ASP.NET Debugging : Silverlight

WCF, Silverlight, and SharePoint… Oh my!

Tom — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:33:42 GMT

I was recently working on a project and needed to have Silverlight make a WCF call. That is pretty straight forward until you place the Silverlight code inside SharePoint and want it to call a WCF that is also inside SharePoint.

The first problem that I had to solve was getting Silverlight to be able to call the WCF correctly. Since in Visual Studio when you make the connection, it will have the local server for the path. Like http://localhost:95559/MyService.svc and for SharePoint I wanted it to point to the local server’s name and in the _layouts directory. Luckily I came across the following blog that helped with getting that to work: Silverlight ServiceReferences.ClientConfig Alternatives

The only change I had to make was to the BasicHttpBinding:

        1: BasicHttpBinding binding = new BasicHttpBinding(

       2:             Application.Current.Host.Source.Scheme.Equals("https", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase) 

       3:             ? BasicHttpSecurityMode.Transport : BasicHttpSecurityMode.TransportCredentialOnly);

Then I had to figure out how to get WCF hosted in SharePoint correctly. For that, I turned to this post: Hosting a WCF service in Windows Sharepoint Services v3.0

So I now had a httpModule that would handle the *.svc requests that start with a ~. That is important to make sure because you will get called again without the ~ so make sure you check for that before removing the first character. I also had Silverlight setup where it could call the SharePoint machine regardless of what Visual Studio wanted to do. I followed the “Dynamic Configuration” setup.

When I had this setup, I then got problems still. The only way I could see the problem was running something like Network Monitor or Web Development Helper. In there I saw a 500 error being returned from the server. I attached a debugger and saw that it was giving me this message:

Security settings for this service require ‘Anonymous’ Authentication but it is not enabled for the IIS application that hosts this service.

From this error, I realized that WCF uses anonymous by default. So I went into my web.config file and changed the binding to support Windows:

       1: <bindings>

       2:     <basicHttpBinding>

       3:         <binding name="MyBinding">

       4:             <security mode="TransportCredentialOnly">

       5:                 <transport clientCredentialType="Windows"/>

       6:             </security>

       7:         </binding>

       8:     </basicHttpBinding>

       9: </bindings>

Then you just add a bindingConfiguration=”MyBinding” on your service endpoint.

After I made that change, I ran it again and this time I got the following error:

Security settings for this service require Windows Authentication but it is not enabled for the IIS application that hosts this service.

So I changed my binding to:

       1: <bindings>

       2:     <basicHttpBinding>

       3:         <binding name="basicHttpBinding">

       4:             <security mode="TransportCredentialOnly">

       5:                 <transport clientCredentialType="Ntlm"/>

       6:             </security>

       7:         </binding>

       8:     </basicHttpBinding>

       9: </bindings>

Note: If you have a ”mex” endpoint you may get another error about ‘anonymous’ because that uses anonymous by default. If you do, you can delete the mex endpoint unless you need discoverability. Then you will need to remove anonymous from that as well.

After making these changes, Silverlight was able to call back into the ASP.NET project that it was loaded from and call a WCF service that was running inside SharePoint.

Adventures with Silverlight 3.0 and SharePoint – Part 2

Tom — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:02:14 GMT

Just a quick update on this. I had to make a few changes to my site and I now have it working!

To fix the master page problem, I needed to load it from code behind. Once I did that, I was able to have that show up. But then I had a problem of the Silverlight application didn’t show up at all.

To get around that I needed to get rid of the width and height settings from the Silverlight object. So I needed to change from using width=100% height=100% to style=”width: 700px; height: 700px”

After making that change, the only thing left was to move my connection string settings into the web.config file for SharePoint. After that was done, my Silverlight Navigation project loaded just fine in SharePoint and was able to use RIA Data Services.

I hope these two posts help anyone else looking to do this. Let me know if you run into any other problems or have any suggestions.

Adventures with Silverlight 3.0 and SharePoint – Part 1

Tom — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:33:41 GMT

I have been working on getting Silverlight 3.0 to work with SharePoint 2007 and I wanted to share with you the progress I have made and some of the challenges I have remaining.

Project

This project uses Silverlight 3.0, the Silverlight Toolkit for 3.0, and RIA Data Services. So it is basically using as much as it can that is new. This means we have a Entity Model and a ASP.NET web application that the Silverlight application will use. It also uses authentication using the new Domain Service for authentication.

What I did

So the first thing I did was to follow the steps in this blog post about Silverlight 2. I just changed it to be the System.Web.Silverlight from 3.0. The suggestion for upgrading the web.config for Silverlight worked great for bringing most of the stuff I needed.

