Tips & Tricks for ASP.NET, IIS, and Visual Web Developer : VWD

Tip#100: Did you know… How to view ASP.NET trace information?

WebDevTools — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:24:00 GMT

You can enable ASP.NET tracing either at an Application level or at a page level; see Tip# 77: Did you know… How to enable Page Level Tracing for your ASP.NET pages? for more information.

With the tracing enabled, you can view the trace output in a trace viewer by navigation to trace.axd from the root of your application. For example, if the URL of your application is http://localhost:11423/Website, then the trace viewer can be accessed at http://localhost:11423/WebSite1/trace.axd.

You can click on the “View Details” link of a requested page to see further information about that specific page.

To write to the trace output, you can add the statment Trace.Write(“This is an action in my page.”) into your code.

The trace request limit and whether the most recent tracing data is kept and shown in the viewer can be specified in the web.config file as follows:

<system.web>
<trace enabled=”true” mostRecent=”true” pageOutput=”true” requestLimit=”20” />

Anh Phan

SDET, Visual Web Developer

Tip#97: Did you know… How to Display Hidden Information in Design View

WebDevTools — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:20:01 GMT

The design view in Visual Studio can display glyphs and borders for the hidden non - graphic elements (such as div, span, form, and script elements). This feature helps you to see where the elements are and avoid inadvertently deleting the non-graphic elements from your page while editing.

To enable it in designer click on View -> Formatting Marks -> Show

Now you will start seeing the hidden elements on the designer surface.

Hope this helps,

Deepak Verma
SDET | Visual Web Developer

Tip#96: Did you know…You could publish your SQL databases using the SQL Publishing Wizard?

WebDevTools — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 02:05:51 GMT

You can use the SQL Publishing wizard in VS 2008/VWD 2008 to deploy a local database from your development machine to a hosting environment on a remote machine.

This is how you will accomplish this:

Step 1: Create a new web site by selecting menu File ->New Web Site. Switch to Server Explorer and add a new Data connection and connect to a database. In this case we will use the Northwind database that comes with SQL Express. You should point to the database you want to publish.

Step 2: Select Northwind.dbo node in Server explorer and right click to bring up the context menu. In the Context menu you have a “Publish to provider…” option.

Step 3: Click “Publish to provider …” to launch the Database Publishing Wizard.

Step 4: Click Next to select the mode. Let us go with “Script to file” mode. We will need to specify the .SQL file name and location.

Step 5: Click Next and you will get to the Publishing Options. On this page, select the script for target database (SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server 2005) and the types of data to publish (Schema, Data or Schema+Data). You also have the option to drop existing object in script if you want to.

Step 6: Keep the default selection and hit next and generate the .SQL script.

Step 7: The .SQL file generated contains a script that you can run on any SQL server to re-create all the tables, sprocs, views, triggers, full-text catalogs, etc. for a database, as well as import and add all of the table row data that was in the database at the time the .SQL file was created.

Step 8: The .SQL file is a plain text file. You can open it in your favorite editor and customize it as you need.

Step 9: Now that we have our .SQL files, we can go about using them to install our database at our hoster. Exactly how to install the .SQL files will vary depending on how the hoster give access to our SQL account. Some hosters provide an HTML based file-upload tool that allows you to provide a .SQL file - which they will then execute against the SQL database you own.

Other hosters provide an online query tool (like below) that allows you to copy/paste SQL statements to run against your database. If you have a hoster which provides an online query tool like this, then you can open the .SQL file with a text-editor and copy/paste the contents into the query textbox and run it.

You can find my original post here.

Reshmi Mangalore
SDET, Visual Web Developer.

Tip #95: Did you know… That Web Application Projects and Class libraries are now available in Express edition?

WebDevTools — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 02:27:39 GMT

Creating a Web Application Project was possible only in VS standard SKU and above in VS 2008.

But with VS 2008 SP1 we went ahead and added support for WAP and class libraries in Visual Web Developer Express edition SP1. You can now create WAPs by going to File –> New Project.

