Can anyone point me to some good resources that can help me understand the best way to work with hierarchical data in ASP.NET MVC 2?
I have an application under development that requires an interface allowing users to add, remove and modify children and grand-children of my root object. The user can make multiple changes without persistance. Only when they click "Save" will the entire object graph be saved.
I've seen one article that serialized the object and stored the data in a hidden field on the form but that seems really cludgy and I am dealing with a lot of data.
If I was doing this in standard ASP.NET, I'd be looking at using child windows and the like to display the edit pages and maintain an instance of the object being edited in Session - which is bad in and of itself. But I've been told we are using MVC as we are standardizing our platforms (but not moving up to MVC 3 yet).
Essentially I need that app to display the properties of my root which includes a child collection of objects. The UI should allow the user to add new items to the collection, remove existing items and 'open' an item for editing. These child items also contain their own list of grandchildren that is editable as well. All of this needs to go on without round-trips across the wire to persist data (its a distributed architecture with all data access behind a WCF service interface).
The examples on www.asp.net all persist the data each time a single change is made, i.e. each postback. But, that would require major schema changes and extra code to deal with temporary objects versus committed objects plus the overhead of the service calls each time. I'm looking for a better solution.
Have you considered looking at any client side libraries like Knockout.JS? I've found that it is excellent at manipulating collections and posting the final version as JSON. Here is an example of what you can do with it. Here is an article about how to integrate it with MVC 2. This is my absolute favorite JS library.
Related
I m new to Umbraco, I have watched Umbraco.tv videos and want to use Umbraco in a project as a cms for managing and editing content. I am highly thankful for your guidance, time and for your thoughts on 3 questions:
How a Umbraco based data driven proejct should be architecutured ? For custom database tables do you use a separate database or same Umbraco database ?
How you work with custom data (non content) ? Do you make everything a document type, even if it is data which you are not going to create content of, for example a simple form submitted data ?
For DAL what technology or ORM you use ? Does Umbraco provide any API for saving simple data which is not a content or document type ?
Thank you so much once again.
1 The architecture question is important but it also has be considered against how complex the project needs to be.
I would usually recommend a separate database for non-Umbraco data since this keeps everything nicely independent and manageable especially as projects grow. It also means that CMS-specific data (i.e. content) can be kept separately from none-CMS data, e.g. user registrations.
However, if the project is small and isn't likely to grow, keep it simple. Use the same database and piggy back off Umbraco's implementation of the Petapoco ORM. For example:
ApplicationContext.DatabaseContext.Database.Save(new Thing());
Or
var item = ApplicationContext.DatabaseContext.Database.Single(thingId);
2 For custom data, again it's a matter of need, maintainability and simplicity. Only use document types for what needs to be and can be stored in the CMS. My personal rule is that if it isn't content or organises content then it doesn't belong in the CMS. For example news and news categories obviously belong in the CMS. However, the comments made on an article have no reason to in the CMS.
3 With regards to DAL, as I have said, Umbraco has an implementation of Petapoco that can be used out of the box. If the project is basic enough, just use that. There is little point in using anything else unless you need some separation and/or some additional grunt in which case I would recommend using NHibernate or EF.
In addition to the points above,
Use NuGet;
Use the MVC mode of Umbraco, as it will provide you with substantially more flexibility. Check out the Hybrid Framework as it provides a very good start point for a robust and flexible project architecture;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PtzyrEFG7I.
You always need a doctype in Umbraco, even if a page doesn't offer any WYSIWYG type editability
I would recommend using a Service Oriented Architecture, and the .dlls you drop into Umbraco can call the service. You can then deploy this service and have full control over how you do data access. Choose whatever method you want. Most modern sites use an ORM and it doesn't matter which, although nHIbernate and Entity Framework are the favourites. Don't be frightened to mix and match a more direct form of data access though as it can give you more control, especially in situations where performance optimisation of large queries is important.
If you're not familiar with adding custom .NET functionality into Umbraco, Trying out adding .NET user controls into Umbraco will give you a good start, and to help you to understand how you can utilise your own .dlls in Umbraco:
http://umbraco.com/help-and-support/video-tutorials/introduction-to-umbraco/developer-introduction/using-net-user-controls.aspx
Anything custom I put in the same database as my Umbraco installation, but everything in custom tables. I don't touch the Umbraco tabes, I would not want to affect my future version updates.
Form submitted data I store in my own custom tables, I avoid creating content nodes with those, it's often tricky and doesn't give me the flexebility I often need. What I do instead is create an "Admin" document type, that is behind login (hard coded access, but easy to hook up to Umbraco users / members if wanted) and use my own custom UI to display my stored custom data.
I use PetaPoto (http://www.toptensoftware.com/petapoco/), it's a micro ORM that is added through a single file (installation is so easy then), using the same db connection string. Then I create custom models as I need and with with parts of the MVC. I normally stay away from route hijacking and rather use Surface Controllers and ajax calls for almost everything.