I then did the following steps:

Copied my project under the _layouts folder
Copied the bin folder for my project to the VirtualDirectories\80\bin folder of SharePoint
Ran gacutil on system.web.silverlight
Ran gacutil on system.web.ria
Ran gacutil on system.web.domainservices.webcontrols

I then made some changes to the web.config of my project, namely removing everything that was already in the web.config for SharePoint. The last change I did was to make the bin folder have FullTrust. I did this by adding the following to the wss_minimaltrust.config file:

        1: <CodeGroup class="UnionCodeGroup" version="1"

       2:     PermissionSetName="FullTrust">

       3:     <IMembershipCondition

       4:         class="UrlMembershipCondition"

       5:         version="1" Url="$AppDirUrl$/bin/*"

       6:     />

       7: </CodeGroup>

After making these changes, the next problem I ran into was around RIA. It makes calls using a DataService.axd. So that needed to be added to the web.config file. In <system.web>:

       1: <httpHandlers>

       2:     ...

       3:     <add path="DataService.axd" verb="GET,POST" type="System.Web.Ria.DataServiceFactory, System.Web.Ria, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"

       4:       validate="false" />

       5: </httpHandlers>

And <system.Webservers>:

       1: <handlers>

       2:     ...

       3:     <add name="DataService" verb="GET,POST" path="DataService.axd"

       4:             type="System.Web.Ria.DataServiceFactory, System.Web.Ria, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" />

       5: </handlers>

That information is talked about in the Silverlight forum for getting it to work with Azure here.

I then tried to get my application to load the SharePoint master page but I ran into a problem where it tells me:

       1: The referenced file '<path to master>' is not allowed on this page.

I am currently investigating that error and will post more as I progress. If anyone else is trying to get this to work with SharePoint or has any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Silverlight RIA calling Stored Procedures that don’t return tables

Tom — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:07:07 GMT

There are times where you want to use a stored procedure that doesn’t return just normal rows out of a database. One classic example is if you are doing Full-Text Searching and want to return the Rank.

The first step to doing this is the get your stored procedures exposed in the ADO.NET Entity Data Model. Instead of going through the steps for doing that here, I’ll just point you to a great post by Julie Lerman on her blog: Implement SELECT Stored Procedures that return miscellaneous data in CTP2 of EF Designer.

After following those steps, you will have the stored procedures all ready to be called from the Entity Data Model. You can then use these stored procedures from ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, or anything else that can consume the Entity Data Model.

One side note, if you use the “Update Model from Database…” feature on your Entity Model, it will destroy the store layer tables that you created from Julie’s post. If that happens, just recreate them again.

Now to get this to work from Silverlight using RIA, there is another step that needs to be done. You need to get these stored procedures exposed in your Domain Service. One way to handle doing that is to create functions in the Domain Service like the following for each of them. Assume you have a stored procedure called SearchData and it takes a string as input to seach for in the database. You can create a function in the Domain Service like:

        1: public IQueryable<SearchDataTable> GetSearchData(String SearchString)

       2: {

       3:     return Context.SearchData(SearchString).AsQueryable();

       4: }

When you compile this, it will create a client side function called LoadSearchData that takes a string as input. Then you can call this just like you load any other data in Silverlight RIA:

       1: public void Searching(String search)

       2: {

       3:     if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(search))

       4:     {

       5:         return;

       6:     }

       7:  

       8:     context.LoadSearchData(search);

       9:     context.Loaded += new EventHandler<System.Windows.Ria.Data.LoadedDataEventArgs>(context_Loaded);

      10: }

      11:  

      12: void context_Loaded(object sender, System.Windows.Ria.Data.LoadedDataEventArgs e)

      13: {

      14:     var context = sender as MyDomainContext;

      15:     foreach (SearchDataTable searchData in context.SearchDataTable)

      16:     {

      17:         ... do stuff with the data ...

      18:     }

      19: }

Notice that I am hooking up to when the context is finished being loaded so that I know the data has been populated.

Creating interesting Silverlight chart datapoints

Tom — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:55:02 GMT

I was reading this great post by Jeff Wilcox and quickly found out that some of the needed code to get this to work was missing from his post.

So I went about recreating the missing parts and getting this to work. Here is what mind looks like now that it is functional:

To get to this work, I followed the same steps that Jeff mentioned so I will not go through them here. But what I will do is give you the source code that I used.

