Thinking Websites

ISAPI_Rewrite Common Regular Expressions

4/12/2010 12:14:00 PM

ISAPI_Rewrite lets you easily create search engine friendly URL' s for your dynamic asp.net website. It is an ISAPI module for IIS that mimics the rewriting abilities of the Apache webserver.

http://www.queenzone.com/forums/1226666/upcoming-video-project-queens-live-bloopers-the-sequel.aspx

RewriteRule ^forum[s]?/([0-9]+)/.+?.aspx /forums/forum_topic_view.aspx?Q=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [NC,L]

Server controls, embedded resources and VB.net

4/10/2010 12:08:00 PM

I had a problem for quite some time when i was trying to include external resources within server controls.

When creating an asp.net server control, you may want to include some additional resources in your assembly, such as javascript or images.

Typically, you plaec these in the "Resources" directory. However, when referencing this directory in VB.net you exclude the path "Resources" when you refrence the resource. This is different to C# whereby you include the "Resources" in the path.

Including "Resouces" in the path in a VB.net server control results in "file not found" error....

For example, i have got an external javascript within my .dll that i want to reference. I register it as:

    
            <Assembly: System.Web.UI.WebResource("RO.UI.ui.stars.js", "text/javascript")>

The javascript file is called "ui.stars.js". My application .dll is called "RO.UI". The javascript file is held within the "Resources" directory - but that path name is not included when i reference the script.

To me, it seems like an error, with the implementation of VB.net. i am not sure if they have fixed this for Visual Studio 2010.

Date with select drop down

4/9/2010 1:38:00 PM

If you need to choose dates that are quite a long way off, the typical "calendar" control isn't very practical as you would need to scroll through many, many years. You could provide a "free form" input, but you want to guarantee a valid date input.

A solution is a date input with a drop down control. To get the inputed date, simply access the "value" attribute of the control.

Link with filesize and icon

4/9/2010 1:30:00 PM

    
             <RO:Link ID="Link1" runat="server" DownloadMessage="Listen" 

            QueryValue='19' filename='hello.zip'  filesize='100098'

             UrlAuthorized="/general/download-file.ashx?q={0}&type=1"></RO:Link>

This control simply creates a link to a file along with a filesize message and an icon.

Searchable Select Element Asp.Net Control

1/26/2010 4:28:00 PM

The standard select list takes each keystroke as the "letter" or "number" to search for.
This isn't particularly nice when you have a long list of items in a select or drop down list.

In the case of a list of countries, searching for "Australia", the "a" i type shows the countries beginning with "a", when i type the "u", i am presented with the countries starting with "u".

This server control extends the standard htmlselect control and adds JQuery search functions to the text list. So that with each keystroke, the list of items is refined. If i search for "Australia", when i type "a", and then "u", i am presented with countries starting with "au" - Australia and Austria.

The control works the same as a standard select. You can add it to your page with:

    
            <ro:selectElement ID="COUNTRY_ID" runat="server">  
        
            </ro:selectElement>

You need to ensure the JQuery library is already included on the page. The control doesn't add this for you - only the additional code required for the dropdown search function.

Contact form Asp.Net Control

1/22/2010 2:34:00 PM

The contact form controls creates a "standard contact form" that is found on pretty much every single website. The idea is to encapsulate this standard element in a single server control - in a similar way to the login control does for login / membership functions.

The form element labels and styles can be modified. You can also choose to include a subject field or not. Collecting the values of the form is then pretty easy.

The code for instantiating the contact form control is:

    
            <RO:ContactForm ID="mystuff" ShowSubject="true" runat="server"></RO:ContactForm>

To get the values of the form, you need to create an event handler for the "submitContactForm" event.

For example:

    
              Sub sendEmail() Handles mystuff.submitContactForm  
        
                    Response.Write(mystuff.nameField)  
        
                    Response.Write(mystuff.emailField)  
        
                    Response.Write(mystuff.commentField)  
        
                End Sub

You can change the "labels" for the various form fields using properties such as "EmailLabelText".

Autocomplete Asp.Net Control

1/22/2010 2:20:00 PM

The asp.net control queries a webservice for information based upon the entry into a textbox.

The code for setting up the autocomplete control is simple. An example looks like:

    
            <RO:AutoComplete ID="myAuto" runat="server" WebserviceUrl="/ajax/lyric.ashx"></RO:AutoComplete>

There are some additional options, such as number of characters to require before requesting information from the webservice. The webservice needs to return an entry per line.

I will update the example to accept JSON respsonses at a later date.

Not showing a datagrid when there are 0 records

1/6/2010 3:25:00 PM

When populating a datagrid you will often use a datareader as it is the fastest way to pull data out of a database.

In the case where there aren’t any records, though, this may leave you with an “empty table”, where the columns are showing, even though there is no data. The datareader doesn’t provide a record count of the returned records – so you aren’t able to “show / hide” the table based on the number of returned records.

There is a simple way of avoiding this, by counting the items in the datagrid after it has bound.

The code below shows this:

    
            myDataGrid.databind()   
        
            If myDataGrid.Items.Count = 0 Then   
        
            myDataGrid.visible = false   
        
            else   
        
            ‘ show a “no records message”   
        
            End if

This allows you to use the efficient datareader, and provide a clean user-interface.

Including JavaScript and Images in an asp.net server control with VB.Net

1/6/2010 3:23:00 PM

There is a differnce between VB.NET and C# when including external resources in a server control.

This is of particular notice to those using VB.Net.

When including JavaScript or images within your custom server control, you will no doubt add a “Resources” folder to your project. However, when including a reference path to the items in the resource folder, you do not include a reference to the “Resources” folder – when using VB.Net.

For example, in my UI library project, under the namespace “RO.UI”. I may have a JavaScript file “ro.js”.

When referencing this file in the “AssemblyInfo.vb” I would write:

    
            <Assembly: System.Web.UI.WebResource("RO.UI.ro.js", "text/javascript")>

Notice, I do not include a reference to the “Resources” directory. This is different from when writing C# - where the reference to the “Resources” path is required.

Test blog entry

11/28/2009 10:29:00 PM

test blog entry 1