instructions that depend on the identity of the current
physical operating system thread.

Notifies a host that execution is about to enter a region of

EndCriticalRegion code in which the effects of a thread abort or unhandled
exception are limited to the current task.

Notifies a host that managed code has finished executing

EndThreadAffinity instructions that depend on the identity of the current
physical operating system thread.

Eliminates the association between a name and a slot, for

all threads in the process. For better performance, use
FreeNamedDataSlot
fields that are marked with the ThreadStaticAttribute
attribute instead.

Retrieves the value from the specified slot on the current

thread, within the current thread's current domain. For
GetData
better performance, use fields that are marked with the
ThreadStaticAttribute attribute instead.

Returns the current domain in which the current thread is

GetDomain
running.

GetDomainID Returns a unique application domain identifier.

Looks up a named data slot. For better performance, use

GetNamedDataSlot fields that are marked with the ThreadStaticAttribute
attribute instead.

Interrupts a thread that is in the WaitSleepJoin thread

Interrupt
state.

Blocks the calling thread until a thread terminates, while

Join continuing to perform standard COM and SendMessage
pumping. This method has different overloaded forms.

Synchronizes memory access as follows: The processor

executing the current thread cannot reorder instructions in
MemoryBarrier such a way that memory accesses prior to the call to
MemoryBarrier execute after memory accesses that follow
the call to MemoryBarrier.

ResetAbort Cancels an Abort requested for the current thread.

SetData Sets the data in the specified slot on the currently running
thread, for that thread's current domain. For better

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performance, use fields marked with the

ThreadStaticAttribute attribute instead.

Start Starts a thread.

Sleep Makes the thread pause for a period of time.

Causes a thread to wait the number of times defined by the

SpinWait
iterations parameter.

Reads the value of a field. The value is the latest written by

any processor in a computer, regardless of the number of
VolatileRead()
processors or the state of processor cache. This method has
different overloaded forms.

Writes a value to a field immediately, so that the value is

VolatileWrite() visible to all processors in the computer. This method has
different overloaded forms.

Causes the calling thread to yield execution to another

Yield thread that is ready to run on the current processor. The
operating system selects the thread to yield to.

Example

The following example illustrates the uses of the Thread class. The page has a label
control for displaying messages from the child thread. The messages from the main
program are directly displayed using the Response.Write() method. Hence they appear
on the top of the page.

The source file is as follows:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs"

Inherits="threaddemo._Default" %>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >

<head runat="server">
<title>
Untitled Page
</title>
</head>
<body>

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<form id="form1" runat="server">

<div>
<h3>Thread Example</h3>
</div>
<asp:Label ID="lblmessage" runat="server" Text="Label">
</asp:Label>
</form>
</body>
</html>

The code behind file is as follows:

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Data;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Xml.Linq;
using System.Threading;

namespace threaddemo
{
public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page
{
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
ThreadStart childthreat = new ThreadStart(childthreadcall);
Response.Write("Child Thread Started <br/>");
Thread child = new Thread(childthreat);
child.Start();
Response.Write("Main sleeping for 2 seconds.......<br/>");
Thread.Sleep(2000);
Response.Write("<br/>Main aborting child thread<br/>");
child.Abort();
}
public void childthreadcall()

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{
try{
lblmessage.Text = "<br />Child thread started <br/>";
lblmessage.Text += "Child Thread: Coiunting to 10";
for( int i =0; i<10; i++)
{
Thread.Sleep(500);
lblmessage.Text += "<br/> in Child thread </br>";
}
lblmessage.Text += "<br/> child thread finished";
}
catch(ThreadAbortException e)
{
lblmessage.Text += "<br /> child thread - exception";
}
finally{
lblmessage.Text += "<br /> child thread - unable to catch the
exception";
}
}
}
}

Observe the following

When the page is loaded, a new thread is started with the reference of the
method childthreadcall(). The main thread activities are displayed directly on the
web page.