Test.xaml

        1: <navigation:Page x:Class="TestProject.Views.Test" 

       2:            xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" 

       3:            xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" 

       4:            xmlns:chartingToolkit="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization.Charting;assembly=System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization.Toolkit"

       5:            xmlns:datavis="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization;assembly=System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization.Toolkit"

       6:            xmlns:navigation="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls;assembly=System.Windows.Controls.Navigation"

       7:            Title="Test Page">

       8:     <navigation:Page.Resources>

       9:         <ControlTemplate x:Key="CustomLineDataPointTemplate" TargetType="chartingToolkit:LineDataPoint">

            <Grid x:Name="Root" Opacity="0" ToolTipService.ToolTip="{Binding DataPointTooltipText}">

                <VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups>

                    <VisualStateGroup x:Name="CommonStates">

                        <VisualStateGroup.Transitions>

                            <VisualTransition GeneratedDuration="0:0:0.1"/>

                        </VisualStateGroup.Transitions>

                        <VisualState x:Name="Normal"/>

                        <VisualState x:Name="MouseOver">

                            <Storyboard>

                                <ColorAnimationUsingKeyFrames BeginTime="00:00:00" Duration="00:00:00.0010000" Storyboard.TargetName="MouseOverHighlight" Storyboard.TargetProperty="(Shape.Fill).(SolidColorBrush.Color)">

                                    <SplineColorKeyFrame KeyTime="00:00:00" Value="#FFFFDF00"/>

                                </ColorAnimationUsingKeyFrames>

                                <DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames BeginTime="00:00:00" Duration="00:00:00.0010000" Storyboard.TargetName="MouseOverHighlight" Storyboard.TargetProperty="(UIElement.Opacity)">

                                    <SplineDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="00:00:00" Value="0.24"/>

                                </DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames>

                            </Storyboard>

                        </VisualState>

                    </VisualStateGroup>

                    <VisualStateGroup x:Name="SelectionStates">

                        <VisualStateGroup.Transitions>

                            <VisualTransition GeneratedDuration="0:0:0.1"/>

                        </VisualStateGroup.Transitions>

                        <VisualState x:Name="Unselected"/>

                        <VisualState x:Name="Selected">

                            <Storyboard>

                                <DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames BeginTime="00:00:00" Duration="00:00:00.0010000" Storyboard.TargetName="SelectionHighlight" Storyboard.TargetProperty="(UIElement.Opacity)">

                                    <SplineDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="00:00:00" Value="0.18"/>

                                </DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames>

                            </Storyboard>

                        </VisualState>

                    </VisualStateGroup>

                    <VisualStateGroup x:Name="RevealStates">

                        <VisualStateGroup.Transitions>

                            <VisualTransition GeneratedDuration="0:0:0.5"/>

                        </VisualStateGroup.Transitions>

                        <VisualState x:Name="Shown">

                            <Storyboard>

                                <DoubleAnimation Duration="0" Storyboard.TargetName="Root" Storyboard.TargetProperty="Opacity" To="1"/>

                            </Storyboard>

                        </VisualState>

                        <VisualState x:Name="Hidden">

                            <Storyboard>

                                <DoubleAnimation Duration="0" Storyboard.TargetName="Root" Storyboard.TargetProperty="Opacity" To="0"/>

                            </Storyboard>

                        </VisualState>

                    </VisualStateGroup>

                </VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups>

                <Ellipse Stroke="{TemplateBinding BorderBrush}" Fill="{TemplateBinding Background}"/>

                <Ellipse RenderTransformOrigin="0.661,0.321">

                    <Ellipse.Fill>

                        <RadialGradientBrush GradientOrigin="0.681,0.308">

                            <GradientStop Color="#00FFFFFF"/>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FF3D3A3A" Offset="1"/>

                        </RadialGradientBrush>

                    </Ellipse.Fill>

                </Ellipse>

                <Ellipse x:Name="SelectionHighlight" Opacity="0" Fill="Red"/>

                <Ellipse x:Name="MouseOverHighlight" Opacity="0" Fill="White"/>

            </Grid>

        </ControlTemplate>

  

        <datavis:StylePalette x:Key="MyCustomStylePalette">

            <!--Blue-->

            <Style TargetType="Control">

                <Setter Property="Background">

                    <Setter.Value>

                        <RadialGradientBrush>

                            <RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                                <TransformGroup>

                                    <ScaleTransform CenterX="0.5" CenterY="0.5" ScaleX="2.09" ScaleY="1.819"/>

                                    <TranslateTransform X="-0.425" Y="-0.486"/>

                                </TransformGroup>

                            </RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FFB9D6F7"/>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FF284B70" Offset="1"/>

                        </RadialGradientBrush>

                    </Setter.Value>

                </Setter>

                <Setter Property="Template" Value="{StaticResource CustomLineDataPointTemplate}" />

            </Style>

            <!--Red-->

            <Style TargetType="Control">

                <Setter Property="Background">

                    <Setter.Value>

                        <RadialGradientBrush>

                            <RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                                <TransformGroup>

