ASP.NET: Supporting Dynamic Applications

Introduction

The ASP.NET membership feature reduces the amount of code you have to write to authenticate users and store their credentials. To quote MSDN:

“The ASP.NET membership gives you a built-in way to validate and store user credentials. You use the ASP.NET membership with Forms authentication and / or with the ASP.NET login controls for authenticating users.”

The membership provider needs to be specified in the Web.config configuration file. You can use your own custom provider or one of the default providers that ships with the .NET Framework, such as the SqlMembershipProvider provider.

All of the user related data is stored in a set of tables used by the ASP.NET membership system. In most cases you’ll use one set of tables per web application. However you can also reuse the same set to store the user credentials of multiple web applications. This effectively enables you to create one web application that acts as a portal allowing you to log in to one of these “virtual” applications.

However this isn’t possible out of the box. You have some work ahead of you, before you can support such dynamic applications.

Let’s get started…

Entity Framework ObjectContext

Introduction

It’s been a good two months since the last post. Today I finally found some spare time to write a new article about .NET. This will be the first article on this blog focusing solely on the Entity Framework. More in particular about using the Entity Framework in different environments such as Windows Applications and in an ASP.NET environment.

The Entity Framework has some drawbacks that will hopefully be addressed in the second release, but in its current state it’s already a really useful technology to use for database access.

This article will not discuss every feature of the Entity Framework as that would entail writing an entire book. The primary focus is on how to deal with the ObjectContext in different environments such as a regular Windows Application and a Web Application (ASP.NET). Let’s get started…

MVP: Model View Presenter

Introduction

Last week I was reading some articles about using WCF, the Entity Framework and how to transport entities across the service boundary. One of the articles I encountered included a demo project that made use of the Model View Presenter (MVP) pattern.

Having explored the demo project I thought it might be interesting to write an article about this pattern. Your favorite search engine will happily supply you with a plethora of links to other articles that explain this pattern thoroughly.

For this article I’ve decided to supply a concrete implemention and to focus less on the theory behind the pattern.

Let’s roll…

ASP.NET Menu: Sliding Doors of CSS

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to create a slick looking and easy to use menu for an ASP.NET enabled website. In order to accomplish this we’ll use the standard functionality of the ASP.NET Menu web control and enhance the look purely by using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

For those of you familiar with CSS the title of this article will surely ring a bell. The CSS used to enhance the look and feel of the ASP.NET Menu control is decribed in a widely known article on A List Apart, entitled “Sliding Doors of CSS“.

The CSS used to improve the look and feel of the menu is thoroughly explained in the article on A List Apart. Credit when credit is due. Thank Douglas Bowman for supplying us with the CSS. Be sure to read his article first if you are not familiar with it.

The focus of this article is on how to simulate such a menu in an ASP.NET environment. Let’s get started…