Articles : Page 1 of 5
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Dynamic JSON Parsing in .NET with JsonValue
Mar 1219So System.Json has been around for a while in Silverlight, but it's relatively new for the desktop .NET framework and now moving into the lime-light with the pending release of ASP.NET Web API which is bringing a ton of attention to server side JSON usage. The JsonValue, JsonObject and JsonArray objects are going to be pretty useful for Web API applications as they allow you dynamically create and parse JSON values without explicit .NET types to serialize from or into. But even more so I think...
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It’s The Little Things about ASP.NET MVC 4
Mar 1211Conway’s Law states, ...organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations. Up until recently, there was probably no better demonstration of this law than the fact that Microsoft had two ways of shipping angle brackets (and curly braces for that matter) over HTTP – ASP.NET MVC and WCF Web API. The reorganization of these two teams under Scott Guthrie (aka “The GU” which I’m contractually boun...
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ASP.NET MVC + Selenium + IISExpress
Dec 1122The goal of this blog entry is to explain how you can create integration tests for ASP.NET MVC applications by using a combination of Selenium WebDriver and IISExpress. Integration tests are useful when you want to test an entire user story. For example, you might want to test whether a user can successfully add an item to a shopping cart. Adding an item to a shopping cart might require the execution of C# code, database code, and JavaScript code. Using an integration test, you can verify t...
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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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New NuGet.org Deployed!
Dec 1106So my last day at Microsoft ended up being a very long one as the NuGet team worked late into the evening to deployan updated version of NuGet.org. I’m very happy to be a part of this as my last act as a Microsoft employee. This is complete re-write of the gallery. Why a rewrite? We’ve learned a lot since we first launched, and our needs have evolved to the point where a rewrite made sense. The new implementation is a vanilla ASP.NET MVC 3 application and highly optimized to be a gallery wit...
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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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Repaving your PC: the easier way
Nov 1128It"s been a while since I had to repave my laptop. I have a Windows Home Server (WHS) at home which images my PC almost daily and allows restoring it to a given point in time in less than 30 minutes. Which is awesome! And which is how I usually restore my PC into a stable state. Over the past year some hardware changes have been made of which the most noteworthy is the replacement of the existing hard drive with an SSD. A great addition, and it was easy to restore as well: swap the disks and r...
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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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NuGet Package of Week #11 - ImageResizer enables clean, clear image resizing in ASP.NET
Oct 1131The Backstory: I was thinking since the NuGet .NET package management site is starting to fill up that I should start looking for gems (no pun intended) in there. You know, really useful stuff that folks might otherwise not find. I'll look for mostly open source projects, ones I think are really useful. I'll look at how they built their NuGet packages, if there's anything interesting about the way the designed the out of the box experience (and anything they could do to make it better) as wel...
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Preventing CSRF With Ajax
Oct 1111A long while ago I wrote about the potential dangers of Cross-site Request Forgery attacks, also known as CSRF or XSRF. These exploits are a form of confused deputy attack. Screen grab from The Police Academy movie.In that post, I covered how ASP.NET MVC includes a set of anti-forgery helpers to help mitigate such exploits. The helpers include an HTML helper meant to be called in the form that renders a hidden input, and an attribute applied to the controller action to protect. These helpers...