                                    <ScaleTransform CenterX="0.5" CenterY="0.5" ScaleX="2.09" ScaleY="1.819"/>

                                    <TranslateTransform X="-0.425" Y="-0.486"/>

                                </TransformGroup>

                            </RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FFFBB7B5"/>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FF702828" Offset="1"/>

                        </RadialGradientBrush>

                    </Setter.Value>

                </Setter>

                <Setter Property="Template" Value="{StaticResource CustomLineDataPointTemplate}" />

            </Style>

            <!-- Light Green -->

            <Style TargetType="Control">

                <Setter Property="Background">

                    <Setter.Value>

                        <RadialGradientBrush>

                            <RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                                <TransformGroup>

                                    <ScaleTransform CenterX="0.5" CenterY="0.5" ScaleX="2.09" ScaleY="1.819"/>

                                    <TranslateTransform X="-0.425" Y="-0.486"/>

                                </TransformGroup>

                            </RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FFB8C0AC"/>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FF5F7143" Offset="1"/>

                        </RadialGradientBrush>

                    </Setter.Value>

                </Setter>

                <Setter Property="Template" Value="{StaticResource CustomLineDataPointTemplate}" />

            </Style>

            <!-- Yellow -->

            <Style TargetType="Control">

                <Setter Property="Background">

                    <Setter.Value>

                        <RadialGradientBrush>

                            <RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                                <TransformGroup>

                                    <ScaleTransform CenterX="0.5" CenterY="0.5" ScaleX="2.09" ScaleY="1.819"/>

                                    <TranslateTransform X="-0.425" Y="-0.486"/>

                                </TransformGroup>

                            </RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FFFDE79C"/>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FFF6BC0C" Offset="1"/>

                        </RadialGradientBrush>

                    </Setter.Value>

                </Setter>

                <Setter Property="Template" Value="{StaticResource CustomLineDataPointTemplate}" />

            </Style>

            <!-- Indigo -->

            <Style TargetType="Control">

                <Setter Property="Background">

                    <Setter.Value>

                        <RadialGradientBrush>

                            <RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                                <TransformGroup>

                                    <ScaleTransform CenterX="0.5" CenterY="0.5" ScaleX="2.09" ScaleY="1.819"/>

                                    <TranslateTransform X="-0.425" Y="-0.486"/>

                                </TransformGroup>

                            </RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FFA9A3BD"/>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FF382C6C" Offset="1"/>

                        </RadialGradientBrush>

                    </Setter.Value>

                </Setter>

                <Setter Property="Template" Value="{StaticResource CustomLineDataPointTemplate}" />

            </Style>

            <!-- Magenta -->

            <Style TargetType="Control">

                <Setter Property="Background">

                    <Setter.Value>

                        <RadialGradientBrush>

                            <RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                                <TransformGroup>

                                    <ScaleTransform CenterX="0.5" CenterY="0.5" ScaleX="2.09" ScaleY="1.819"/>

                                    <TranslateTransform X="-0.425" Y="-0.486"/>

                                </TransformGroup>

                            </RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FFB1A1B1"/>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FF50224F" Offset="1"/>

                        </RadialGradientBrush>

                    </Setter.Value>

                </Setter>

                <Setter Property="Template" Value="{StaticResource CustomLineDataPointTemplate}" />

            </Style>

            <!-- Dark Green -->

            <Style TargetType="Control">

                <Setter Property="Background">

                    <Setter.Value>

                        <RadialGradientBrush>

                            <RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                                <TransformGroup>

                                    <ScaleTransform CenterX="0.5" CenterY="0.5" ScaleX="2.09" ScaleY="1.819"/>

                                    <TranslateTransform X="-0.425" Y="-0.486"/>

                                </TransformGroup>

                            </RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FF9DC2B3"/>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FF1D7554" Offset="1"/>

                        </RadialGradientBrush>

                    </Setter.Value>

                </Setter>

                <Setter Property="Template" Value="{StaticResource CustomLineDataPointTemplate}" />

            </Style>

            <!--Gray Shade-->

            <Style TargetType="Control">

                <Setter Property="Background">

                    <Setter.Value>

                        <RadialGradientBrush>

                            <RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                                <TransformGroup>

                                    <ScaleTransform CenterX="0.5" CenterY="0.5" ScaleX="2.09" ScaleY="1.819"/>

                                    <TranslateTransform X="-0.425" Y="-0.486"/>

                                </TransformGroup>

                            </RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FFB5B5B5"/>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FF4C4C4C" Offset="1"/>

                        </RadialGradientBrush>

                    </Setter.Value>

                </Setter>

                <Setter Property="Template" Value="{StaticResource CustomLineDataPointTemplate}" />