The second thread runs and sends messages to the label control.
The main thread sleeps for 2000 ms, during which the child thread executes.

The child thread runs till it is aborted by the main thread. It raises the
ThreadAbortException and is terminated.

Control returns to the main thread.

When executed the program sends the following messages:

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ASP.NET - Configuration
The behavior of an ASP.NET application is affected by different settings in the
configuration files:

machine.config
web.config

The machine.config file contains default and the machine-specific value for all supported
settings. The machine settings are controlled by the system administrator and
applications are generally not given access to this file.

An application however, can override the default values by creating web.config files in its
roots folder. The web.config file is a subset of the machine.config file.

If the application contains child directories, it can define a web.config file for each folder.
Scope of each configuration file is determined in a hierarchical top-down manner.

Any web.config file can locally extend, restrict, or override any settings defined on the
upper level.

Visual Studio generates a default web.config file for each project. An application can
execute without a web.config file, however, you cannot debug an application without a
web.config file.

The following figure shows the Solution Explorer for the sample example used in the web
services tutorial:

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In this application, there are two web.config files for two projects i.e., the web service
and the web site calling the web service.

The web.config file has the configuration element as the root node. Information inside
this element is grouped into two main areas: the configuration section-handler
declaration area, and the configuration section settings area.

The following code snippet shows the basic syntax of a configuration file:

<configuration>
<!-- Configuration section-handler declaration area. -->
<configSections>
<section name="section1" type="section1Handler" />
<section name="section2" type="section2Handler" />
</configSections>
<!-- Configuration section settings area. -->
<section1>
<s1Setting1 attribute1="attr1" />
</section1>
<section2>
<s2Setting1 attribute1="attr1" />
</section2>
<system.web>
<authentication mode="Windows" />

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</system.web>
</configuration>

Configuration Section Handler declarations

The configuration section handlers are contained within the <configSections> tags. Each
configuration handler specifies name of a configuration section, contained within the file,
which provides some configuration data. It has the following basic syntax:

<configSections>
<section />
<sectionGroup />
<remove />
<clear/>
</configSections>

It has the following elements:

Clear - It removes all references to inherited sections and section groups.

Remove - It removes a reference to an inherited section and section group.

Section - It defines an association between a configuration section handler and a

configuration element.

Section group - It defines an association between a configuration section

handler and a configuration section.

Application Settings
The application settings allow storing application-wide name-value pairs for read-only
access. For example, you can define a custom application setting as:

<configuration>
<appSettings>
<add key="Application Name" value="MyApplication" />
</appSettings>
</configuration>

For example, you can also store the name of a book and its ISBN number:

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<configuration>
<appSettings>
<add key="appISBN" value="0-273-68726-3" />
<add key="appBook" value="Corporate Finance" />
</appSettings>
</configuration>

Connection Strings
The connection strings show which database connection strings are available to the
website. For example:

<connectionStrings>
<add name="ASPDotNetStepByStepConnectionString"
connectionString="Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;
Data Source=E:\\projects\datacaching\ /
datacaching\App_Data\ASPDotNetStepByStep.mdb"
providerName="System.Data.OleDb" />
<add name="booksConnectionString"
connectionString="Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;
Data Source=C:\ \databinding\App_Data\books.mdb"
providerName="System.Data.OleDb" />
</connectionStrings>

System.Web Element
The system.web element specifies the root element for the ASP.NET configuration section
and contains configuration elements that configure ASP.NET Web applications and control
how the applications behave.

