ASP.NET 3.5 ASP.NET 3.5. in C# Beginning. From Novice to Professional. Updatesofts.com. Matthew MacDonald

Transcription

1 cyan MaGenTa yellow Black pantone 123 c Books for professionals By professionals The expert s Voice in.net Companion ebook Available Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008: Dear Reader, Author of Pro ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008 (Apress) Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in VB 2008 (Apress) Pro WPF: Windows Presentation Foundation in.net 3.0 (Apress) Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 in C# 2005 (Apress) ASP.NET: The Complete Reference Welcome to the most up to date and comprehensive beginning ASP.NET book you ll find on any shelf. As you probably already know, ASP.NET is a framework for developing modern web applications. In the right hands, ASP.NET produces web applications that are secure, blisteringly fast, and highly scalable. Best of all, ASP.NET includes a huge set of ready-to-use features like website navigation, data binding, themes, and user management. ASP.NET allows you to create anything from a dynamic personal website to a full-scale e-commerce storefront. In this book, I assume that you have only basic knowledge of C#, although those coming from a more experienced background will find that the basics are reviewed quickly and efficiently. As you explore ASP.NET, you ll learn the key database, security, and performance principles you need to know in order to design a solid web application. My book will also teach you to use techniques such as object-oriented programming and code-behind development from the beginning, rather than fake it with simplified techniques that won t work well in real life. Once you ve reached the end of the book, you ll have mastered the core techniques of website programming, and you ll have the knowledge necessary to begin work as a professional ASP.NET developer. Welcome aboard! Matthew MacDonald (Microsoft MVP, MCSD) THE APRESS ROADMAP Companion ebook See last page for details on $10 ebook version SOURCE CODE ONLINE Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008 Pro ASP.NET 3.5 Server Controls with AJAX Components Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 Data Access with LINQ, C# 2008, and ADO.NET Pro C# 2008 and the.net 3.5 Platform Beginning Silverlight 1.1 Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008 Pro WPF: Windows Presentation Foundation in.net 3.0 Pro Silverlight 1.1 ISBN-13: ISBN-10: US $49.99 Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 From Novice to Professional, SECoNd EdiTioN in C# 2008 SECoNd EdiTioN Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008 From Novice to Professional netbooks.wordpress.com Start your journey into ASP.NET with a renowned author Updatesofts.com SECoND EDiTioN Matthew MacDonald MacDonald Shelve in.net User level: Beginner Intermediate this print for content only size & color not accurate spine = 1.857" 992 page count

2

3 Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008 From Novice to Professional, Second Edition Matthew MacDonald

4 Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition Copyright 2007 by Matthew MacDonald All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher. ISBN-13 (pbk): ISBN-10 (pbk): Printed and bound in the United States of America Trademarked names may appear in this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use the names only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. Lead Editor: Jonathan Hassell Technical Reviewer: Andy Olsen Editorial Board: Steve Anglin, Ewan Buckingham, Tony Campbell, Gary Cornell, Jonathan Gennick, Jason Gilmore, Kevin Goff, Jonathan Hassell, Matthew Moodie, Joseph Ottinger, Jeffrey Pepper, Ben Renow-Clarke, Dominic Shakeshaft, Matt Wade, Tom Welsh Project Manager Production Editor: Laura Esterman Copy Editor: Liz Welch Associate Production Director: Kari Brooks-Copony Compositor: Dina Quan Proofreaders: April Eddy, Nancy Sixsmith Indexer: John Collin Artist: April Milne Cover Designer: Kurt Krames Manufacturing Director: Tom Debolski Distributed to the book trade worldwide by Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 233 Spring Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY Phone SPRINGER, fax , orders-ny@springer-sbm.com, or visit For information on translations, please contact Apress directly at 2855 Telegraph Avenue, Suite 600, Berkeley, CA Phone , fax , info@apress.com, or visit The information in this book is distributed on an as is basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author(s) nor Apress shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this work. The source code for this book is available to readers at