            </Style>

            <!--Blue-->

            <Style TargetType="Control">

                <Setter Property="Background">

                    <Setter.Value>

                        <RadialGradientBrush>

                            <RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                                <TransformGroup>

                                    <ScaleTransform CenterX="0.5" CenterY="0.5" ScaleX="2.09" ScaleY="1.819"/>

                                    <TranslateTransform X="-0.425" Y="-0.486"/>

                                </TransformGroup>

                            </RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FF98C1DC"/>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FF0271AE" Offset="1"/>

                        </RadialGradientBrush>

                    </Setter.Value>

                </Setter>

                <Setter Property="Template" Value="{StaticResource CustomLineDataPointTemplate}" />

            </Style>

            <!-- Brown -->

            <Style TargetType="Control">

                <Setter Property="Background">

                    <Setter.Value>

                        <RadialGradientBrush>

                            <RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                                <TransformGroup>

                                    <ScaleTransform CenterX="0.5" CenterY="0.5" ScaleX="2.09" ScaleY="1.819"/>

                                    <TranslateTransform X="-0.425" Y="-0.486"/>

                                </TransformGroup>

                            </RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FFC1C0AE"/>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FF706E41" Offset="1"/>

                        </RadialGradientBrush>

                    </Setter.Value>

                </Setter>

                <Setter Property="Template" Value="{StaticResource CustomLineDataPointTemplate}" />

            </Style>

            <!--Cyan-->

            <Style TargetType="Control">

                <Setter Property="Background">

                    <Setter.Value>

                        <RadialGradientBrush>

                            <RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                                <TransformGroup>

                                    <ScaleTransform CenterX="0.5" CenterY="0.5" ScaleX="2.09" ScaleY="1.819"/>

                                    <TranslateTransform X="-0.425" Y="-0.486"/>

                                </TransformGroup>

                            </RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FFADBDC0"/>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FF446A73" Offset="1"/>

                        </RadialGradientBrush>

                    </Setter.Value>

                </Setter>

                <Setter Property="Template" Value="{StaticResource CustomLineDataPointTemplate}" />

            </Style>

            <!-- Special Blue -->

            <Style TargetType="Control">

                <Setter Property="Background">

                    <Setter.Value>

                        <RadialGradientBrush>

                            <RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                                <TransformGroup>

                                    <ScaleTransform CenterX="0.5" CenterY="0.5" ScaleX="2.09" ScaleY="1.819"/>

                                    <TranslateTransform X="-0.425" Y="-0.486"/>

                                </TransformGroup>

                            </RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FF2F8CE2"/>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FF0C3E69" Offset="1"/>

                        </RadialGradientBrush>

                    </Setter.Value>

                </Setter>

                <Setter Property="Template" Value="{StaticResource CustomLineDataPointTemplate}" />

            </Style>

            <!--Gray Shade 2-->

            <Style TargetType="Control">

                <Setter Property="Background">

                    <Setter.Value>

                        <RadialGradientBrush>

                            <RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                                <TransformGroup>

                                    <ScaleTransform CenterX="0.5" CenterY="0.5" ScaleX="2.09" ScaleY="1.819"/>

                                    <TranslateTransform X="-0.425" Y="-0.486"/>

                                </TransformGroup>

                            </RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FFDCDCDC"/>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FF757575" Offset="1"/>

                        </RadialGradientBrush>

                    </Setter.Value>

                </Setter>

                <Setter Property="Template" Value="{StaticResource CustomLineDataPointTemplate}" />

            </Style>

            <!--Gray Shade 3-->

            <Style TargetType="Control">

                <Setter Property="Background">

                    <Setter.Value>

                        <RadialGradientBrush>

                            <RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                                <TransformGroup>

                                    <ScaleTransform CenterX="0.5" CenterY="0.5" ScaleX="2.09" ScaleY="1.819"/>

                                    <TranslateTransform X="-0.425" Y="-0.486"/>

                                </TransformGroup>

                            </RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FFF4F4F4"/>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FFB7B7B7" Offset="1"/>

                        </RadialGradientBrush>

                    </Setter.Value>

                </Setter>

                <Setter Property="Template" Value="{StaticResource CustomLineDataPointTemplate}" />

            </Style>

            <!--Gray Shade 4-->

            <Style TargetType="Control">

                <Setter Property="Background">

                    <Setter.Value>

                        <RadialGradientBrush>

                            <RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                                <TransformGroup>

                                    <ScaleTransform CenterX="0.5" CenterY="0.5" ScaleX="2.09" ScaleY="1.819"/>

                                    <TranslateTransform X="-0.425" Y="-0.486"/>

                                </TransformGroup>

                            </RadialGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FFF4F4F4"/>

                            <GradientStop Color="#FFA3A3A3" Offset="1"/>

                        </RadialGradientBrush>

                    </Setter.Value>

                </Setter>

                <Setter Property="Template" Value="{StaticResource CustomLineDataPointTemplate}" />