Reshmi Mangalore
SDET, Visual Web Developer.

Tip #92: Did you know … How to select a master page using 'Select a Master Page' dialog?

WebDevTools — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 23:02:20 GMT

Master page for a Web form can always be set manually in the source code, but here is an option to select the master page while create the webform using the 'Select a Master Page' dialog.

The path to select a Master page using the 'Select a master page' dialog is different for a Web application project than for a Web site.

For a Web Application project:

Right click solution explore. Select Add and then select New Item
From the Add new Item dialog select Web content form and click on Add button.
Select a Master Page dialog would appear. Navigate thru the project folders to select the Master page & click on OK button. The aspx added would now be using the selected master page.

For a Web site project:

While adding a Webform, check the select master page checkbox and click on the Add button.
Select a Master Page dialog would appear. Navigate thru the project folders to select the Master page & click on OK button. The aspx added would now be using the selected master page.

Hope this helps,

Deepak Verma
SDET | Visual Web Developer

Tip #90: Did you know … How to rearrange menu items in Visual Web Developer?

WebDevTools — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 08:36:19 GMT

You can use the Rearrange Commands dialog box to do this. To get there:

Launch the Tools->Customize dialog. Now select the Commands Tab.

Click on the Rearrange commands… button, and this will launch the dialog that will help you with arranging your menu and toolbar items. Now choose a menu or toolbar to rearrange. You can rearrange the items by selecting them and moving them up and down. You can also use this dialog to add your own menu options.

Rearrange Commands Dialog:

Reshmi Mangalore,

SDET, Visual Web Developer.

Tip #89: Did you know…You could customize Toolbars in Visual Web Developer?

WebDevTools — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 21:53:02 GMT

Visual Web Developer by default shows the standard toolbar. To expose the remaining tool bars, you will have to right click on the standard tool bar area. This will bring up the list of all toolbars available. Select in this list to show or hide toolbars. In the picture below, I have chosen the formatting toolbar and the HTML Source Editing toolbars to be shown.

You can further customize the tool bar using the Tools->Customize menu option. This will launch the Customize dialog box.This dialog gives you the option to Use large Icons, Show Screen Tips on Toolbars and Show shortcut keys in ScreenTips.

Reshmi Mangalore

SDET, Visual Web Developer.

Tip #88: Did you know… To not stress your server, limit the number of concurrent requests

WebDevTools — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 03:07:43 GMT

The other day somebody ask me if there was a way to limit the amount of work that Site Analysis in IIS SEO Toolkit would cause to the server. This is interesting for a couple of reasons,

You might want to reduce the load that Site Analysis cause to your server at any given time
You might have a Denial-of-service detection system such as our Dynamic IP Restrictions IIS module that will start failing requests based on number of requests in a certain amount of time
Or If you like me have to go through a Proxy and it has a configured limit of number of requests per minute you are allowed to issue

In Beta 1 we do not support the Crawl-delay directive in the Robots exclusion protocol; in future versions we will look at adding support this setting. The good news is that in Beta 1 we do have a configurable setting that can help you achieve this goals called Maximum Number of Concurrent Requests that you can configure.

To set it:

Go to the Site Analysis Reports page
Select the option "Edit Feature Settings..." as show in the next image
In the "Edit Feature Settings" dialog you will see the Maximum Number of Concurrent Requests option that you can set to any value from 1 to 16. The default value is 8 which means at any given time we will issue 8 requests to the server.

Carlos Aguilar Mares, IIS Team

View the original post

Technorati Tags: IIS,SEO,tips and tricks

Tip #84: Did you know… How to set a Start page for your Web Site in Visual Web Developer?

WebDevTools — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 01:49:00 GMT

As you are developing your site, you may want to start at a particular page for testing your web site. By defaults, when you start debugging, Visual Studio runs the page that was currently in focus in your designer.

If you set this page, Visual web Developer will start your web site with the Set Page and not the current page in designer.

You can do this by right-click on the page and selecting Set As Start Page option from the context menu.

