Category Archives: .NET 3.5 - Page 3

Hidden Gems in Visual Basic 2008 by Amanda Silver

Posted by on December 11, 2007 No comments

I found that one at the Visual Basic Team Blog. Over here she puts together a list of some of the new features in Visual Basic 2008:

I like these icon smile Hidden Gems in Visual Basic 2008 by Amanda Silver
2) If Operator

Ever notice that the IIF function returns something of type Object? This means that you don’t get Intellisense or type-checking by default on that result. For those of you that insist on type-safe, early-bound code, you have to cast the result. The code then looks something like this:

Dim intC As Integer = CInt(IIf(intA = intB, intA, intB - 1))

With the If operator, you can now write that line as:

Dim intD As Integer = If(intA = intB, intA, intB)

And with type inference it gets even easier on the eyes:

clip image004 thumb Hidden Gems in Visual Basic 2008 by Amanda Silver

4) Nullable

Nullable is the feature you’ll notice but rarely have to think about. It’s basically the .NET representation for a Nullable value type (Integer, Date, etc.) Using the designer for LINQ to SQL, the Object-Relational Mapping layer introduced in Visual Studio 2008, nullable columns in your database are mapped to this type. The result is that you can write the following expression in VB and the right thing happens – null valued rows propagate null. In the example below, the Independence property on the Country type is a nullable date, denoted as Date?

        Dim virginIslands As New Country With {.Independence = Nothing}
        Dim palau As New Country With {.Independence = #10/1/1994#}
 
        Dim vILength = #8/24/2005# - virginIslands.Independence ' Nothing
        Dim pLength = #8/24/2005# - palau.Independence ' 3980.00:00:00

9) Type inference for loop variables

Check out the following code:

clip image020 thumb Hidden Gems in Visual Basic 2008 by Amanda Silver

And this code:

clip image022 thumb Hidden Gems in Visual Basic 2008 by Amanda Silver

Without having to specify the type of the control variable, it’s inferred from right-hand-side expression or the collection we’re iterating over.

read all of them from here

Extending Base Type Functionality with Extension Methods

Posted by on December 10, 2007 No comments

This article comes from Scott Mitchell at 4guysfromrolla.com. Its good post which I liked and wanna share with you:

Extension methods allow a developer to tack on her own methods to an existing class in the .NET Framework. For example, imagine that our developer created a method named StripHtml, that strips HTML elements from a string using a regular expression. By associating this method with the System.String class, it could be called as if it was one of the System.String class’s built-in methods:

Dim str As String = "<b>Hello, world!</b>"
Dim strippedString = str.StripHtml()

Creating the Extension Methods with Visual Basic
In order to create the extension methods in Visual Basic we need to first create a Module. For each extension method you want to create, add a method whose first input parameter is of the type that you want to add the extension method to. Moreover, prefix the method with the Extension() attribute.

The following Module named DateTimeHelpers contains two methods: ToRelativeToCurrentTimeString(DateTime) and ToRelativeToCurrentUtcTimeString(DateTime), both of which accept a DateTime instance as their first input parameter. The methods are also marked with the Extension() attribute (which is found in the System.Runtime.CompilerServices namespace). The two methods call the private ToRelativeString method, which returns the appropriate string message based on the difference in time between the two passed-in DateTime values.

Imports System.Runtime.CompilerServices
Imports Microsoft.VisualBasic
 
Namespace Helpers
    Public Module DateTimeHelpers
       <Extension()> _
       Public Function ToRelativeToCurrentTimeString(ByVal dt As DateTime) As String
            Return ToRelativeString(dt, DateTime.Now)
       End Function
 
       <Extension()> _
       Public Function ToRelativeToCurrentUtcTimeString(ByVal dt As DateTime) As String
            Return ToRelativeString(dt, DateTime.UtcNow)
       End Function
 
       Private Function ToRelativeString(ByVal timeInPast As DateTime, ByVal currentTime As DateTime) As String
            If timeInPast.Date <> currentTime.Date Then
                ' timeInPast happend more than a day ago... show the date & time
                Return timeInPast.ToString()
            Else
                ' timeInPast and currentTime happened on the same day...
                Dim secondsApart As Integer = Convert.ToInt32(currentTime.Subtract(timeInPast).TotalSeconds)
 