            </Style>

        </datavis:StylePalette>

    </navigation:Page.Resources>

    <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">

        <chartingToolkit:Chart x:Name="Chart1" Title="Overall History"

                                               Width="500" Height="500" StylePalette="{StaticResource MyCustomStylePalette}">

            <chartingToolkit:Chart.Series>

                <chartingToolkit:LineSeries

                            Title="First Line"

                            IndependentValueBinding="{Binding EntryDate}"

                            DependentValueBinding="{Binding Count}" />

                <chartingToolkit:LineSeries

                            Title="Second Line"

                            IndependentValueBinding="{Binding EntryDate}"

                            DependentValueBinding="{Binding Count}" />

                <chartingToolkit:LineSeries

                            Title="Third Line"

                            IndependentValueBinding="{Binding EntryDate}"

                            DependentValueBinding="{Binding Count}" />

            </chartingToolkit:Chart.Series>

        </chartingToolkit:Chart>

    </Grid>

</navigation:Page>

Text.xaml.cs

       1: using System;

       2: using System.Collections.Generic;

       3: using System.Linq;

       4: using System.Net;

       5: using System.Windows;

       6: using System.Windows.Controls;

       7: using System.Windows.Documents;

       8: using System.Windows.Input;

       9: using System.Windows.Media;

using System.Windows.Media.Animation;

using System.Windows.Shapes;

using System.Windows.Navigation;

using System.Windows.Controls.DataVisualization.Charting;

  

namespace TestProject.Views

{

    public class MyData

    {

        public MyData(int count, DateTime entryDate, string dataTitle, int growth)

        {

            Count = count;

            EntryDate = entryDate;

            DataTitle = dataTitle;

            Growth = growth;

        }

  

        public int Count { get; set; }

        public DateTime EntryDate { get; set; }

  

        public string DataTitle { get; set; }

        public int Growth { get; set; }

  

        public object DataPointTooltipText

        {

            get

            {

                TextBlock tb = new TextBlock();

                tb.Inlines.Add(new Run { Text = "Title: " + DataTitle, FontWeight = FontWeights.Bold });

                tb.Inlines.Add(new LineBreak());

                tb.Inlines.Add(new Run { Text = "Updated: " + EntryDate.ToShortDateString() });

                tb.Inlines.Add(new LineBreak());

                if (Growth >= 0)

                    tb.Inlines.Add(new Run { Text = "Growth: " + Growth.ToString(), Foreground = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Green) });

                else

                    tb.Inlines.Add(new Run { Text = "Neg Growth: " + Growth.ToString(), Foreground = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Red) });

  

                return tb;

            }

        }

    }

  

    public partial class Test : Page

    {

        public Test()

        {

            InitializeComponent();

        }

  

        // Executes when the user navigates to this page.

        protected override void OnNavigatedTo(NavigationEventArgs e)

        {

            LoadData();

        }

  

        public void LoadData()

        {

            List<MyData> line1 = new List<MyData>();

            List<MyData> line2 = new List<MyData>();

            List<MyData> line3 = new List<MyData>();

  

            line1.Add(new MyData(4, new DateTime(2008, 11, 10), "Test 1", 4));

            line1.Add(new MyData(9, new DateTime(2008, 11, 12), "Test 2", 5));

            line1.Add(new MyData(20, new DateTime(2009, 2, 13), "Test 3", 11));

  

            line2.Add(new MyData(1, new DateTime(2008, 12, 14), "Test A", 1));

            line2.Add(new MyData(15, new DateTime(2008, 12, 20), "Test B", 14));

            line2.Add(new MyData(10, new DateTime(2009, 1, 12), "Test C", -5));

  

            line3.Add(new MyData(7, new DateTime(2008, 12, 1), "Test 1.1", 7));

            line3.Add(new MyData(13, new DateTime(2009, 1, 12), "Test 1.2", 6));

            line3.Add(new MyData(16, new DateTime(2009, 2, 10), "Test 1.3", 3));

  

            LineSeries ls = Chart1.Series[0] as LineSeries;

            ls.ItemsSource = line1;

  

            LineSeries ls2 = Chart1.Series[1] as LineSeries;

            ls2.ItemsSource = line2;

  

            LineSeries ls3 = Chart1.Series[2] as LineSeries;

            ls3.ItemsSource = line3;

        }

    }

}

Let me know if you have any questions. And please note that this is using Silverlight 3.0 and the latest toolkit.

ASP.NET MVC and JSON and when do you use Async

Tom — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 13:00:00 GMT

I wanted to post somewhat of a discussion starter around some of the new technologies that ASP.NET has recently released.