5 For my wonderful family, Faria and Maya

6 Contents at a Glance About the Author xxv About the Technical Reviewer xxvii Acknowledgments xxix Introduction xxxi PART 1 Introducing.NET CHAPTER 1 The.NET Framework CHAPTER 2 The C# Language CHAPTER 3 Types, Objects, and Namespaces PART 2 Developing ASP.NET Applications CHAPTER 4 Visual Studio CHAPTER 5 Web Form Fundamentals CHAPTER 6 Web Controls CHAPTER 7 State Management CHAPTER 8 Error Handling, Logging, and Tracing CHAPTER 9 Deploying ASP.NET Applications PART 3 Building Better Web Forms CHAPTER 10 Validation CHAPTER 11 Rich Controls CHAPTER 12 User Controls and Graphics CHAPTER 13 Styles, Themes, and Master Pages CHAPTER 14 Website Navigation iv

7 PART 4 Working with Data CHAPTER 15 ADO.NET Fundamentals CHAPTER 16 Data Binding CHAPTER 17 The Data Controls CHAPTER 18 Files and Streams CHAPTER 19 XML PART 5 Website Security CHAPTER 20 Security Fundamentals CHAPTER 21 Membership CHAPTER 22 Profiles PART 6 Advanced ASP.NET CHAPTER 23 Component-Based Programming CHAPTER 24 Caching CHAPTER 25 ASP.NET AJAX INDEX v

8

9 Contents About the Author xxv About the Technical Reviewer xxvii Acknowledgments xxix Introduction xxxi PART 1 Introducing.NET CHAPTER 1 The.NET Framework The Evolution of Web Development HTML and HTML Forms Server-Side Programming Client-Side Programming The.NET Framework C#, VB, and the.net Languages The Common Language Runtime The.NET Class Library Visual Studio The Last Word CHAPTER 2 The C# Language The.NET Languages C# Language Basics Case Sensitivity Commenting Statement Termination Blocks Variables and Data Types Assignment and Initializers Strings and Escaped Characters Arrays Enumerations vii

10 viii CONTENTS Variable Operations Advanced Math Type Conversions Object-Based Manipulation The String Type The DateTime and TimeSpan Types The Array Type Conditional Logic The if Statement The switch Statement Loops The for Loop The foreach Loop The while loop Methods Parameters Method Overloading Delegates The Last Word CHAPTER 3 Types, Objects, and Namespaces The Basics About Classes Static Members A Simple Class Building a Basic Class Creating an Object Adding Properties Adding a Method Adding a Constructor Adding an Event Testing the Product Class Value Types and Reference Types Assignment Operations Equality Testing Passing Parameters by Reference and by Value Reviewing.NET Types Understanding Namespaces and Assemblies Using Namespaces Importing Namespaces Assemblies

11 CONTENTS ix Advanced Class Programming Inheritance Static Members Casting Objects Partial Classes Generics The Last Word PART 2 Developing ASP.NET Applications CHAPTER 4 Visual Studio The Promise of Visual Studio Creating Websites Creating a New Web Application Websites and Web Projects The Hidden Solution Files The Solution Explorer Adding Web Forms Migrating a Website from a Previous Version of Visual Studio Designing a Web Page Adding Web Controls The Properties Window The Anatomy of a Web Form The Web Form Markup The Page Directive The Doctype The Essentials of XHTML Writing Code The Code-Behind Class Adding Event Handlers IntelliSense and Outlining Visual Studio Debugging The Visual Studio Web Server Single-Step Debugging Variable Watches The Last Word

12 x CONTENTS CHAPTER 5 Web Form Fundamentals The Anatomy of an ASP.NET Application ASP.NET File Types ASP.NET Application Directories Introducing Server Controls HTML Server Controls Converting an HTML Page to an ASP.NET Page View State The HTML Control Classes Adding the Currency Converter Code Event Handling Behind the Scenes with the Currency Converter Error Handling Improving the Currency Converter Adding Multiple Currencies Storing Information in the List Adding Linked Images Setting Styles A Deeper Look at HTML Control Classes HTML Control Events Advanced Events with the HtmlInputImage Control The HtmlControl Base Class The HtmlContainerControl Class The HtmlInputControl Class The Page Class Sending the User to a New Page HTML Encoding Application Events The Global.asax File Additional Application Events ASP.NET Configuration The web.config File Nested Configuration Storing Custom Settings in the web.config File The Website Administration Tool (WAT) The Last Word

13 CONTENTS xi CHAPTER 6 Web Controls Stepping Up to Web Controls Basic Web Control Classes The Web Control Tags Web Control Classes The WebControl Base Class Units Enumerations Colors Fonts Focus The Default Button List Controls Multiple-Select List Controls The BulletedList Control Table Controls Web Control Events and AutoPostBack How Postback Events Work The Page Life Cycle A Simple Web Page Improving the Greeting Card Generator Generating the Cards Automatically The Last Word CHAPTER 7 State Management The Problem of State View State The ViewState Collection A View State Example Making View State Secure Retaining Member Variables Storing Custom Objects Transferring Information Between Pages Cross-Page Posting The Query String Cookies A Cookie Example

