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

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#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

Tip #29: Did you know… How to enable Edit and Continue feature for Web Application Projects?

WebDevTools — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:06:59 GMT

If you want to edit your WAPs while debugging them, here is how you do it:

1. Check the “Enable Edit and Continue” checkbox in the Web Properties page.

2. Check the “Enable Edit and Continue” checkbox under Tools->Options->Debugging->Edit and Continue

These two setting will enable Edit and Continue as you debug your WAPs.

Reshmi Mangalore

SDET, Visual Web Developer

Tip #20: Did you know… How to change WAP to use an IIS Web server?

WebDevTools — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 03:39:09 GMT

Sometimes while developing WAP you might want to switch to IIS Web server instead of the Visual Studio Development Server provided by VWD.

Here is how you do it:

1. Go to the Properties page of WAP by clicking on properties under WAP in Solution Explorer or Right click on WAP and select Properties from the context menu.

2. This will bring up the properties page as shown below.

3. In the Properties page, select the Web tab on the left hand side as marked in the picture above.

4. Under Servers, select the “Use IIS Web Server” radio button and click on the Create Virtual Directory button next to it. VWD will then create virtual directory for you.

You are all set now to run your WAP on local IIS.

Reshmi Mangalore

SDET, Visual Web Developer

Tip #17: Did you know... How to remote debug WAPs that are using IIS?

WebDevTools — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:05:00 GMT

If you want to work on an web application project using IIS that is sitting on another server, you can use the remote debugger and the web property pages in Visual Studio 2008 SP1.

First, open your web application project on the server (e.g. \\server\share), by going to File > Open Project. If you right click on your project and select Properties, then select the “Web” tab, in the “Servers” section you’ll see “Use Custom Web Server” radio button.

With this selected, enter the URL of your web site. Then, start your remote debugger on the web server. Now browsers will be launched with that URL, and your breakpoints will be hit.

John Dundon
SDET | Visual Web Developer