Chris van de Steeg’s blog

I’ve been playing with RIAServices and DynamicData lately, and managed to combine these with NHibernate as ORM in an ASP.NET MVC project.

For this project the following (extensive) list of libraries is used (all these libraries are included in the download):

• MS ASP.NET Mvc 1.0
• Microsoft .NET RIA Services July 2009 Preview
• NHibernate 2.1.0CR1
• NHibernate Linq (latest trunk version)
• FluentNhibernate (latest trunk version, patched to work with NHibernate 2.1.0CR1)
• MS Unity 1.2
• ASP.NET Dynamic Data MVC Preview (since this project is pretty old, I had to modify it quite a bit, the source is included in the download)
• I used Rob Conery’s t4 templates as the base to generate entities from the database.

Besides using these libraries, I copied some code snippits from the Kigg project, which has quite a nice codebase!

In the first part of this serie, I’ll show you how you can use these libraries along with my own code to scaffold the entire Northwind database in an mvc project. It’ll be totally hassle-free, I promise! It will generate classes from the database-schema and I will also show you how to override the default generated domainservices and repositories (yes, those are generated at runtime if you don’t specify your own!).

In the upcoming parts, I will add client-side validation and some ajax-love to the scaffold pages. In one of those parts I’ll also explain how my code works, and what it does. I’m also thinking about showing how to replace some parts of the library, since it’s very pluggable. I could for example replace the persistencelayer with Linq-to-Sql or replace the Depency part with StructureMap.

Although this sample shows you how to use an existing database, it would ofcourse be best if you could use the Model-first approach! Luckely nHibernate makes this very simple as well. If you create the entity files in your project and have them inherited from BaseEntity, all you have to do is add this line to your Application_Start:

new SchemaUpdate(IoC.Resolve<Configuration>).Execute(true, true);

Your database schema will be automatically updated if you change anything to your Model.

You can watch the screencast here and download the sample + dll’s here

For the next screencast, I’ll by a mic so I don’t have to subtitle it

Quite some had changed between mvc p4 and mvc p5, so it took some time too update my jquery4mvc project to preview 5. Be sure to check out scott’s post to read all the new stuff. He’ll be posting on the ajaxhelpers some time soon also.  If you wish to skip the reading and directly download the stuff: it’s at codeplex.

The javascript-only package includes 3 javascript files that allow you to use the default Microsoft AjaxHelper. You can just copy those files to your Content folder and include them in your head section, instead of the MicrosoftAjax.js and MicrosoftMvcAjax.js. All ajax extensions work the same as their Microsoft equivalence,  using jQuery instead of MicrosoftAjax. As a little bonus, you’ll get back and forward button support for your ajax-links.

That’s it, go ahead and use the AjaxHelper functions like you’re used to. Though a few things have changed for the AjaxHelpers in preview 5, you could still use the introduction ASP.NET MVC Preview 4 – Using Ajax and Ajax.Form by Scott Hanselman if you haven’t already checked out the AjaxHelper. Main thing that has changed is that you cannot use inline javascript in the AjaxOptions in preview 5, you should now specify a method name. You could also download the entire jQueryMvc project, it holds a sample website showing some of the ajax magic.

Talking about the entire project, it’s more than just the .js files! The intention of the project is to get you up and running very quickly when you want to create an mvc based ajax application. We use Unity as our default IoC container.

I think it’s quite hard to explain exactly what the project does for you, it’s best really to just look at the sample website, but I will give a brief overview. First, we have a DefaultViewViewEngine. If you mark your controller with a [DefaultView] attribute like so:

If you call in example /Home/Index, by default the Index view will be searched for. If it isn’t found, the DefaultViewViewEngine will look for a template with the name specified ("default" in the above example). It doesn’t matter what viewengine you use for your views, it will work for all of them. So what can this do? Look at the structure of the views in the sample site:

As you can see, most of the the views only have an ascx file prefixed with an underscore. Since the views are not found when the actions Home/About, Home/SayHello, Home/Index are called upon, the DefaultViewViewEngine will open Shared/Default.aspx.
This default page does not do much

As you can see, it just uses the masterpage. But with only little imagination, you can see that you can easily create different default-pages for each controller. The masterpage however, does hold some extra magic:

This special contentplaceholder, by default works like a normal placeholder. But, if it doesn’t get new content from it’s page, it will ask the ViewEngine(s) to open the view of the current action prefixed with an underscore. So, if you call Home/About, this will ask for Home/_About. 
Can you see the magic? For all similar pages, you just have to create the ascx files (or other partials if you use a different viewengine). Those partial views will be pushed into the main page.

But wait, there’s more! If you make an ajax-request to a controller that has the [AjaxController] attribute, it will return only the partial view! Now, isn’t that great ? That looks a lot like the updatepanel to me

Go to codeplex and download the project to see the ajax-magic I’m so excited about!
Source can be downloaded at Google code: http://code.google.com/p/jquerymvc/source/checkout
The sample website can be seen in action at: http://www.chrisvandesteeg.nl/demo/jquerymvc5/

Working on jQuery4mvc preview 4, one of the first things I ofcourse wanted to do was to replace the ASP.NET Ajax library that’s used by the AjaxHelper.

Unfortunately the AjaxHelper itself is sealed, so atm we can’t (easily) change how the AjaxHelper generates its links. So, as an alternative, I created a javascript library that uses the same methodnames as the MicrosoftMvcAjax version.

Though at first I was upset that AjaxHelper wasn’t opened up, this javascript-only solution makes it very easy to use. All you have to do is

• place the latest jQuery version in your Content folder;
• place my javascript file in your Content folder;
• add references in your views (or masterpage ofcourse) to these 2 files instead of referencing the MicrosoftMvcAjax.js and MicrosoftAjax.js file.

If you haven’t played with the AjaxHelper yet, take a look at Scott Hanselman’s post on Using Ajax and Ajax.Form

This jQuery version also has a little extra: browser-history support for your ajax requests

Now, go download the js file and play!