It holds most of the configuration elements needed to be adjusted in common

applications. The basic syntax for the element is as given:

<system.web>
<anonymousIdentification>
<authentication>
<authorization>
<browserCaps>
<caching>
<clientTarget>
<compilation>

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<customErrors>
<deployment>
<deviceFilters>
<globalization>
<healthMonitoring>
<hostingEnvironment>
<httpCookies>
<httpHandlers>
<httpModules>
<httpRuntime>
<identity>
<machineKey>
<membership>
<mobileControls>
<pages>
<processModel>
<profile>
<roleManager>
<securityPolicy>
<sessionPageState>
<sessionState>
<siteMap>
<trace>
<trust>
<urlMappings>
<webControls>
<webParts>
<webServices>
<xhtmlConformance>
</system.web>

The following table provides brief description of some of common sub elements of the
system.web element:

AnonymousIdentification

This is required to identify users who are not authenticated when authorization is
required.

Authentication
It configures the authentication support. The basic syntax is as given:

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<authentication mode="[Windows|Forms|Passport|None]">
<forms>...</forms>
<passport/>
</authentication>

Authorization
It configures the authorization support. The basic syntax is as given:

<authorization>
<allow .../>
<deny .../>
</authorization>

Caching

It Configures the cache settings. The basic syntax is as given:

<caching>
<cache>...</cache>
<outputCache>...</outputCache>
<outputCacheSettings>...</outputCacheSettings>
<sqlCacheDependency>...</sqlCacheDependency>
</caching>

CustomErrors
It defines custom error messages. The basic syntax is as given:

<customErrors defaultRedirect="url" mode="On|Off|RemoteOnly">

<error. . ./>
</customErrors>

Deployment
It defines configuration settings used for deployment. The basic syntax is as follows:

<deployment retail="true|false" />

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HostingEnvironment
It defines configuration settings for hosting environment. The basic syntax is as follows:

<hostingEnvironment idleTimeout="HH:MM:SS"
shadowCopyBinAssemblies="true|false"
shutdownTimeout="number" urlMetadataSlidingExpiration="HH:MM:SS" />

Identity
It configures the identity of the application. The basic syntax is as given:

<identity impersonate="true|false" userName="domain\username"

password="<secure password>"/>

MachineKey
It configures keys to use for encryption and decryption of Forms authentication cookie
data.

It also allows configuring a validation key that performs message authentication checks
on view-state data and forms authentication tickets. The basic syntax is:

<machineKey validationKey="AutoGenerate,IsolateApps" [String]

decryptionKey="AutoGenerate,IsolateApps" [String]
validation="HMACSHA256" [SHA1 | MD5 | 3DES | AES | HMACSHA256 |
HMACSHA384 | HMACSHA512 | alg:algorithm_name]
decryption="Auto" [Auto | DES | 3DES | AES | alg:algorithm_name]
/>

Membership
This configures parameters of managing and authenticating user accounts. The basic
syntax is:

<membership defaultProvider="provider name"

userIsOnlineTimeWindow="number of minutes" hashAlgorithmType="SHA1">
<providers>...</providers>
</membership>

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Pages

It provides page-specific configurations. The basic syntax is:

<pages asyncTimeout="number" autoEventWireup="[True|False]"

buffer="[True|False]" clientIDMode="[AutoID|Predictable|Static]"
compilationMode="[Always|Auto|Never]"
controlRenderingCompatibilityVersion="[3.5|4.0]"
enableEventValidation="[True|False]"
enableSessionState="[True|False|ReadOnly]"
enableViewState="[True|False]"
enableViewStateMac="[True|False]"
maintainScrollPositionOnPostBack="[True|False]"
masterPageFile="file path"
maxPageStateFieldLength="number"
pageBaseType="typename, assembly"
pageParserFilterType="string"
smartNavigation="[True|False]"
styleSheetTheme="string"
theme="string"
userControlBaseType="typename"
validateRequest="[True|False]"
viewStateEncryptionMode="[Always|Auto|Never]" >
<controls>...</controls>
<namespaces>...</namespaces>
<tagMapping>...</tagMapping>
<ignoreDeviceFilters>...</ignoreDeviceFilters>
</pages>

Profile

It configures user profile parameters. The basic syntax is:

<profile enabled="true|false" inherits="fully qualified type reference"

automaticSaveEnabled="true|false" defaultProvider="provider name">
<properties>...</properties>
<providers>...</providers>
</profile>