ASP.NET MVC

This technology has one huge benefit of allowing you to do unit testing on your site. But there are also a number of other advantages to it, for example, you can have a web page call commands inside a controller. This allows multiple pages to call the same command which helps keep things clean. It also does a pretty good job of separating the code from the presentation layer. But I did find myself doing a lot of coding like I used to with classic ASP or even IDC where we loop through results and have <%= %> snippets all over the aspx page.

JSON/AJAX

These technologies have really opened the door to a lot more asynchronous commands on the web. They allow you to do lots of small submissions and updates without the need to submit and refresh the whole page.

jQuery

This is a really interesting new functionality in that it really isn’t anything new but just a way of collecting things in a cleaner way. The way it is designed really gives us an ability to do things that you generally don’t consider doing. For example, you can make images clickable without having any link code in the html. It can also give some interesting ways to hide some of your IP (although they can always see it using something like netmon).

Silverlight

I think with Silverlight 3, we have really raised the bar for making Silverlight a choice for developing an application. Especially if you combine it with RIA, there are a lot of great applications of Silverlight that before would be much harder to create. I know Silverlight 3 is just in developer beta, but I have been using it quite a bit lately and I think it is really going to change things. The deep linking and search engine optimization functionality really help make this a good solution as well.

So when would you use which?

That is what I’d like to hear from everyone. If you have a page, when do you decide that you should do something async? When do you decide that you should just submit the entire page? Have you considered using Silverlight yet? What functionality makes it attractive to you? Is it the off-line functionality?

My take

I wanted to give some of my thoughts on these things, but remember that they are just thoughts as a lot of these technologies I haven’t used enough to know which is best for what situation.

I think that most of these technologies allow for very fast creation of a site. I think a lot of it boils down to what you are comfortable with or what you have available. If you have designers at your disposal, Silverlight is a great choice as they can create the Xaml to make your application look amazing.

I think one of the powerful things about MVC is that you can combine it with AJAX, jQuery, JSON to get a bunch of these things in the same application. But it still is a question as to when to use what. For me, I really like using jQuery to control the UI and then have it call commands through AJAX/JSON. It also allows you to update a page with new content without having to refresh the page. Which makes the user experience a lot cleaner.

As for Silverlight, in general I think it is a wildcard out of the bunch. You can do all the same things you can with these other technologies but within the same framework. So I think if you want to have the best of all worlds and learn the smallest amount, this may be a good way to go.

So what are your thoughts? And do you have any other functionality that you would like that see that isn’t available yet?

Silverlight 3 RIA controls and how they load

Tom — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 13:00:00 GMT

If you have started playing with the RIA controls for Silverlight, one thing that you will need to understand is that when you get a DomainContext and call one of the load commands, that it does this async.

So if you do something like:

var context = new TestDomainContext();
context.LoadProducts();
foreach (Product p in context.Products)
{
    myComboBox.Items.Add(p.ProductName);
}

You will get nothing put into your ComboBox. You need to hook up to the Loaded event and when that fires, then you can load up your ComboBox:

var context = new TestDomainContext();
context.LoadProducts();
context.Loaded += new EventHandler
            <System.Windows.Ria.Data.LoadedDataEventArgs>
            (context_Loaded);

void context_Loaded(object sender,
            System.Windows.Ria.Data.LoadedDataEventArgs e)
{
    var context = sender as TestDomainContext;

    foreach (Product p in context.Products)
    {
        myComboBox.Items.Add(p.ProductName);
    }
}

Just wanted to get that out there in case anyone else runs into that issue.

ASP.NET Troubleshooting

Tom — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:31:03 GMT

So with how long ASP.NET has been out for now, I am really curious to know how people go about tracking down issues in their project.

I’d like to know things like:

How do you know there is a problem
What tools do you use to confirm that the problem really is a problem
How do you gather data about the problem
How do you determine if the problem is your code or something else (like the network, hard drive failure, etc)
If the problem is your code, how do you ensure your fix resolves the problem (how do you test the fix)

If there are any others, I’d also like to hear them.

Also, if you do anything in the Cloud now, I’d love to hear how you troubleshoot that. And it can be from any cloud service provider.

And have any of these things changed with some of the new ways to program that have come out. For example, AJAX, MVC, Silverlight, IE8, jQuery, etc.

Future Vision UX ideas

Tom — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:17:55 GMT

If you haven’t seen this video, check this out and see what you think of one view of the future:

What are your reactions to this? Do you think this is something that is possible in the near future? Do you think that Silverlight or other such technologies could enable things like this?

This video is from the Office Labs folks.