                ' See if the date dt is within the last hour...
                If secondsApart < 10 Then
                   Return "Seconds ago..."
                ElseIf secondsApart < 60 Then
                   Return "Less than a minute ago..."
                ElseIf secondsApart < 3600 Then
                   Return String.Format("{0:N0} minutes ago...", secondsApart / 60 + 1)
                End If
 
                ' Ok, the date is more than an hour old... show the time
                Return timeInPast.ToShortTimeString()
            End If
       End Function
    End Module
End Namespace

We can now call these extension methods from a DateTime instance. In order to use an extension method, we first need to add an Imports directive to the code file, importing the namespace where the extension methods reside (Helpers). Upon doing that, the extension method is visible in the IntelliSense drop-down list, as the following screen shot illustrates.
ExtMethods1 Extending Base Type Functionality with Extension Methods
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ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions CTP Preview Released

Posted by on December 10, 2007 No comments

Few days ago from Microsoft released ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions CTP Preview. This release brings additional runtime functionality to ASP.NET and .NET 3.5. You can download it here.

Here is what this release includes:

* ASP.NET AJAX Improvements: New ASP.NET AJAX features in the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions release include better browser history support (back/forward button integration, and server-side history management support), improved AJAX content linking support with permalinks, and additional JavaScript library improvements.

* ASP.NET MVC: This model view controller (MVC) framework for ASP.NET provides a structured model that enables a clear separation of concerns within web applications, and makes it easier to unit test your code and support a TDD workflow. It also helps provide more control over the URLs you publish in your applications, and more control over the HTML that is emitted from them.

* ASP.NET Dynamic Data Support: The ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions release delivers new features that enable faster creation of data driven web sites. It provides a rich scaffolding framework, and will enable rapid data driven site development using both ASP.NET WebForms and ASP.NET MVC.

* ASP.NET Silverlight Support: With the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions release we’ll deliver support for easily integrating Silverlight within your ASP.NET applications. Included will be new controls that make it easy to integrate Silverlight video/media and interactive content within your sites.

* ADO.NET Data Services: In parallel with the ASP.NET Extensions release we will also be releasing the ADO.NET Entity Framework. This provides a modeling framework that enables developers to define a conceptual model of a database schema that closely aligns to a real world view of the information. We will also be shipping a new set of data services (codename “Astoria”) that make it easy to expose REST based API endpoints from within your ASP.NET applications.

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Converting SQL to LINQ – DISTINCT, WHERE, ORDER BY and Operators

Posted by on December 4, 2007 3 comments

Bill Horst continues with those simple examples. After this one here comes the other set. They are perfect to show basic syntax. Here are few more:

DISTINCT
SQL SELECT statements can include the DISTINCT specifier, which causes all duplicate records in the query result to be removed. In a LINQ expression, Distinct is its own individual clause, rather than a specifier on the Select clause. This means that Distinct can appear between any two other clauses. The Distinct clause takes whatever result is returned by the preceding clause (Select, in the case below) and returns a filtered result with duplicates removed. To two code examples below accomplish the same results:

SQL

SELECT DISTINCT Name, Address
FROM CustomerTable

VB

From Contact In CustomerTable _
Select Contact.Name, Contact.Address _
Distinct

ORDER BY
The SQL ORDER BY clause can also be represented in a LINQ expression. A LINQ Order By clause allows for a comma-delimited list of expressions to specify how results should be sorted. Any valid VB expression can be used, so these expressions don’t necessarily have to be the names of field that were selected.

SQL

SELECT * FROM CustomerTable
ORDER BY Phone

VB

From Contact In CustomerTable _
Order By Contact.Phone

ASC/DESC
A SQL ORDER BY clause can also include ASC and DESC keywords, to specify that the sort should be in ascending or descending order, respectively. VB uses Ascending and Descending keywords for the same purpose, with the same syntax. If neither specifier is present, ascending order is the default.