Hope this helps!
You can use the database containing the Umbraco tables for tables not used in Umbraco. If there are no hosting problems for you using multiple databases then you can simply link to a second database in the web.config - this would be safer than using the default Umbraco database as Umbraco packages often add database tables & there could be naming conflicts.
Viewing non-Umbraco data (eg from a database) is best done by adding macros that access the data using standard .Net patterns (eg razor scripts, .Net User Controls) & then in Umbraco you add in a reference to the macro in the template (view). You can use multiple templates (views) for any document type; so if you have a document type called 'forms' that contains no data you can use the 'allowed templates' checkboxes to say which view(s) are valid for this document type. When you add a content item you must specify a doc type at the start, but the template (view) can be changed at any time.
If you are storing data any .Net ORM will work with Umbraco (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_object-relational_mapping_software#.NET) I've used Linq to Sql, Subsonic & Dapper before now - but there are lots of options.
Take a look at my example using umbraco within Onion Architecture
https://github.com/afroukh/OnionCMS
I'm building a large hierarchical web application and I need some help deciding on some best practices with leveraging MVC.
The application will have tabs at the top which control a sub page, and a query pane (off to the side).
There will be two templates for query panes, each used by different sub-pages. The sub-pages will be based on the selected tab with settings derived from the query panes.
Clicking on tabs or updating the query pane will update the sub-page section without refreshing the page.
I'm a bit new to MVC and what I don't quite understand is how I can leverage MVC methodologies to help me manage the web application's state (which consists of the selected tab, query options, and other page-specific options).
Currently I'm planning on initially setting up a model which stores the client state parameters (default values, or values obtained from a DB), and using it to load the page, consisting of several partial views. When anything is changed (tab/query/etc), the view will call a corresponding controller, passing back model parameters via post (I'm assuming there's no way to store session-specific client state models on the server-side?).
My question is:
Am I doing it right?
If not, what am I missing; and specifically, is there a way to store these session-specific state models server side so they don't have to be passed back to the server during every single page transaction?
If I understood everything you need Its a SPA (Single Page Application). This will provide a magic user experience, without full page reload, and low data traffic. But, requireds some MVVM framework (AngularJS, KnockoutJs, etc) and a lot of JavaScript coding. But the result is amazing. The guy behind this in MVC is John Papa, take a look in everything on his blog and you will win.
John Papa Blog
Hopes Its Help you
I'm currently looking into client side model binding to HTML templates especially with angularjs. I was wondering what the best strategy is for retrieving clientside viewmodels from the server, e.g. a viewmodel containing not only the data for editing but also the data for select lists or drop down lists etc..
As I see it , one has several options
retrieve one viewmodel from the server using e.g. web api, containing ALL the data needed for the view model
render a client side viewmodel to javascript inside the server side html
retrieve data for the viewmodel using multiple web api calls, e.g one for the main data to be edited, and one for each additional data (select lists)
I didn't encounter many examples for option 1 as it seems that web api is used mostly for crud operations returning specific data for one type of object e.g. Person or Order
option 2 conforms to the practice of server side view models with asp.net mvc but I have not seen many examples using this technique in combination with angularjs
option 3 looks clean if one considers seperation of concerns, but has the disadvantage of multiple smaller ajax requests.
Could you share your thoughts and experiences ?
Personally, I use option #3. The app would make requests to "prepare the editor", such as populating dropdown lists, and requests to fetch the data you want to edit (or, if you are creating a new object, any default initial values). I think this separates concerns better than option #1, which ties together "model" data and "support" data.
But as you pointed out, this does make extra calls, and, if they are very numerous, can noticeably slow down the page. (or increase complexity; on a big form with lots of dependent fields, ordering may become important).
What I usually do is have the server provide a "combined" api (e.g. /editor/prepare-all) while also providing small pieces (e.g. /editor/prepare-dropdown-1, /editor/prepare-dropdown-2). When your editor loads, you use the combined one; if there are dependencies between fields, you can request only the data for the dependent fields (e.g. /editor/prepare-dropdown-2?dropdown1-value=123). I believe this has little impact on the server's complexity.
I would agree with st. never and have definitely used option #3 and I think combining $resource and Web API would be a perfect RAD combination. However, I've also worked on very complex screens where I've wanted sub-second response times so I've resorted to optimise the entire development 'column' - I develop using SQL Server as my backend database so I've used it's native support for XML to return structured XML from a stored procedure which I then serialise into a .Net Model (POCO) which I then pass to a Json serialiser for transfer to the browser. I might have some extra business processing to perform against the POCO but this still leads to a very simple code structure to transfer a fairly complex structure of data. Typically it's also very fast because I've made one call to the database and monitoring and optimising one stored procedure is very simple.
I have a system written in ASP.Net 2.0 Web Form. The framework that talks to MySQL Server is really cool. It reads all controls inside the server form tag or panel and does CRUD operations on the target table.