14 xii CONTENTS Session State Session Tracking Using Session State A Session State Example Session State Configuration Cookieless Timeout Mode Application State An Overview of State Management Choices The Last Word CHAPTER 8 Error Handling, Logging, and Tracing Common Errors Exception Handling The Exception Class The Exception Chain Handling Exceptions Catching Specific Exceptions Nested Exception Handlers Exception Handling in Action Mastering Exceptions Throwing Your Own Exceptions Logging Exceptions Viewing the Windows Event Logs Writing to the Event Log Custom Logs A Custom Logging Class Retrieving Log Information Error Pages Error Modes Custom Error Pages Page Tracing Enabling Tracing Tracing Information Writing Trace Information Application-Level Tracing The Last Word

15 CONTENTS xiii CHAPTER 9 Deploying ASP.NET Applications ASP.NET Applications and the Web Server How Web Servers Work The Virtual Directory Web Application URLs Web Farms Internet Information Services (IIS) The Many Faces of IIS Installing IIS 5 (in Windows XP) Installing IIS 6 (in Windows Server 2003) Installing IIS 7 (in Windows Vista) Installing IIS 7 (in Windows Server 2008) Registering the ASP.NET File Mappings Verifying That ASP.NET Is Correctly Installed Managing Websites with IIS Manager Creating a Virtual Directory Configuring a Virtual Directory Deploying a Simple Site Web Applications and Components Other Configuration Steps Code Compilation The ASP.NET Account Deploying with Visual Studio Creating a Virtual Directory for a New Project Copying a Website Publishing a Website The Last Word PART 3 Building Better Web Forms CHAPTER 10 Validation Understanding Validation The Validator Controls Server-Side Validation Client-Side Validation

16 xiv CONTENTS The Validation Controls A Simple Validation Example Other Display Options Manual Validation Validating with Regular Expressions A Validated Customer Form Validation Groups The Last Word CHAPTER 11 Rich Controls The Calendar Formatting the Calendar Restricting Dates The AdRotator The Advertisement File The AdRotator Class Pages with Multiple Views The MultiView Control The Wizard Control The Last Word CHAPTER 12 User Controls and Graphics User Controls Creating a Simple User Control Independent User Controls Integrated User Controls User Control Events Passing Information with Events Dynamic Graphics Basic Drawing Drawing a Custom Image Placing Custom Images Inside Web Pages Image Format and Quality The Last Word c1f7fa939e14ed6480dade2089a967cf

17 CONTENTS xv CHAPTER 13 Styles, Themes, and Master Pages Styles Style Types Creating a Basic Inline Style Creating a Style Sheet Applying Style Sheet Rules Themes How Themes Work Applying a Simple Theme Handling Theme Conflicts Creating Multiple Skins for the Same Control More Advanced Skins Master Page Basics A Simple Master Page and Content Page How Master Pages and Content Pages Are Connected A Master Page with Multiple Content Regions Default Content Master Pages and Relative Paths Advanced Master Pages Table-Based Layouts Code in a Master Page Interacting with a Master Page Programmatically The Last Word CHAPTER 14 Website Navigation Site Maps Defining a Site Map Seeing a Simple Site Map in Action Binding an Ordinary Page to a Site Map Binding a Master Page to a Site Map Binding Portions of a Site Map The SiteMap Class Mapping URLs The SiteMapPath Control Customizing the SiteMapPath Using SiteMapPath Styles and Templates Adding Custom Site Map Information

18 xvi CONTENTS The TreeView Control TreeView Properties TreeView Styles The Menu Control Menu Styles Menu Templates The Last Word PART 4 Working with Data CHAPTER 15 ADO.NET Fundamentals Understanding Data Management The Role of the Database Database Access in the Web World Configuring Your Database SQL Server Express Browsing and Modifying Databases in Visual Studio The sqlcmd Command-Line Tool SQL Basics Running Queries in Visual Studio The Select Statement The SQL Update Statement The SQL Insert Statement The SQL Delete Statement ADO.NET Basics Data Namespaces The Data Provider Classes Direct Data Access Creating a Connection The Select Command The DataReader Putting It All Together Updating Data Disconnected Data Access Selecting Disconnected Data Selecting Multiple Tables Defining Relationships The Last Word