RoleManager

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It configures settings for user roles. The basic syntax is:

<roleManager cacheRolesInCookie="true|false" cookieName="name"

cookiePath="/" cookieProtection="All|Encryption|Validation|None"
cookieRequireSSL="true|false " cookieSlidingExpiration="true|false "
cookieTimeout="number of minutes" createPersistentCookie="true|false"
defaultProvider="provider name" domain="cookie domain">
enabled="true|false"
maxCachedResults="maximum number of role names cached"
<providers>...</providers>
</roleManager>

SecurityPolicy

It configures the security policy. The basic syntax is:

<securityPolicy>
<trustLevel />
</securityPolicy>

UrlMappings
It defines mappings to hide the original URL and provide a more user friendly URL. The
basic syntax is:

<urlMappings enabled="true|false">
<add.../>
<clear />
<remove.../>
</urlMappings>

WebControls
It provides the name of shared location for client scripts. The basic syntax is:

<webControls clientScriptsLocation="String" />

WebServices

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This configures the web services.

ASP.NET - Deployment
There are two categories of ASP.NET deployment:

Local deployment : In this case, the entire application is contained within a

virtual directory and all the contents and assemblies are contained within it and
available to the application.
Global deployment : In this case, assemblies are available to every application
running on the server.

There are different techniques used for deployment, however, we will discuss the
following most common and easiest ways of deployment:

XCOPY deployment

Copying a Website

Creating a set up project

XCOPY Deployment
XCOPY deployment means making recursive copies of all the files to the target folder on
the target machine. You can use any of the commonly used techniques:

FTP transfer

Using Server management tools that provide replication on a remote site

MSI installer application

XCOPY deployment simply copies the application file to the production server and sets a
virtual directory there. You need to set a virtual directory using the Internet Information
Manager Microsoft Management Console (MMC snap-in).

Copying a Website
The Copy Web Site option is available in Visual Studio. It is available from the Website ->
Copy Web Site menu option. This menu item allows copying the current web site to
another local or remote location. It is a sort of integrated FTP tool.

Using this option, you connect to the target destination, select the desired copy mode:

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Overwrite

Source to Target Files

Sync UP Source And Target Projects

Then proceed with copying the files physically. Unlike the XCOPY deployment, this
process of deployment is done from Visual Studio environment. However, there are
following problems with both the above deployment methods:

You pass on your source code.

There is no pre-compilation and related error checking for the files.

The initial page load will be slow.

Creating a Setup Project

In this method, you use Windows Installer and package your web applications so it is
ready to deploy on the production server. Visual Studio allows you to build deployment
packages. Let us test this on one of our existing project, say the data binding project.

Open the project and take the following steps:

Step (1) : Select File -> Add -> New Project with the website root directory highlighted
in the Solution Explorer.

Step (2) : Select Setup and Deployment, under Other Project Types. Select Setup
Wizard.

Step (3) : Choosing the default location ensures that the set up project will be located
in its own folder under the root directory of the site. Click on okay to get the first splash
screen of the wizard.

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Step (4) : Choose a project type. Select 'Create a setup for a web application'.

Step (5) : Next, the third screen asks to choose project outputs from all the projects in
the solution. Check the check box next to 'Content Files from...'

Step (6) : The fourth screen allows including other files like ReadMe. However, in our
case there is no such file. Click on finish.

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Step (7) : The final screen displays a summary of settings for the set up project.

Step (8) : The Set up project is added to the Solution Explorer and the main design
window shows a file system editor.

Step (9) : Next step is to build the setup project. Right click on the project name in the
Solution Explorer and select Build.

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Step (10) : When build is completed, you get the following message in the Output
window:

Two files are created by the build process:

Setup.exe

Setup-databinding.msi

You need to copy these files to the server. Double-click the setup file to install the
content of the .msi file on the local machine.

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