This could also be set in Properties page under the Start Options tab as shown below.

Enjoy!

Reshmi Mangalore

SDET, Visual Web Developer

Tip #82: Did you know... How to migrate Visual Studio 2005 Web Application Project to Visual Studio 2008

WebDevTools — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:32:56 GMT

Following steps highlight how a Visual Studio 2005 Web application project can be migrated to Visual Studio 2008.

Take backup of the original project
Open Visual Studio 2008
Click File -> Open Project and browse to the folder to open the project
You will receive the following conversion wizard to help you convert the solution or project to the current version. Click Next.
Select Yes on this screen if you want the wizard to help you to take the backup, otherwise select No and Click Next.
Be sure to read the summary on this screen & click finish
As soon as you click finish, you will see an upgrade prompt. Click yes if you want to upgrade to the latest framework otherwise Click No. If you select yes to upgrade, the project file as well as web.config file is updated for the latest framework. It's recommended to select the checkbox to do the same for all webs in this solution.
The conversion wizard would show you the status, select Show the log to see the log and click close.

For projects using Ajax you might need to install ASP.NET Ajax Extensions 1.0 in VS 2008 if you said no to upgrade. Please see Tip #62 to learn how to install it.

Hope this helps,

Deepak Verma
SDET | Visual Web Developer

Tip #69: Did you know…The keyboard shortcut for View in Browser?

WebDevTools — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:27:35 GMT

Ctrl +Shift+W does the trick for you.

This short cut is mentioned under File Menu -> View in Browser.

So if you are still using Select File -> Right click for context menu and then selecting View in Browser as shown below, you may want to start using Ctrl+Shift+W.

Reshmi Mangalore

SDET, Visual Web Developer

Tip #68 Did you know… How simple it is to attach an existing style sheet to your web page?

WebDevTools — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:19:01 GMT

Open an existing web site in VWD. Open the page by double clicking on it in solution explorer to which you want to attach the existing style sheet in your web site.

Now, switch to Design View of the page and bring up Select Style Sheet dialog by clicking on menu: Format –> Attach Style Sheet as shown below.

Click the OK button and this will add a link to the Style sheet that you selected in the Select Style Sheet dialog. Now you can make use of all the styles described in this style sheet.

<head runat="server">
    <title>Untitled Page</title>
    <link href="StyleSheet.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
</head></PRE< P>

Alternatively, you can just switch the page to which you want to add the link and Drag Drop the style sheet from solution explorer to the page in which you want to make use of the styles. The drag drop action adds the above piece of code to source view.

Reshmi Mangalore

SDET, Visual Web Developer

Tip#64:Did you know … How to convert a GridView column from asp:BoundField to asp:TemplateField in Design View?

WebDevTools — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:26:41 GMT

Assume that you already have a data source SqlDataSource1 that binds to a simple query returning some details from the Customers table.

     <asp:SqlDataSource ID="SqlDataSource1" runat="server" 

        ConnectionString="<%$ ConnectionStrings:MyConnectionString %>" 

        SelectCommand="SELECT [FirstName], [LastName], [Email] FROM [Customers] ORDER BY [FirstName]">

    </asp:SqlDataSource>

In Visual Studio, if you add a GridView control to a web forms page in Design View and choose SqlDataSource1 as the Data Source (as shown in figure 1 below), typically the GridView columns are generated as asp:BoundField types in source.

Figure 1

            <asp:GridView ID="GridView1" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="False" 

                DataSourceID="SqlDataSource1">

                <Columns>

                    <asp:BoundField DataField="FirstName" HeaderText="FirstName" 

                        SortExpression="FirstName" />

                    <asp:BoundField DataField="LastName" HeaderText="LastName" 

                        SortExpression="LastName" />

                    <asp:BoundField DataField="Email" HeaderText="Email" SortExpression="Email" />

                </Columns>

            </asp:GridView>

Often, you want to customize one or more columns by converting them into an asp:TemplateField rather than asp:BoundField. Let’s say you want to convert the Email column into a asp:TemplateField.

