Articles : Page 1 of 6
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DropDownList and SelectListItem Array Item Updates in MVC
May 1216So I ran into an interesting behavior today as I deployed my first MVC 4 app tonight. I have a list form that has a filter drop down that allows selection of categories. This list is static and rarely changes so rather than loading these items from the database each time I load the items once and then cache the actual SelectListItem[] array in a static property. However, when we put the site online tonight we immediately noticed that the drop down list was coming up with pre-set values that...
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ASP.NET MVC Postbacks and HtmlHelper Controls ignoring Model Changes
Apr 1220So here's a binding behavior in ASP.NET MVC that I didn't really get until today: HtmlHelpers controls (like .TextBoxFor() etc.) don't bind to model values on Postback, but rather get their value directly out of the POST buffer. Effectively it looks like you can't change the display value of a control via model value updates on a Postback operation. To demonstrate here's an example. I have a small section in a document where I display an editable email address: This is what the form displa...
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Wishful Thinking: Why can't HTML fix Script Attacks at the Source?
Apr 1215The Web can be an evil place, especially if you're a Web Developer blissfully unaware of Cross Site Script Attacks (XSS). Even if you are aware of XSS in all of its insidious forms, it's extremely complex to deal with all the issues if you're taking user input and you're actually allowing users to post raw HTML into an application. I'm dealing with this again today in a Web application where legacy data contains raw HTML that has to be displayed and users ask for the ability to use raw HTML as...
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Physical Directories vs. MVC View Paths
Apr 1205This post falls into the bucket of operator error on my part, but I want to share this anyway because it describes an issue that has bitten me a few times now and writing it down might keep it a little stronger in my mind. I've been working on an MVC project the last few days, and at the end of a long day I accidentally moved one of my View folders from the MVC Root Folder to the project root. It must have been at the very end of the day before shutting down because tests and manual site nav...
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Rebuilding CoasterBuzz, Part III: The architecture using the "Web stack of love"
Apr 1203This is the third post in a series about rebuilding one of my Web sites, which has been around for 12 years. I hope to relaunch in the next month or two. More: Part I: Evolution, and death to WCF Part II: Hot data objects I finally hit a point in the re-do of CoasterBuzz where I feel like the major pieces are in place... rewritten, ported and what not, so that I can focus now on front-end design and more interesting creative problems. I've been asked on more than one occasion (OK, just...
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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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ASP.NET MVC, Web API, Razor and Open Source
Mar 1228Microsoft has made the source code of ASP.NET MVC available under an open source license since the first V1 release. We’ve also integrated a number of great open source technologies into the product, and now ship jQuery, jQuery UI, jQuery Mobile, jQuery Validation, Modernizr.js, NuGet, Knockout.js and JSON.NET as part of it. I’m very excited to announce today that we will also release the source code for ASP.NET Web API and ASP.NET Web Pages (aka Razor) under an open source license (Apache 2...
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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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A Simple 2-Column Layout in Razor
Aug 11222 column layouts are rather popular on the web, and there are 1,001 ways to make them work. The approach you choose really depends on the type of content you have, and how you want images and backgrounds to work. What I'll show is the Razor _Layout and CSS to achieve the following look: The Razor _Layout file can rely on partial views to handle each of the primary sections: top, navigation, sidebar, and footer. RenderBody will produce the primary content area. <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <hea...
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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 ...
