Articles : Page 1 of 4
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Passing multiple POST parameters to Web API Controller Methods
May 1209ASP.NET Web API introduces a new API for creating REST APIs and making AJAX callbacks to the server. This new API provides a host of new great functionality that unifies many of the features of many of the various AJAX/REST APIs that Microsoft created before it - ASP.NET AJAX, WCF REST specifically - and combines them into a whole more consistent API. Web API addresses many of the concerns that developers had with these older APIs, namely that it was very difficult to build consistent REST sty...
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ASP.NET MVC Now Accepting Pull Requests
Mar 1229Changing a big organizations is a slow endeavor. But when people are passionate and persistent, change does happen. Three years ago, the ASP.NET MVC source code was released under an open source license. But at the time, the team could not accept any code contributions. In my blog post talking about that release, I said the following (emphasis added): Personally (and this is totally my own opinion), I’d like to reach the point where we could accept patches. There are many hurdles in the w...
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Rebuilding CoasterBuzz, Part II: Hot data objects
Mar 1219This is the second post, originally from my personal blog, in a series about rebuilding one of my Web sites, which has been around for 12 years. More: Part I: Evolution, and death to WCF After the rush to get moving on stuff, I temporarily lost interest. I went almost two weeks without touching the project, in part because the next thing on my backlog was doing up a bunch of administrative pages. So boring. Unfortunately, because most of the site's content is user-generated, you need some...
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Using an alternate JSON Serializer in ASP.NET Web API
Mar 1209The new ASP.NET Web API that Microsoft released alongside MVC 4.0 Beta last week is a great framework for building REST and AJAX APIs. I've been working with it for quite a while now and I really like the way it works and the complete set of features it provides 'in the box'. It's about time that Microsoft gets a decent API for building generic HTTP endpoints into the framework. DataContractJsonSerializer sucks As nice as Web API's overall design is one thing still sucks: The built-in JSON S...
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Using SignalR to broadcast a slide deck
Dec 1106Last week, Ive discussed Techniques for real-time client-server communication on the web (SignalR to the rescue). Weve seen that when building web applications, you often face the fact that HTTP, the foundation of the web, is a request/response protocol. A client issues a request, a server handles this request and sends back a response. All the time, with no relation between the first request and subsequent requests. Also, since its request-based, there is no way to send messages from the serv...
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Scott Hanselman's 2011 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows
Dec 1101Everyone collects utilities, and most folks have a list of a few that they feel are indispensable. Here's mine. Each has a distinct purpose, and I probably touch each at least a few times a week. For me, util means utilitarian and it means don't clutter my tray. If it saves me time, and seamlessly integrates with my life, it's the bomb. Many/most are free some aren't. Those that aren't free are very likely worth your 30-day trial, and perhaps your money. Here are most of the contents of my ...
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Using the West Wind Web Toolkit to set up AJAX and REST Services
Nov 1103I frequently get questions about which option to use for creating AJAX and REST backends for ASP.NET applications. There are many solutions out there to do this actually, but when I have a choice - not surprisingly - I fall back to my own tools in the West Wind West Wind Web Toolkit. I've talked a bunch about the 'in-the-box' solutions in the past so for a change in this post I'll talk about the tools that I use in my own and customer applications to handle AJAX and REST based access to servic...
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Adding Export Capabilities to the Razor WebGrid
Sep 1103When MVC first came out I really missed having a grid control. Now a few years later, we finally have a grid control again. In case, you didnt know the WebGrid was included in the System.Web.Helpers assembly which shipped with MVC 3. After using a variety of grid controls over the years I was actually glad that the API for the new WebGrid was kept clean and simple. Here is a screenshot of what the grid looks like: To display a grid on a razor view page, you basically create a new grid objec...
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Calling ASP.NET MVC Action Methods from JavaScript
Aug 1119In a recent blog post, I wrote a a controller inspector to demonstrate Controller and Action Descriptors. In this blog post, I apply that knowledge to build something more useful. One pain point when you write Ajax heavy applications using ASP.NET MVC is managing the URLs that Routing generates on the server. These URLs aren’t accessible from code in a static JavaScript file. There are techniques to mitigate this: Generate the URLs in the view and pass them into the JavaScript API. This ...
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New Ajax Grid Scaffolding NuGet Package for MVC 3
Aug 1118EDITOR’S NOTE: Microsoft has an amazing intern program. For a summer, these bright college students work with a feature crew getting real work done, all the while attending cool events nearly every week that, frankly, make the rest of us jealous! Just look at some of the perks listed in this news article! This summer, the ASP.NET MVC is hosting an intern, Stephen Halter, who while very smart, doesn’t have a blog of his own (booo! hiss!). Being the nice guy that I am (and also being amenable ...
