Essential ASP.NET 2.0

by Onion, Fritz; Brown, Keith

• ISBN13: 9780321237705
• ISBN10: 0321237706
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-10-30
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional

Summary

"No one knows ASP.NET like Fritz Onion. And no one knows .NET security like Keith Brown. Combine the two and what do you get? The most comprehensive and enlightening book on ASP.NET 2.0 industrywide. I'm sure you'll find the book you're holding was worth every penny." --Aaron Skonnard, member of technical staff and cofounder, Pluralsight "Essential ASP.NET 2.0gets under the hood and dismantles the engine before your eyes. Fritz and Keith understand that we as developers need to understand how it works and this book does exactly that. Their explanation of the ASP.NET 2.0 page event sequence is worth the price of the book alone." --Shawn Wildermuth, Microsoft MVP (C#), "The ADO Guy" "Essential ASP.NET 2.0is an incredibly useful must-read for any developer.Many books drag you through theory and mindless detail, but this one actually sets up the problems you may encounter with ASP.NET 2.0 and rolls out the alternatives." --Patrick Hynds, Microsoft Regional Director and President, CriticalSites "This book is essential for any ASP.NET developer moving from version 1.x to 2.0. Onion and Brown not only cover the new features, but provide a wealth of insight and detail about how to use them effectively." --Ron Petrusha, author ofVisual Basic 2005: The Complete Reference "Drawing on their deep technical knowledge and real-world experience, Fritz and Keith take the reader into some of the less explored and much improved areas of ASP.NET such as diagnostics and state management and performance. Readers will turn to this book over and over again." --John Timney, Microsoft MVP, Senior Web Services Consultant,British Telecom "Fritz and Keith, both established developers and writers in our industry, have succeeded again--enlightening us on the latest advancements found in ASP.NET 2.0. If you're new to ASP.NET or a seasoned veteran, you'll benefit tremendously from their overview, analysis, and sample code." --Joe "MSJoe" Flanigen "This book seeks not only to explain how to effectively build Web sites with ASP.NET, it also gives the reader an idea of how the process works. This insight is essential to creating applications that work with the infrastructure rather than fighting it." --Justin Burtch, Vice President, Newbrook Solutions Essential ASP.NET 2.0is the Microsoft developer's definitive reference for ASP.NET 2.0 programming. It covers all you need to know to build robust, well-designed Web applications with ASP.NET 2.0, Visual Studio 2005, and .NET 2.0. ASP.NET MVP Fritz Onion and Developer Security MVP Keith Brown draw on their unparalleled experience working with ASP.NET 2.0 and teaching it to professional developers. From data binding to security, UIs to performance, they demystify ASP.NET 2.0's most difficult areas, and introduce little-known techniques for leveraging it to the fullest. The perfect companion to his previous classic,Essential ASP.NET with Examples in C#,Essential ASP.NET 2.0offers hundreds of new C# examples that illuminate today's best Web development practices. (Both C# and VB 2005 versions of all code examples can be downloaded from the companion Web site.) Topics explored in-depth include: Application architecture Code behind Master pages Themes and skins Navigation controls Data binding State management Security Web Parts Diagnostics Performance optimization Asynchronous tasks and pages Simply put, if you want to design and build better ASP.NET 2.0 Web applications,Essential ASP.NET 2.0delivers everything you need: insider's knowledge, proven best practices, and outstanding code samples.

Author Biography

Fritz Onion is cofounder of Microsoft .NET training provider Pluralsight, and author of Pluralsight's ASP.NET curriculum. He teaches ASP.NET development worldwide. The author of the highly acclaimed Essential ASP.NET with Examples in C# (Addison-Wesley), Onion is a columnist for MSDN Magazine, and a regular speaker at TechEd, VSLive!, and PDC.

