{Steve!=null}

Developer thoughts and musings

Archive for April, 2008

NHibernate Query Generator

April 26th, 2008

I finally took the time today to get NHibernate Query Generator running in my project. I should have done this a long time ago!

NHQG makes querying more intuitive then the Criteria.

Ayende is the creator – here is one link that show him introducing version 1.5 (I’m using 1.8)

You can download it here

To integrate with VS 2008, there is a registry key needed you can get here (thank you Ryan Cromwell!). Ryan has a link here and here (I did this one, not the first one – but I will look into it) about installing and using it.

Last link for the topic – building up a dynamic query with the NHQG QueryBuilder

I used this with my Spring.NET/NHibernate Dao classes fairly easy. My base class would have something like ‘FindAll(DetachedCriteria criteria, Order order)’

So, my query is something like this then:

List<Person> people = PersonDao.FindAll(Where.Person.FirstName == ‘Steve’, OrderBy.Person.LastName);

It supports ‘Where’, ‘Group’ ‘Projection’ and ‘OrderBy’. You build up the queries just like OO collection building (similiar perhaps to Linq).

Where.Person.FirstName.InSensitiveLike(‘eve’, MatchMode.StartsWith);

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Posted in Uncategorized

Ruby and Visual Studio – Sapphire Steel

April 25th, 2008

http://www.sapphiresteel.com/-Blog-

This might be the occasion to really jump in and try Ruby. Sapphire Steel has Ruby integration with Visual Studio, including drag and drop UI for building forms, etc…

Update: I didn’t realize this wasn’t opensource. I will pass on it for now. If anyone has a good recommendation for a ruby ide let me know

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Posted in General

Rick Strahl on jQuery AJAX calls to a WCF REST Service

April 21st, 2008

Rick Strahl has a blog post on using jQuery ajax calls to a WCF REST service:

http://west-wind.com/weblog/posts/324917.aspx

This will come in handy using asp.net mvc with jQuery going forward!

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Posted in WCF, jQuery

ASP.NET MVC Source Refresh Preview

April 17th, 2008

Scott Guthrie has posted on update on asp.net mvc, outlining some new features and upcoming changes…

The testing with the ActionResult on the action looks good. I also noticed they internally use Moq to do their mocking. Moq is very slick! What is really good to see is that this framework is being built with testing in mind. That is a big deal that shouldn’t be overlooked or brushed off lightly. Very refreshing !

Other changes include empty ‘RenderView’ calls that default to the action’s name (Monorail did this).

Other items include the new MapRoute helper, which support characters in the url (this should help in the senario I had where I was using ‘gamertags’ that were sometimes problematic, ie. 4./Jg53_Recon -> the url didn’t like this too much

“Note that in addition to using the new routing system for ASP.NET MVC scenarios, we are also now using the same routing system within ASP.NET Dynamic Data (which uses ASP.NET Web Forms).”

I haven’t used the ‘RouteLink’ html helper, but it looks powerful and Scott includes a sample on this as well.

I will most likely wait for the preview 3 drop, but it’s good to see what is coming down the road (I also wonder how many ‘preview’ numbers we’ll have – lol)

Big thanks to Mr. Gu for this update!

Update 1: In the comments section:

>>>>>> Will this new official preview version 3, support dynamic languages.
Dynamic language and DRL support is coming. Expect more samples on this soon.

Update 2: Walkthrough of using pre-Preview 3 By Fredrik Normen (great blog site by the way)

This walkthrough highlights some of the changes that Scott mentioned:

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Posted in MVC

MS MVC – jQuery Ajax’d Forms

April 11th, 2008

First, check out the link to the form quickstart: http://malsup.com/jquery/form/

Within my MS MVC control I have the following:

<form id="frmAddEmployeePlan" action="/Employee/SaveEmployeePlan" method="post">
<%= Html.TextBox("CompanyContributionAmount", "")%>
<input type="submit" value="Save" />

That is the form. I kept it simple for the demo.

Note the action – this is key – I’m sending it to the Employee controller’s ‘SaveEmployeePlan’ action.

At the top of this form I have the following javascript to wire up the ajax form:

<script type="text/javascript">
$(function(){

    $('#frmAddEmployeePlan').ajaxForm(function() {
                alert("Thank you for your comment!");
            });

   });

This is fairly straight forward jQuery stuff. Basically it intercepts the form request, makes it an ajax call.

Now in my SaveEmployeePlan:

public void SaveEmployeePlan()
        {
            string test = this.ReadFromRequest("CompanyContributionAmount");
        }

I read the request in just to validate it works – works great.

Very simple example, I would use some of the options here: http://malsup.com/jquery/form/#code-samples

ie. in their example it shows this:

// prepare the form when the DOM is ready 
$(document).ready(function() {
    var options = {
        target:        '#output1',   // target element(s) to be updated with server response 
        beforeSubmit:  showRequest,  // pre-submit callback 
        success:       showResponse  // post-submit callback 

        // other available options:
        //url:       url         // override for form's 'action' attribute
        //type:      type        // 'get' or 'post', override for form's 'method' attribute
        //dataType:  null        // 'xml', 'script', or 'json' (expected server response type)
        //clearForm: true        // clear all form fields after successful submit
        //resetForm: true        // reset the form after successful submit 

        // $.ajax options can be used here too, for example:
        //timeout:   3000 
    }; 

    // bind form using 'ajaxForm' 
    $('#myForm1').ajaxForm(options);
});

The target here is key. So on my form I would setup a div with an id of ‘output1′ and write the ‘thank you’ into that div and then use the ‘clearForm : true’

ie.

public void SaveEmployeePlan()
        {
            //collect form data and save it
            Response.Write("Thank you");
        }

Slick eh?

2 comments »

Posted in MVC, jQuery

Posting comments and WordPress Themes

April 10th, 2008

I’ve switched back to more of an original wordpress theme, it appears the one I was using has problems with comments.

I know the problem with the default is that the text runs off to the right, so I’ll have to investigate that next.

So, you might see the themes change as I experiment with WordPress

Thanks

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Posted in General

MS MVC, Spring.NET, NHibernate, jQuery and Ajax

April 9th, 2008

I’m finding these tools/technologies to be a great fit for each other. In my application I’m allowing Spring.NET to inject my Dao objects with Spring.NET handling the session management of NHibernate. In addition, each Dao that is used by a MS MVC controller is injected into the controller by Spring.NET.

So my first real test is loading a Company screen with MS MVC. The overall UI design is that each aspect of a company will be viewable using jQuery tabs with a tab view. ie. CompanyInfo, CompanyAddress, CompanyBilling, CompanyBanking, CompanyEmployees, etc… The customer wants quick and easy accesses. They load a company via a simple search and view this information.

To faciliate this, I created a MS MVC view control for each of the above. Each tab renders each control.

Initially I noticed a problem here: with NHibernate lazy-load, the view was making many database calls to populate each tab view, regardless if the tab was even viewed. ie. Billing and Banking info are in the query, and loaded, even if the customer is just looking at ‘company info’.

With some quick and easy jQuery to the rescue and using MS MVC RESTful controller/actions, I was able to solve this problem rather quickly, and quite honestly, I’m very happy with the results. The approach is that jQuery tabs can capture that the user clicks on the tab. When this occurs the data is loaded into a MS MVC control using ajax (the user sees a loading progress indicator) and displayed in the View. This takes advantage of NHibernate lazy load as well. NHibernate will not query out to that object until it’s accessed.

If I get a chance, I’ll include some code snippet and some pretty pictures… Let me know if that would be helpful.