When I create the CRUD page, I just need to create the table in database user{id,name,password,createdate} and I just need to use id to be the exact column name in the table. The controls can be input/select/option/chekbox/textarea or even FCK Editor or CK Editor on the page. The framework loops through all the controls inside the Panel and save/edit/delete. If I want to add some new fields, email and mobile, I just need to add two controls on the page and add two more columns in the table. That's it. I don't have to change anything in page.aspx.cs file, Entity Layer, Business Layer or Data Access Layer. It is VERY easy to implement and maintain.
We want to upgrade the system to use ASP.Net 4 MVC3 with Entity Framework CT5. We will rebuild the whole system from the scratch. I was hoping some experts here could give me some pointers. I found the following two options to rebuild the system.
1. Code First
Our new system will do the exactly the same operations as the above framework. It will loop through all Request.Forms data and map them with its associate table in the database and save/update/delete all the data. To do this, view will post the form data, controller will accept the values with the Entity classes and save them to the database via EF. I still need to create ViewModel class to display data on View. If there is any change like adding email and mobile fields to user page, I still need to change three places view, entity(domain class) and ViewModel. I don't have to change anything in database as EF will automatically run ALTER TABLE to add two new fields. I still cannot figure out how to minimize the needs of both entity and viewmodel classes.
2. Database First
I really do not prefer this way but I will if this solution provides more flexible operations. I will create the columns in database, the system will dynamically create the ViewModel(I am still figuring out how to do that) reading all columns in the table, and display data on the page. When the view post data it needs to dynamically create the entity class and save the changes to the database.
EDIT:
Reasons of upgrading the current system.
We want to use the power of new features in .Net 4, Linq, Entity Framework, unobtrusive javascript library, easifer to work with JSON data, Remote Validation(We can use RequireFieldValidator, RegExValidator in current system but they are limited, for eg: validation on input checkboxes and option), duck typing with var and interface.
Our new system will do the exactly the same operations as the above
framework. It will loop through all Request.Forms data and map them
with its associate table in the database and save/update/delete all
the data. To do this, view will post the form data, controller will
accept the values with the Entity classes and save them to the
database via EF.
Someone please slap me if I'm missing something here, but these statements seem contradictory to me. If you want a system that will automatically parse the Request.Forms data and map them directly to a database table, then why would you need to use Entity Framework (or any other kind of middleware) at all? The point of EF, or any ORM, is to create a meaningful collection of conceptual data objects that represent your system's nouns. You then operate on those nouns, affecting their properties or accessing their behaviors, and let the ORM figure out how to map them to the tables + columns.
To answer your question, it sounds like you want the easiest solution, meaning the one where you have to write the least amount of code. If that is a correct assumption, then you might want to go with Database first. You can have EF generate your entity classes, but like you said, you will still have to either manually create viewmodel classes or come up with some kind of AOP (using T4 maybe) to generate these for you. But anytime you give a tool the power to generate something for you, you lose control over it.
I prefer code first / conceptual model first, but I also like to have complete control over everything in the application (aside from infrastructure concerns which can be delegated to tools and frameworks like AutoMapper, EF, T4MVC, etc). Yes, it is more work, because I have to create the entity classes, the viewmodel classes, and the views, (and controllers, and action filters, and html helpers, and rrrvrything else). If your domain is one where you can just map text boxes straight to database tables & columns, then maybe this would be overkill for you.
I need some suggestions on how to resolve the issue I am having. I have tried several different options but hit limitation after limitation. Here is a brief overview of what is going on...
We have 40 tables that hold configuration data that needed to implement CRUD operations. We must use Telerik MVC Grid and preferably the INLINE editing. We must manage the original state and the changed properties on a single object. That object will later be serialized into the database for later approval.
Instead of making 40 models, 40 views, 120 crud methods(no delete), that will all closely share the same code except the field names. I am trying to create a way to make this generic enough where we can have 40 models (maybe?), 1 view, 3 crud methods.
I am running into limitation in various areas:
WCF doesn't support generics
Telerik grid doesn't support dynamic types
WCF doesn't keep methods and private properties intact
We are using MEF also, so this is a plugin, inside of a plugin.. i know..
Adding methods to the WCF layer is not permitted...
My Idea?
I thought I would try creating a class to hold the state, well call it ManagedState. I originally wanted the table models to inherit from it and I had it linked to track changes but this was not working.
I also have now tried using the ManagedState class separately from the configuration class
and using that strictly to pass back and forth through our WCF service. Then try using that data to create the original type and hydrate it.
Really there is so much that has gone into this I am flustered. I have no particular code to share as this is an overall question of how I would implement it as I am hitting brick walls all over. I can post code in future if I get a good response to attempt another method to implement.
I see this question had a lot of views so I figured I would respond to answer my question.
I pretty much used T4 templates to generate a TelerikGrid HTMLHelper. The Telerik grid code was generated for each type unfortunately but all I had to do was call the helper and pass my type in and it used a case statement to return the correct grid.