Keith Brown is cofounder of Pluralsight and contributing editor for MSDN Magazine. He is the author of Programming Windows Security and The .NET Developer's Guide to Windows Security, both from Addison-Wesley.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. xv
List of Tables	p. xix
Foreword	p. xxi
Preface	p. xxiii
Acknowledgments	p. xxix
About the Authors	p. xxxi
Architecture	p. 1
Fundamentals	p. 2
Dynamic Content	p. 2
Server-Side Controls	p. 5
Data Binding	p. 8
Codebehind	p. 9
Codebehind Basics	p. 9
Codebehind 2.0	p. 11
Page Lifecycle	p. 15
Common Events	p. 15
New Events	p. 17
Implicit Event Subscription	p. 18
Compilation	p. 20
Compilation Directories	p. 20
Site Compilation	p. 24
Assembly Generation	p. 26
Customizing Assembly Generation	p. 28
Web Application Projects	p. 28
Summary	p. 30
User Interface Elements	p. 33
Page Templates	p. 33
Master Pages	p. 35
Implementation Details	p. 37
Working with Master Pages	p. 41
Details of Usage	p. 45
Themes and Skins	p. 48
Themes	p. 49
Working with Themes	p. 51
Fundamentals of Navigation Controls	p. 54
Control Adapters	p. 58
Building Control Adapters	p. 58
Browser Recognition	p. 64
CSS Friendly Adapters	p. 66
Summary	p. 66
Data Binding	p. 67
Declarative Data Binding	p. 68
Data Binding	p. 68
Data Source Controls	p. 70
Storing Connection Strings	p. 82
Data Source Parameters	p. 83
New Data-Bound Controls	p. 87
Data-Binding Evaluation Syntax	p. 91
Declarative Data-Binding Techniques	p. 91
Hierarchical Data Binding	p. 96
Binding to Objects	p. 102
Typed DataSets	p. 112
Summary	p. 112
State Management	p. 113
Cross-Page Posting	p. 114
Fundamentals	p. 114
Implementation	p. 120
Caveats	p. 121
Multi-Source Cross-Page Posting	p. 124
Wizard and MultiView Controls	p. 127
Same Page State Management	p. 127
Wizard Control	p. 128
MultiView and View Controls	p. 131
Profile	p. 133
Fundamentals	p. 133
Migrating Anonymous Profile Data	p. 137
Managing Profile Data	p. 138
Storing Profile Data	p. 138
Serialization	p. 139
User-Defined Types as Profile Properties	p. 142
Optimizing Profile	p. 143
Going the Custom Route	p. 147
Summary	p. 149
Security	p. 151
How Much Security Do I Need?	p. 151
Getting Started with Membership	p. 153
Provider Architecture	p. 158
MembershipProvider	p. 160
The Login Control	p. 162
User Account Lockout: Blessing or Curse?	p. 164
Password Complexity Policy	p. 166
Choosing a Password Format	p. 167
Password Questions and Answers	p. 169
Configuring a Membership Provider	p. 170
Custom Providers	p. 172
Using the Membership Class to Access Your Provider	p. 173
SQL Database Permissions	p. 175
The LoginView and Other Controls	p. 177
The Role Manager	p. 180
Configuring the Role Manager and Provider	p. 181
Other Role Providers	p. 183
A Word about Machine Keys	p. 184
Cookieless Forms Authentication	p. 185
SiteMapProvider Security Trimming	p. 187
Configuration File Encryption	p. 188
Summary	p. 191
Web Parts	p. 193
Web Part Fundamentals	p. 194
Portal Components	p. 194
Building a Minimal Portal Page	p. 195
Display Mode	p. 201
Catalog Parts and Zones	p. 204
Properties	p. 206
Editor Parts and Zones	p. 210
Verbs	p. 211
Connections	p. 214
Personalization Scope	p. 218
Exporting and Importing Web Parts	p. 220
Formatting Web Parts and Zones	p. 225
User Controls as Web Parts	p. 226
Personalization Data and Providers	p. 231
Changing the Personalization Data Store	p. 233
Creating Your Own Personalization Provider	p. 235
Summary	p. 239
Diagnostics	p. 241
Health Monitoring and Web Events	p. 241
Web Event Hierarchy	p. 242
Which Events Should I Monitor?	p. 245
Built-in Providers	p. 245
The E-Mail Providers	p. 248
The SQL Provider	p. 251
Buffering	p. 252
Registering for Events	p. 254
Throttling and Profiles	p. 256
Mapping the Health Monitoring Configuration Section	p. 258
Custom Web Events	p. 258
Custom Providers	p. 261
Tracing in ASP.NET 2.0	p. 264
Pro
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

I remember sitting in a room on the Microsoft campus in August of 2003 listening to Scott Guthrie and others from the ASP.NET team present the wide array of new features coming in ASP.NET 2.0. They astounded us with one demo after another of features that greatly simplified Web development, and in such a pluggable and extensible fashion so that changes could be made at any level as needed during the development process. As with its predecessor, I knew that this release was going to change the way developers built Web applications, and it would be compelling enough to bring many more developers to the ASP.NET platform.Over the subsequent two years I carefully tracked the Beta releases of ASP.NET 2.0, wrote many articles on the upcoming features, and gave numerous conference talks around the world. In early 2005 I finished writing Pluralsight's Applied ASP.NET 2.0 course, and spent the next year and a half teaching the course, as well as speaking, blogging, and writing about ASP.NET 2.0 in many different forums. This book is the culmination of those activities, and I hope it helps you in your path to understanding ASP.NET 2.0. Sample Code, Web Site, FeedbackAll of the code samples in this book are drawn from working samples available for display and download at http://pluralsight.com/essentialasp.net2/ . The site also contains examples written in VB.NET and a listing of all links and references mentioned in the book. Any errata found after publication will be posted on this site, as well as a supplemental set of more extended examples of the concepts presented in this book for your reference. The authors welcome your comments, errata, and feedback via the forms available on the Web site. Volume 2, Not Second EditionThis book is fundamentally a companion book to my first book on ASP.NET,Essential ASP.NET with Examples in C#, and is not a second edition. You will notice little to no overlap between the two books, and, in fact, I strongly encourage you to become comfortable with much of the contents of the first book before jumping into this one. Almost all of the topics presented in the first book are still completely relevant today in the ASP.NET 2.0 release. There are, however, a few topics that can be bypassed in the first book as they have been replaced and/or modified with the ASP.NET 2.0 release. The following is a reader's guide toEssential ASP.NET with Examples in C#with the intent of preparing you to read this new book. Chapter 1--ArchitectureThe discussion of codebehind should be read only lightly, as it has changed in 2.0, although the ASP.NET 1.1 model of codebehind is still supported. Chapter 2--WebFormsThe discussion of codebehind and server-side control integration can be skipped, as this has changed in ASP.NET 2.0. The last section on building WebForms with Visual Studio can be skipped. Chapter 3--ConfigurationAll of this chapter is still completely relevant. Do note that every use of ConfigurationSettings should now be ConfigurationManager in ASP.NET 2.0. Chapter 4--HTTP PipelineThe discussion of asynchronous handlers can be skipped in anticipation of the entire chapter dedicated to asynchrony (Chapter 9) in this new book. Chapter 5--Diagnostics and Error HandlingAll of this chapter is still completely relevant in ASP.NET 2.0. Chapter 6--ValidationAll of this chapter is still completely relevant in ASP.NET 2.0. Be aware that client-side validation now works cross-browser (not just in Internet Explorer as it did in ASP.NET 1.1). Also, there is a new ValidationGroup property you can associate with validation controls and buttons that generate postbacks to selectively fire subsets of validation controls. Chapter 7--Data BindingSkip over the discussion of the DataGrid control, as it has been replaced by