19 CONTENTS xvii CHAPTER 16 Data Binding Introducing Data Binding Types of ASP.NET Data Binding How Data Binding Works Single-Value Data Binding A Simple Data Binding Example Simple Data Binding with Properties Problems with Single-Value Data Binding Using Code Instead of Simple Data Binding Repeated-Value Data Binding Data Binding with Simple List Controls A Simple List Binding Example Strongly Typed Collections Multiple Binding Data Binding with a Dictionary Collection Using the DataValueField Property Data Binding with ADO.NET Creating a Record Editor Data Source Controls The Page Life Cycle with Data Binding The SqlDataSource Selecting Records Parameterized Commands Handling Errors Updating Records The Last Word CHAPTER 17 The Data Controls The GridView Automatically Generating Columns Defining Columns Formatting the GridView Formatting Fields Using Styles Formatting-Specific Values Selecting a GridView Row Adding a Select Button Using Selection to Create Master-Details Pages

20 xviii CONTENTS Editing with the GridView Sorting and Paging the GridView Sorting Paging Using GridView Templates Using Multiple Templates Editing Templates in Visual Studio Handling Events in a Template Editing with a Template The DetailsView and FormView The DetailsView The FormView The Last Word CHAPTER 18 Files and Streams Files and Web Applications File System Information The Path Class The Directory and File Classes The DirectoryInfo and FileInfo Classes The DriveInfo Class A Sample File Browser Reading and Writing with Streams Text Files Binary Files Shortcuts for Reading and Writing Files A Simple Guest Book Allowing File Uploads The FileUpload Control The Last Word CHAPTER 19 XML XML s Hidden Role in.net Configuration Files XHTML ADO.NET Data Access Anywhere Miscellaneous Data Is Stored

21 CONTENTS xix XML Explained Improving the List with XML XML Basics Attributes Comments The XML Classes The XML TextWriter The XML Text Reader Working with XML Documents in Memory Reading an XML Document Searching an XML Document XML Validation XML Namespaces XML Schema Definition Validating an XML Document XML Display and Transforms The Xml Web Control XML Data Binding Nonhierarchical Binding Hierarchical Binding with the TreeView Binding to XML Content from Other Sources The Last Word PART 5 Website Security CHAPTER 20 Security Fundamentals Determining Security Requirements The ASP.NET Security Model The Visual Studio Web Server Authentication and Authorization Forms Authentication Web.config Settings Authorization Rules The WAT The Login Page Windows Authentication Web.config Settings IIS Settings A Windows Authentication Test

22 xx CONTENTS Impersonation Understanding Impersonation Programmatic Impersonation Confidentiality with SSL Creating a Certificate Request Secure Sockets Layer The Last Word CHAPTER 21 Membership The Membership Data Store Membership with SQL Server 2005 Express Using the Full Version of SQL Server Configuring the Membership Provider Creating Users with the WAT The Membership and MembershipUser Classes Authentication with Membership Disabled Accounts The Security Controls The Login Control The CreateUserWizard Control The PasswordRecovery Control Role-Based Security Creating and Assigning Roles Restricting Access Based on Roles The LoginView Control The Last Word CHAPTER 22 Profiles Understanding Profiles Profile Performance How Profiles Store Data Using the SqlProfileProvider Enabling Authentication Using the Full Version of SQL Server The Profile Databases Defining Profile Properties Using Profile Properties

23 CONTENTS xxi Profile Serialization Profile Groups Profiles and Custom Data Types The Profile API Anonymous Profiles The Last Word PART 6 Advanced ASP.NET CHAPTER 23 Component-Based Programming Why Use Components? Component Jargon Three-Tier Design Encapsulation Business Objects Data Objects Components and Classes Creating a Component Classes and Namespaces Class Members Adding a Reference to the Component Using the Component Properties and State A Stateful Account Class A Stateless AccountUtility Class Data-Access Components A Simple Data-Access Component Using the Data-Access Component Enhancing the Component with Error Handling Enhancing the Component with Aggregate Information The ObjectDataSource Making Classes the ObjectDataSource Can Understand Selecting Records Using Method Parameters Updating Records The Last Word