Silverlight updates – CBS and a contest

Tom — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 14:00:00 GMT

As reported on a few sites:

Silverlight is going to be the technology of choice for CBS to broadcast their video broadcasting of the March tournament.

Users will be able to view the games in either a standard, 550 Kbps, broadcast using Windows Media Player or a hi-definition quality video with Silverlight, 1.5 Mbps.

Contest

On another note, there is now a Silverlight contest where you can win $5,000 and have your game featured in ServerQuest II. For more information, check out the site at http://www.serverquestcontest.com/

For the contest, the requirements are:

The initial file download size cannot exceed 4MB Total file size must be < 10MB

Resolution limited to 800x430

There are no frame rate limitations

The game cannot include any upload file aspects

The game cannot require or allow any external communication (i.e. no send-to-a-friend components, etc.)

The game must be developed in Silverlight 2.0 and submitted in object/binary code format

The game must clearly indicate to others that it is governed by the Creative Commons license

Creating an Auto-complete textbox

Tom — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 13:00:00 GMT

It seems that auto-complete is very popular these days with different sites. So I wanted to show you how you can create your own Auto-complete textbox on your web sites. There are two ways that this can be accomplished depending on what you are using and what you want to use.

Ajax control toolkit

This method is described very well on the following blog post: ASP.NET MVC Tip #37 – Create an Auto-Complete Text Field. The best thing about this method is that you can use a webservice as the backend for what you call to get the data back. This enables you to have a database of possible results and populate the box as the person types. For example, if you were going to write a web site that allows someone to post a blog, you could have a Auto-Complete textbox for the tags on the post. Pulling down the list of tags they have used in the past.

JQuery

Another way to accomplish this is to use JQuery. With this javascript library, you can get this to work pretty easily. To see how, check out: UI/Autocomplete on JQuery.com. This also has some advantages, less code and easier to setup. But would take some more to make it more powerful, like adding Ajax to make a call to the server. But if you have a known list, this could be really nice and would be quick.

Silverlight

You can also use Silverlight to make an Auto-complete textbox. This method is described by Nikhil on his blog here: Silverlight AutoComplete.

I hope this gives you some options to add this useful method to your web sites. Feel free to post other methods here as well.

XPerf: A CPU Sampler

Tom — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Seema just had a great about using XPerf to troubleshoot CPU issues when using Silverlight. This can also be used in the same way to troubleshoot ASP.NET or IIS.

What can XPerf tell you? Seema answers that question, it can find out:

Is my app asking Silverlight to constantly spin on CPU cycles.
Whether one UI layout or design is more expensive than the other.
Whether the time is spent in drawing (agcore.dll), the plug-in’s interactions with (npctrl.dll), or in compilation/JIT (coreclr.dll)
How much is stretching/blending/rotating that video going to cost in terms of CPU cycles? How about if you encode it differently?

You can read more about XPerf and how to download and use it from Seema post here.

Note: The tools only work on Vista and Windows Server 2008.

The PDC this year…

Tom — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Not sure how many people are planning on attending the PDC (Professional Developers Conference) this year, but it is going to be a fantastic conference.

We announced some huge announcements on the PDC web site. http://www.microsoftpdc.com/

We have a major lineup of executive keynote speakers representing most of the core Microsoft businesses.
We’ll have 20+ Windows 7 sessions, and we’ll be giving out the Win7 bits.
We also announced our in-depth symposia sessions including parallel computing and S+S.

If you have any questions about the PDC, feel free to check out the site listed above, or you can Ask the Brain.

The conference runs from October 27th to October 30th with the pre-conference on October 26th. You can see the full agenda here.

We have also just announced that all partners and customers attending the PDC will receive a very special gift this year: a 160GB external USB2 hard drive with all of the bits! That is a very cool gift and very useful as well. I’d love to hear if anyone is going or thinking about going to the PDC!

How are you using ASP.NET and Silverlight?

Tom — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:00:00 GMT

I have posted in the past about some new things that are coming with DeepZoom and the like. What I am curious about is how is everyone using ASP.NET and Silverlight? Are there plans in the future to use it?

I think the options with it are some vast, that I’d like to see how everyone is planning on using it moving forward. Also, if you aren’t planning on using it, what are you going to use and what doesn’t Silverlight do that you’d like to see it do.

More about the Olympics and NBC

Tom — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Tim Heuer has a great post where he talks about NBCOlympics.com and how things are going. There is a great video talking about this and Silverlight, Eric Schmidt from Microsoft was interviewed about it.. Feel free to check out the video here. It is about 35 minutes but will give you a great idea of how much work it is to get this going. Some amazing stuff.

Check it out here:

This is amazing stuff that I can’t get enough of. Especially taking into consideration the short amount of time that they had to do it in.

Enjoy.