Dynamic is magic : A solution to use the ASP.NET profile in web applications.

Posted January 31st, 2012 in ASP.NET, HowTo, Tips and Tricks, Web development by admin

Profiles are not auto generated with Web Applications, so you can’t just add them in the web.config and use them directly. (unless …)

The WebSite project do a magic thing : when you add properties to the profile in the web.config file, a class is autogenerated and allow the developer to access these properties. The web application project don’t do that.

You can find some workarounds over the web, here is some

The “dynamic” keyword help us here.

So, no more chit chat, here is the code snippets for a profile with 3 parameters : LastName, FirstName and GSM

web.config:


<profile enabled="true">
 <providers>
 <clear/>
 <add name="AspNetSqlProfileProvider" type="System.Web.Profile.SqlProfileProvider" connectionStringName="ApplicationServices" applicationName="MyApp"/>
 </providers>
 <properties>
 <add name="FirstName" type="string"/>
 <add name="LastName" type="string"/>
 <add name="GSM" type="string"/>
 </properties>
 </profile>

A “business” class, I called it “ProfilePresenter”, it returns the profile of the logged user and allow modifications:


public class ProfilePresenter
{
 public dynamic GetProfile()
 {
 return HttpContext.Current.Profile;
 }
 public dynamic UpdateProfile(string FirstName, string LastName, string GSM)
 {
 HttpContext.Current.Profile.SetPropertyValue("FirstName", FirstName);
 HttpContext.Current.Profile.SetPropertyValue("LastName", LastName);
 HttpContext.Current.Profile.SetPropertyValue("GSM", GSM);
 HttpContext.Current.Profile.Save();
 return HttpContext.Current.Profile;
 }
}

A page that uses the ProfilePresenter class : displaying the profile properties, and edit them

ObjectDataSource:


<asp:ObjectDataSource runat="server" ID="ProfileODS" TypeName="Board.Presenters.ProfilePresenter"
 SelectMethod="GetProfile" UpdateMethod="UpdateProfile"/>
<pre>

FormView: Display part

 <asp:FormView runat="server" ID="ProfileFV" DataSourceID="ProfileODS" RenderOuterTable="false">
 <EmptyDataTemplate>
 <p>
 No profil datas
 </p>
 </EmptyDataTemplate>
 <ItemTemplate>
 <h2>
 Profil informations</h2>
 <div>
 <asp:Button runat="server" ID="Edit" CommandName="Edit" Text="Edit" /></div>
 <table>
 <thead>
 <tr>
 <th colspan="2">
 Infos
 </th>
 </tr>
 </thead>
 <tbody>
 <tr>
 <th>
 LastName
 </th>
 <td>
 <%# Eval("LastName")%>
 </td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
 <th>
 FirstName
 </th>
 <td>
 <%# Eval("FirstName")%>
 </td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
 <th>
 GSM
 </th>
 <td>
 <%# Eval("GSM")%>
 </td>
 </tr>
 </tbody>
 </table>
 </ItemTemplate>

FormView : the Edit part

 <EditItemTemplate>
 <h2>
 Profil Update</h2>
 <div>
 <asp:Button runat="server" ID="Edit" CommandName="Cancel" Text="Annuler" />
 <asp:Button runat="server" ID="Button1" CommandName="Update" Text="Sauver" /></div>
 <table>
 <thead>
 <tr>
 <th colspan="2">
Infos
 </th>
 </tr>
 </thead>
 <tbody>
 <tr>
 <th>
 LastName
 </th>
 <td>
 <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="LastName" Text='<%# Bind("LastName")%>' />
 </td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
 <th>
 FirstName
 </th>
 <td>
 <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="FirstName" Text='<%# Bind("FirstName")%>' />
 </td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
 <th>
 GSM
 </th>
 <td>
 <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="GSM" Text='<%# Bind("GSM")%>' />
 </td>
 </tr>
 </tbody>
 </table>
 </EditItemTemplate>
 </asp:FormView>

A simple use :


dynamic profil = HttpContext.Current.Profile;
if (profil != null)
{
 Console.Writeline(profil.GSM);
}

Another example : retrieve the gsm numbers from  members of a security role. It shows how to retrieve the profile of an other user


string[] users = Roles.GetUsersInRole(role);

List<string> gsm = new List<string>();
foreach (string user in users)
{
 dynamic profil = HttpContext.Current.Profile;
 dynamic profi = profil.GetProfile(user);
 if (profi != null)
 {
 if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(profi.GSM))
 {
 gsm.Add(profi.GSM);
 }
 }
}

Let me know what you think !

JS Mixer is released

Posted February 6th, 2011 in MyProjects, Personal, Tools, Web development by Sam Beauvois

CSS mixer is really cool.  Good job.  Is there a JavaScript mixer?

It’s the main content of a mail I received last week.

It decided me to write a JS Mixer application, based on CSS Mixer.
The big part of the work was already done, I just needed to adapt my code.

Just like CSS Mixer, you can download it from codeplex : http://jsmixer.codeplex.com/

You can also download it from some software websites.

JSMixer antivirus scan report at softoxi.com

Remark :

With ASP.NET WebForms, you can achieve the same result by setting a few propertie to the ScriptManager control.

But the advantage to use a tool like JSMixer, is that your server doesn’t have to do the work : it’s already done !

And when you spare some work to your server, your server is happy !

10+ links for Html5

Posted January 18th, 2011 in Web development by Sam Beauvois

If you  are interested in HTML5: here is a few links to visit :

And here is a presentation of HTML5 made in 2009 by Brad Neuberg (Google) :

Introduction to HTML 5 from Brad Neuberg on Vimeo.

A bunch of new releases at Microsoft

Posted January 14th, 2011 in Tools, Web development by Sam Beauvois

Yesterday was a web tool’s day : Microsoft released 7 free products for the web developpers.

Here is the Scott Guthrie’s post about it : http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2011/01/13/announcing-release-of-asp-net-mvc-3-iis-express-sql-ce-4-web-farm-framework-orchard-webmatrix.aspx

You can install most of these products from the Microsoft Web Platform Installer


I already installed webmatrix :