24 xxii CONTENTS CHAPTER 24 Caching Understanding Caching When to Use Caching Caching in ASP.NET Output Caching Caching on the Client Side Caching and the Query String Caching with Specific Query String Parameters A Multiple Caching Example Custom Caching Control Fragment Caching Cache Profiles Data Caching Adding Items to the Cache A Simple Cache Test Caching to Provide Multiple Views Caching with the Data Source Controls Caching with Dependencies File Dependencies Cache Item Dependencies SQL Server 2000 Cache Dependencies SQL Server 2005 and 2008 Cache Dependencies The Last Word CHAPTER 25 ASP.NET AJAX Understanding Ajax Ajax: The Good Ajax: The Bad The ASP.NET AJAX Toolkit The ScriptManager Partial Refreshes A Simple UpdatePanel Test Handling Errors Conditional Updates Triggers Progress Notification Showing a Simulated Progress Bar Cancellation

25 CONTENTS xxiii Timed Refreshes The ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit Installing the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit The Accordion The AutoCompleteExtender Getting More Controls The Last Word INDEX

26

27 About the Author MATTHEW MACDONALD is an author, educator, and Microsoft MVP. He s a regular contributor to programming journals and the author of more than a dozen books about.net programming, including Pro ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008 (Apress, 2007), Pro WPF: Windows Presentation Foundation in.net 3.0 (Apress, 2007), and Pro.NET 2.0 Windows Forms and Custom Controls in C# (Apress, 2006). He lives in Toronto with his wife and daughter. xxv

28

29 About the Technical Reviewer ANDY OLSEN is a freelance developer and consultant based in the UK. Andy has been working with.net since Beta 1 days and has coauthored and reviewed several books for Apress, covering C#, Visual Basic, ASP.NET, and other topics. Andy is a keen football and rugby fan and enjoys running and skiing (badly). Andy lives by the seaside in Swansea with his wife Jayne and children Emily and Thomas, who have just discovered the thrills of surfing and look much cooler than he ever will! xxvii

30

31 Acknowledgments No author could complete a book without a small army of helpful individuals. I m deeply indebted to the whole Apress team, including Laura Esterman, who helped everything move swiftly and smoothly; Liz Welch, who performed the copy edit; Andy Olsen, who performed a thorough technical review; and many other individuals who worked behind the scenes indexing pages, drawing figures, and proofreading the final copy. I also owe a special thanks to Gary Cornell, who always offers invaluable advice about projects and the publishing world. I d also like to thank those who were involved with previous editions of this book. This includes Emma Acker and Jane Brownlow at Osborne McGraw-Hill and previous tech reviewers Ronald Landers, Gavin Smyth, Tim Verycruysse, and Julian Skinner. I also owe a hearty thanks to all the readers who caught errors and took the time to report problems and ask good questions, including Rick Falck, who submitted detailed comments for virtually every chapter. Keep sending in the feedback it helps make better books! Finally, I d never write any book without the support of my wife and these special individuals: Nora, Razia, Paul, and Hamid. Thanks, everyone! xxix

32

33 Introduction ASP.NET is Microsoft s platform for developing web applications. Using ASP.NET, you can create e-commerce shops, data-driven portal sites, and just about anything else you can find on the Internet. Best of all, you don t need to paste together a jumble of HTML and script code in order to program the Web. Instead, you can create full-scale web applications using nothing but code and a design tool such as Visual Studio The cost of all this innovation is the learning curve. To master ASP.NET, you need to learn how to use an advanced design tool (Visual Studio), a toolkit of objects (the.net Framework), and an object-oriented programming language (such as C# 2008). Taken together, these topics provide more than enough to overwhelm any first-time web developer. Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008 assumes you want to master ASP.NET, starting from the basics. Using this book, you ll build your knowledge until you understand the concepts, techniques, and best practices for writing sophisticated web applications. The journey is long, but it s also satisfying. At the end of the day, you ll find that ASP.NET allows you to tackle challenges that are simply out of reach on many other platforms. About This Book This book explores ASP.NET, which is a core part of Microsoft s.net Framework. The.NET Framework is not a single application it s actually a collection of technologies bundled into one marketing term. The.NET Framework includes languages such as C# 2008 and VB 2008, an engine for hosting programmable web pages and web services (ASP.NET), a model for interacting with databases (ADO.NET), and a class library stocked with tools for everything from reading files to validating a password. To master ASP.NET, you need to learn about each of these ingredients. This book covers all these topics from the ground up. As a result, you ll find yourself learning many techniques that will interest any.net developer, even those who create Windows applications. For example, you ll learn about component-based programming, you ll discover structured error handling, and you ll see how to access files, XML, and relational databases. You ll also learn the key topics you need for web programming, such as state management, web controls, and caching. By the end of this book, you ll be ready to create your own rich web applications and make them available over the Internet. xxxi