You can quickly do this in Design View by clicking on ‘Edit Columns’ in the Smart Tasks panel of the GridView, select the ‘Email’ field in the dialog that pops up and click on ‘Convert this field into a TemplateField’, then click ‘OK’.

Figure 2

Figure 3

The source for the field Email will now be updated to:

    <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Email" SortExpression="Email">

        <EditItemTemplate>

            <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server" Text='<%# Bind("Email") %>'></asp:TextBox>

        </EditItemTemplate>

        <ItemTemplate>

            <asp:Label ID="Label1" runat="server" Text='<%# Bind("Email") %>'></asp:Label>

        </ItemTemplate>

    </asp:TemplateField>

You can also do a similar thing with the DetailsView control by choosing the ‘Edit Fields’ item in the Smart Tasks panel of the DetailsView control.

Bala Chirtsabesan
SDET | Visual Web Developer

Tip#63: Did you know…How to specify a fixed port for Visual Studio Development Server while using WAPs?

WebDevTools — Wed, 20 May 2009 00:59:18 GMT

In Tip#21 we showed you how to set a fixed port for the Developer Web Server in Web Sites.

Here is how you will be able to configure this for Web Application Projects.

1. Go to the properties page of WAP. Right Click on your Web Application and click on Properties in context menu. This will take you to the Properties page.

2. Select Web Tab in this page.

3. Under Servers section, select the Use Visual Studio Development Server option. Then select Specific Port and enter the port on which you want your App to run.

4. View your page in browser and you will see that Visual studio has assigned the port you configured for your Development Server.

Enjoy!

Reshmi Mangalore

SDET, Visual Web Developer

Tip #61: Did you know… How to create an ASP.Net Dynamic Data Web Site?

WebDevTools — Thu, 14 May 2009 21:54:22 GMT

If your web site is heavily data driven then here is a quick and easy way for you to create one without writing much code. All you need is Visual Studio 2008 SP1 or Visual Web Developer 2008 Express SP1 installed on your box.

Dynamic Data Web Sites makes use of a mechanism called Scaffolding. When Scaffolding is enabled it lets ASP.Net go through your data model and generate web pages for your tables. These generated pages have Insert, Delete and Update capabilities for each table.

Here are the steps:

Step 1: Create a Dynamic Data Web Site.

Go to File ->New Web Site and select Dynamic Data Web Site template. Give it a name and select the location and language to be used. Click Ok button.

Step 2: Add data to your Web Site.

Copy paste pubs.mdf file that you want to use in your App_Data folder.

Step 3: Create a Data model using LINQ to SQL.

Right click on App_code and Add New LINQ to SQL Classes. On selecting the LINQ to SQL Classes the DataClasses.dbml opens up in your O/R Designer.

Step 4: Drag drop tables to Object Relational Designer.

Now drag drop Authors table on to the O/R Designer from server explorer and save DataClassses.dbml.

Step 5: Look what VS has created for you.

Note that there are two files DataClasses.dbml.layout and DataCalsses.designer.vb present under the .dbml file node.

Open DataCalsses.designer.vb, and you can see that there is a Partial Public Class DataClassesDataContext. This file also contains an entity class for Author table (Partial Public Class author).

Step 6: Register the data context in Global.asax file.

Open global.asax page and add the following lines of code in RegisterRoutes method.

VB code:

model.RegisterContext(GetType(AdventureWorksDataContext), _ New ContextConfiguration() With {.ScaffoldAllTables = True})

C# code:

model.RegisterContext(typeof(AdventureWorksDataContext), new ContextConfiguration() { ScaffoldAllTables = true });

Save the file.

Step 7: View the page in Browser

Now you can view default.aspx page using View in Browser. This will show you a link for Authors table.

Click on the table name and you will see a page with data from Authors Table. There is also readymade option for you to Edit, Delete and Insert new data.

Try this today and have fun!

Reshmi Mangalore

SDET, Web Development Tools