SQL

SELECT * FROM CustomerTable
ORDER BY Phone ASC, Name DESC

VB

From Contact In CustomerTable _
Order By Contact.Phone Ascending, Contact.Name Descending

Here is the original post by Bill Horst

Two interesting posts!

Posted by on December 3, 2007 No comments

I have severe lack of time so thats the reason to blog about the following posts in one short notice. Few weeks ago I came across Matt Berseth’s blog and made me quite good impression. He blogs frequently and providing quality posts. His last two I liked a lot.

The first one was about how to create image reflections. He describes three practices:

image%7B0%7D%5B4%5D Two interesting posts!

– Browser Specific Client Side Solution
– Cross Browser Client Side Solution
– Cross Browser Server Side Solution

Which one we choose is a matter of what we really want – rendering time or support for all browsers.

Then he wrote about my favourtite IDE – Visual Studio 2008. Matt described how we can use the new ListVew control plus adding DataPager control and extend it with SliderExtender Control from AjaxControlToolkit.

image%7B0%7D Two interesting posts!

This post is provided with demo and source code for download. Thanks Matt!

Converting SQL to LINQ

Posted by on December 3, 2007 3 comments

This is a series of posts regarding the new language improvements in VB 9. Bill Horst has written the second on which I came across here. As we all know VB LINQ statements enable SQL-like syntax for queries in the VB language. LINQ syntax doesn’t match SQL syntax exactly, so if you are already working with SQL or familiar with SQL queries, you may find yourself wanting to convert an existing SQL query to LINQ.

And here is an example with FROM clause:

A SQL SELECT statement always begins with a SELECT Clause, followed by a FROM Clause. A VB query expression always begins with a From Clause or Aggregate Clause (Aggregate will be discussed later). A basic SQL FROM clause specifies a table over which to query, and similarly, a LINQ From Clause specifies an object over which to query (CustomerTable). This object could represent “In-Memory” data, a SQL data table, or XML information. My examples use the “In-Memory” case, since it allows the simplest code. In addition to this data object, the VB From clause always includes an identifier for the current “row” (Contact), which basically functions as an alias.

SQL

SELECT Contact.CustomerID, Contact.Phone
FROM CustomerTable Contact

LINQ

From Contact In CustomerTable
Select Contact.CustomerID, Contact.Phone

Here is the whole post by Bill Horst.

In it training, the order of courses matters a lot. Doing 70-290 after 70-270 makes more sense rather than the vice versa. This holds true for 70-291 as well. A 642-901 should be attempted after 642 series, not something as basic as 70-297.

Silverlight 1.1 Tools Alpha for Visual Studio 2008

Posted by on November 27, 2007 1 comment

This afternoon from Microsoft released an updated version of the Silverlight 1.1 Tools Alpha that works with the final release of Visual Studio 2008. You can download it for free here.
silverlight Silverlight 1.1 Tools Alpha for Visual Studio 2008
The tools alpha refresh released today has the same feature-set as the Silverlight Tools Alpha add-on which was previously available for Visual Studio 2008 Beta2 (it has simply been updated to work with the final VS 2008 release). This feature-set includes basic Silverlight 1.1 project system support, XAML markup editing and intellisense support, debugging support, Expression Blend project compatibility, and VB and C# code-behind intellisense. You can find quickstart tutorials that detail how to use these features here.

The next public preview of Silverlight will include a ton of new runtime features, as well as a significantly enhanced VS 2008 tooling support. Scott Guthrie will be blogging more details about this shortly.

Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 Released

Posted by on November 19, 2007 1 comment

Today Microsoft shipped Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5. You can download the final release using one of the links below:

* If you are a MSDN subscriber, you can download your copy from the MSDN subscription site (note: some of the builds are just finishing being uploaded now – so check back later during the day if you don’t see it yet).

* If you are a non-MSDN subscriber, you can download a 90-day free trial edition of Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite here. A 90-day trial edition of Visual Studio 2008 Professional (which will be a slightly smaller download) will be available next week. A 90-day free trial edition of Team Foundation Server can also be downloaded here.