34 xxxii INTRODUCTION Note This book has a single goal: to be as relentlessly practical as possible. I take special care not to leave you hanging in the places where other ASP.NET books abandon their readers. For example, when encountering a new technology, you ll learn not only how it works but also why (and when) you should use it. I also highlight common questions and best practices with tip boxes and sidebars at every step of the way. Finally, if a topic is covered in this book, it s covered right. This means you won t learn how to perform a task without learning about potential drawbacks and the problems you might run into and how you can safeguard yourself with real-world code. Who Should Read This Book This book is aimed at anyone who wants to create dynamic websites with ASP.NET. Ideally, you ll have experience with a previous version of a programming language such as C or Java. If not, you should be familiar with basic programming concepts (loops, conditional structures, arrays, and so on), whether you ve learned them in Visual Basic, Pascal, Turing, or a completely different programming language. This is the only requirement for reading this book. Understanding HTML and XHTML (the markup languages used to write web pages) will help you, but it s not required. ASP.NET works at a higher level, allowing you to deal with fullfeatured web controls instead of raw web page markup. However, you ll get a quick overview of XHTML fundamentals in Chapter 4, and you ll learn about CSS, the Cascading Style Sheet standard, in Chapter 13. This book will also appeal to programmers who have some experience with C# and.net but haven t worked with ASP.NET in the past. However, if you ve used a previous version of ASP.NET, you ll probably be more interested in a faster-paced book such as Pro ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008 (Apress, 2007) instead. Note This book begins with the fundamentals: C# syntax, the basics of object-oriented programming, and the philosophy of the.net Framework. If you haven t worked with C# before, you can spend a little more time with the syntax review in Chapter 2 to pick up everything you need to know. If you aren t familiar with the ideas of object-oriented programming, Chapter 3 fills in the blanks with a quick, but comprehensive, review of the subject. The rest of the book builds on this foundation, from ASP.NET basics to advanced examples that show the techniques you ll use in real-world web applications. What You Need to Use This Book The main prerequisite for this book is a computer with Visual Studio You can use the scaled-down Visual Studio Web Developer 2008 Express Edition (available at microsoft.com/vstudio/express) with a few minor limitations. Most significantly, you can t use Visual Studio Web Developer to create separate components, a technique discussed in Chapter 23. However, you can get around this limitation by using two express editions Visual Studio Web Developer Express Edition to create your websites and Visual C# 2008 Express

35 INTRODUCTION xxxiii Edition to create your components. Even if you don t use this trick, you ll still be able to run all the sample code for this book. To develop ASP.NET web pages, you need Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Server To use an ASP.NET web page (in other words, to surf to it over the Internet), you simply need a web browser. ASP.NET fully supports Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Netscape, and any other browser that respects the HTML standard on virtually any operating system. There are a few features that won t work with extremely old browsers (such as the ASP.NET AJAX techniques you ll learn about in Chapter 25), and you ll consider these limitations when they crop up. You ll also notice that this book features a variety of screen captures some taken in Windows XP and others in Windows Vista. This should make perfect sense. After all, your choice of operating system (and the operating system of the people who are browsing your website) won t change how your web pages work. If you plan to host websites on your computer, you ll also need to use IIS (Internet Information Services), the web hosting software that s part of the Windows operating system. You might also use IIS if you want to test deployment strategies. You ll learn how to use and configure IIS in Chapter 9. Finally, this book includes several examples that use SQL Server. You can use any version of SQL Server to try these examples, including SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, which is included with some versions of Visual Studio (and freely downloadable at microsoft.com/sql/express). If you use other relational database engines, the same concepts will apply; you will just need to modify the example code. Code Samples To master ASP.NET, you need to experiment with it. One of the best ways to learn ASP.NET is to try the code samples for this book, examine them, and dive in with your own modifications. To obtain the sample code, surf to or the publisher s website at You ll also find some links to additional resources and any updates or errata that affect the book. Note Previous editions of this book tackled web services, a feature that allows you to create code routines that can be called by other applications over the Internet. Web services are more interesting when considering rich client development (because they allow you to give web features to ordinary desktop applications), and they re in the process of being replaced by a new technology known as WCF (Windows Communication Foundation). For those reasons, web services aren t covered in this book. However, if you want to branch out and explore the web service world, you can download the web service chapters from the previous edition of this book from the book s download page. The information in these chapters still applies to ASP.NET 3.5, because the web service feature hasn t changed.

36 xxxiv INTRODUCTION Chapter Overview This book is divided into six parts. Unless you ve already had experience with the.net Framework, the most productive way to read this book is in order from start to finish. Chapters later in the book sometimes incorporate features that were introduced earlier in order to create more well-rounded and realistic examples. On the other hand, if you re already familiar with the.net platform, C#, and object-oriented programming, you ll make short work of the first part of this book. Part 1: Introducing.NET You could start coding an ASP.NET application right away by following the examples in the second part of this book. But to really master ASP.NET, you need to understand a few fundamental concepts about the.net Framework. Chapter 1 sorts through the Microsoft jargon and explains what the.net Framework really does and why you need it. Chapter 2 introduces you to C# 2008 with a comprehensive language tour. Finally, Chapter 3 explains the basics of modern object-oriented programming. Part 2: Developing ASP.NET Applications The second part of this book delves into the heart of ASP.NET programming and introduces its new event-based model. In Chapter 4, you ll take a look around the Visual Studio design environment and learn a few fundamentals about web forms, events, and XHTML. In Chapters 5 and 6, you learn how to program a web page s user interface through a layer of objects called server controls. Next, you ll explore a few more essentials of ASP.NET programming. Chapter 7 describes different strategies for state management. Chapter 8 presents different techniques for handling errors. Finally, Chapter 9 walks you through the steps for deploying your application to a web server. Taken together, these chapters contain all the core concepts you need to design web pages and create a basic ASP.NET website. Part 3: Building Better Web Forms The third part of this book explores several topics that can help you transform ordinary web pages into polished web applications. In Chapter 10 you ll learn to use the validation controls to catch invalid data before the user submits it. In Chapter 11 you ll move on to consider some of ASP.NET s more exotic controls, such as the Calendar and Wizard. In Chapter 12, you ll learn how to build your own reusable blocks of web page user interface and draw custom graphics on the fly. Finally, Chapter 13 shows how you can standardize the appearance of an entire website with themes and master pages, and Chapter 14 shows you how to add navigation to a website. Part 4: Working with Data Almost all software needs to work with data, and web applications are no exception. In Chapter 15, you begin exploring the world of data by considering ADO.NET Microsoft s.netpowered technology for interacting with relational databases. Chapters 16 and 17 explain how

37 INTRODUCTION xxxv to use data binding and the advanced ASP.NET data controls to create web pages that integrate attractive, customizable data displays with automatic support for paging, sorting, and editing. Chapter 18 moves out of the database world and considers how to interact with files. Chapter 19 broadens the picture even further and describes how ASP.NET applications can use the XML support that s built into the.net Framework. Part 5: Website Security Every public website needs to deal with security making sure that sensitive data cannot be accessed by the wrong users. In Chapter 20, you ll start out learning how ASP.NET provides different authentication systems for dealing with users. You can write your own custom logic to verify user names and passwords, or you can use existing Windows account information. In Chapter 21, you ll learn about the membership model, which extends the authentication system with prebuilt security controls and handy objects that automate common tasks. If you want, you can even get ASP.NET to create and manage a database with user information automatically. Finally, Chapter 21 deals with another add-on the profiles model that lets you store information for each user automatically, without writing any database code. Part 6: Advanced ASP.NET This part includes the advanced topics you can use to take your web applications that extra step. Chapter 23 covers how you can create reusable components for ASP.NET applications. Chapter 24 demonstrates how careful use of caching can boost the performance of almost any web application. Finally Chapter 25 introduces ASP.NET AJAX, one of the hottest new topics in web development. Using ASP.NET AJAX, you can build web pages that feel more responsive and add rich features that are usually limited to desktop applications, like text autocompletion and drag-and-drop. Feedback This book has the ambitious goal of being the best tutorial and reference for ASP.NET. Toward that end, your comments and suggestions are extremely helpful. You can send complaints, adulation, and everything in between directly to apress@prosetech.com. I can t solve your ASP.NET problems or critique your code, but I do benefit from information about what this book did right and wrong (and what it may have done in an utterly confusing way). You can also send comments about the website support for this book.