*If you want to use the free Visual Studio 2008 Express editions (which are much smaller and totally free), you can download them here.

* If you want to just install the .NET Framework 3.5 runtime, you can download it here.

List of New Features – old version

– VS 2008 Multi-Targeting Support
VS 2008 enables you to build applications that target multiple versions of the .NET Framework. This means you can use VS 2008 to open, edit and build existing .NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 2.0 applications (including ASP.NET 2.0 applications using ASP.NET AJAX 1.0), and continue to deploy these application on .NET 2.0 machines.

– ASP.NET AJAX and JavaScript Support
.NET 3.5 has ASP.NET AJAX built-in (no separate download required). In addition to including all of the features in ASP.NET AJAX 1.0, ASP.NET 3.5 also now includes richer support for UpdatePanels integrating with WebParts, ASP.NET AJAX integration with controls like and , WCF support for JSON, and many other AJAX improvements.

– VS 2008 Web Designer and CSS Support
VS 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express includes a significantly improved HTML web designer (the same one that ships with Expression Web). This delivers support for split-view editing, nested master pages, and great CSS integration.

– Language Improvements and LINQ
The new VB and C# compilers in VS 2008 deliver significant improvements to the languages. Both add functional programming concepts that enable you to write cleaner, terser, and more expressive code. These features also enable a new programming model we call LINQ (language integrated query) that makes querying and working with data a first-class programming concept with .NET.

– Data Access Improvements with LINQ to SQL
LINQ to SQL is a built-in OR/M (object relational mapper) in .NET 3.5. It enables you to model relational databases using a .NET object model. You can then query the database using LINQ, as well as update/insert/delete data from it. LINQ to SQL fully supports transactions, views, and stored procedures. It also provides an easy way to integrate business logic and validation rules into your data model.

– Browsing the .NET Framework Library Source using Visual Studio

Lots of other improvements

The list above is only a small set of the improvements coming. For client development VS 2008 includes WPF designer and project support. ClickOnce and WPF XBAPs now work with FireFox. WinForms and WPF projects can also now use the ASP.NET Application Services (Membership, Roles, Profile) for roaming user data.

Office development is much richer – including support for integrating with the Office 2007 ribbon, and with Outlook. Visual Studio Tools for Office support is also now built-into Visual Studio (you no longer need to buy a separate product).

New WCF and Workflow projects and designers are now included in VS 2008. Unit testing support is now much faster and included in VS Professional (and no longer just VSTS). Continuous Integration support is now built-in with TFS. AJAX web testing (unit and load) is now supported in the VS Test SKU. And there is much, much more…

Installation Suggestions

People often ask me for suggestions on how best to upgrade from previous betas of Visual Studio 2008. In general I’d recommend uninstalling the Beta2 bits explicitly. As part of this you should uninstall Visual Studio 2008 Beta2, .NET Framework Beta2, as well as the Visual Studio Web Authoring Component (these are all separate installs and need to be uninstalled separately). I then usually recommend rebooting the machine after uninstalling just to make sure everything is clean before you kick off the new install. You can then install the final release of VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 on the machine.

Once installed, I usually recommend explicitly running the Tools->Import and Export Settings menu option, choosing the “Reset Settings” option, and then re-pick your preferred profile. This helps ensure that older settings from the Beta2 release are no longer around (and sometimes seems to help with performance).

Note that VS 2008 runs side-by-side with VS 2005 – so it is totally fine to have both on the same machine (you will not have any problems with them on the same box).

Silverlight Tools and VS Web Deployment Project Add-Ins

Two popular add-ins to Visual Studio are not yet available to download for the final VS 2008 release. These are the Silverlight 1.1 Tools Alpha for Visual Studio and the Web Deployment Project add-in for Visual Studio. Our hope is to post updates to both of them to work with the final VS 2008 release in the next two weeks. If you are doing Silverlight 1.1 development using VS 2008 Beta2 you’ll want to stick with with VS 2008 Beta2 until this updated Silverlight Tools Add-In is available.

Read Scott Gu