38

39 PART 1 Introducing.NET

40

41 CHAPTER 1 The.NET Framework Microsoft has a time-honored reputation for creating innovative technologies and wrapping them in buzzwords that confuse everyone. The.NET Framework is the latest example it s been described as a feeble Java clone, a meaningless marketing term, and an attempt to take over the Internet with proprietary technology. But none of these descriptions is truly accurate..net is actually a cluster of technologies some revolutionary, some not that are designed to help developers build a variety of different types of applications. Developers can use the.net Framework to build rich Windows applications, long-running services, and even command-line tools. Of course, if you re reading this book you re most interested in using.net to craft web applications. You ll use a specific subset of the.net Framework called ASP.NET, and you ll work with one of.net s core languages: C#. In this chapter, you ll examine the technologies that underlie.net. First, you ll take a quick look at the history of web development and learn why the.net Framework was created. Next, you ll get a high-level overview of the different parts of.net and see how ASP.NET 3.5 fits into the picture. The Evolution of Web Development The Internet began in the late 1960s as an experiment. Its goal was to create a truly resilient information network one that could withstand the loss of several computers without preventing the others from communicating. Driven by potential disaster scenarios (such as nuclear attack), the U.S. Department of Defense provided the initial funding. The early Internet was mostly limited to educational institutions and defense contractors. It flourished as a tool for academic collaboration, allowing researchers across the globe to share information. In the early 1990s, modems were created that could work over existing phone lines, and the Internet began to open up to commercial users. In 1993, the first HTML browser was created, and the Internet revolution began. HTML and HTML Forms It would be difficult to describe early websites as web applications. Instead, the first generation of websites often looked more like brochures, consisting mostly of fixed HTML pages that needed to be updated by hand. A basic HTML page is a little like a word-processing document it contains formatted content that can be displayed on your computer, but it doesn t actually do anything. The 3

42 4 CHAPTER 1 THE.NET FRAMEWORK following example shows HTML at its simplest, with a document that contains a heading and single line of text: <html> <head> <title>sample Web Page</title> </head> <body> <h1>sample Web Page Heading</h1> <p>this is a sample web page.</p> </body> </html> An HTML document has two types of content: the text and the elements (or tags) that tell the browser how to format it. The elements are easily recognizable, because they are designated with angled brackets (< >). HTML defines elements for different levels of headings, paragraphs, hyperlinks, italic and bold formatting, horizontal lines, and so on. For example, <h1>some Text</h1> uses the <h1> element. This element tells the browser to display Some Text in the Heading 1 style, which uses a large, bold font. Similarly, <p>this is a sample web page.</p> creates a paragraph with one line of text. The <head> element groups the header information together, including the title that appears in the browser window, while the <body> element groups together the actual document content that s displayed in the browser window. Figure 1-1 shows this simple HTML page in a browser. Right now, this is just a fixed file (named sample_web_page_heading.htm) that contains HTML content. It has no interactivity, doesn t require a web server, and certainly can t be considered a web application. Figure 1-1. Ordinary HTML: the brochure site

43 CHAPTER 1 THE.NET FRAMEWORK 5 Tip You don t need to master HTML to program ASP.NET web pages, although it s often useful. For a quick introduction to HTML, refer to one of the excellent HTML tutorials on the Internet, such as com/html. You ll also get a mini-introduction in Chapter 4. HTML 2.0 introduced the first seed of web programming with a technology called HTML forms. HTML forms expand HTML so that it includes not only formatting tags but also tags for graphical widgets, or controls. These controls include common ingredients such as drop-down lists, text boxes, and buttons. Here s a sample web page created with HTML form controls: <html> <head> <title>sample Web Page</title> </head> <body> <form> <input type="checkbox" /> This is choice #1<br /> <input type="checkbox" /> This is choice #2<br /><br /> <input type="submit" value="submit" /> </form> </body> </html> In an HTML form, all controls are placed between the <form> and </form> tags. The preceding example includes two check boxes (represented by the <input type="checkbox" /> element) and a button (represented by the <input type="submit" /> element). The <br /> element adds a line break in between lines. In a browser, this page looks like Figure 1-2. Figure 1-2. An HTML form