Some useful properties,classes and methods which we require mostly during development in .net

 

 1: System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Request.ApplicationPath

System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Request.ApplicationPath gives you the applications current running path.

 

 

This list will be ever increasing as soon as i found some useful content i will publish it once again.

If you also want to share some common,useful and often ignored things in .net you can comment in there i will surely include them in the list.

PostBack Events are not firing in asp.net…………….Why????????

This seems to be a problem with all the beginners at one or the other moment in their coding profession they face this problem.

One of the silly mistake due to which this problem can occur is that you have some validation controls on your page which you are initialy not showing up on the page ie there might be a situation wherein you might have various divs on a page and you might be using tabbed navigaiton to show one particular div’s contents at one time and hiding rest of the div’s.So sometimes you might have some validation controls in one particular div and you might be working on the contents of another div which doesnot have any validation controls but do have postback controls ie asp controls.

But what happens in this situation is that although the divs are hidden yet the markup is processed and loaded on the page now if you click on any postback buttons or linkbuttons or any control to do postback it will not postback because you have not met the required validation fulfilment reuqirements as the text boxes which you are using for validation might be empty or there might be some other problem in there which is causing validation to be false, thus no postback to the server.

So if such is your scenario then just enter a property of the asp control called “CausesValidation” to false.

Setting this will remove that button from checking that are the validation requirements fulfilled on the page and thus it will cause a postback.

Why is Guid Sometimes better than Identity in Database

When the application demands that the just inserted value should be returned back.In such cases it is much wise to use GUID instead of auto- incrementing identity column in the database.

One benifit of using GUID is that it can be generated programatically beforehand using the GUID class in .net frmework

We can have Guid guid  = new Guid();

Now we can pass this newly generated guid to any no of insert statements this way we can save our application from the complex logic of using output parameters or return statement and also from the use of SCOPE_IDENTITY().

But you are free to use the other approach also it all depends on the need of the application

DropDownList asp.net Control problems and challanges faced using appenddatabound items and autopostbacks

Sometimes we need a solution where we have to append certain hardcoded values which are given in the markup and then we have to append some values from the database after these hardcoded values.

These hardcoded value can be a single item saying "Select" or "Remove" or a list of asp list items.

So if we are not following the right steps in the sequence of databinding and clearing items from the dropdownlist control, this control may act a little different as we would have thought and create havoc in our programming life.

Today while building an application i came accross the similar situation where i have two dropdownlists one is "ddlCategories " where current categories to which a post belongs are coming form the datasource it alos has a listitem value which is hardcoded in the markup saying Remove Existing Categories which have a value of -1 and index value 0.

There is one more list called "ddlAddUserCategories" in which all the categories related to particular user are databound using the datasource.

Here also we are having a hardcoded value same as above but having a different text saying that Add Existing Categories….

Markup is give below

 1: <td>

 2: <asp:DropDownList ID="ddlCategories" runat="server" AutoPostBack="true" SkinID="ddlBlue"

 3: EnableViewState="true" OnSelectedIndexChanged="ddlCategories_SelectedIndexChanged">

 4: <asp:ListItem Text="Remove Existing Categories...." Value="-1" Selected="True" />

 5: </asp:DropDownList>

 6: <span class="spanAddCategory">Remove Existing Categories</span>

 7: </td>

 8: <td>

 9: <asp:DropDownList ID="ddlUserCategories" runat="server" AutoPostBack="true" SkinID="ddlBlue"

 10: EnableViewState="true" OnSelectedIndexChanged="ddlUserCategories_SelectedIndexChanged">

 11: <asp:ListItem Text="Apply Existing Categories....." Value="-1" Selected="True" />

 12: </asp:DropDownList>

 13: <span class="spanAddCategory">Apply Existing Categories</span>

 14: </td>

Now i want that whenever i postback using the autopostback property of the dropdownlist

i should have changes reflected in both the dropdownlists.

So first of all remember to keep the datasource and databinding code sequence inside

if (!Page.IsPostBack).If you simply keep it inside the page load event,every time the page loads it will again overwrite the values and you may lead to a situation in which even if you selecte different values, then also the same value for the selectedindex is returned.So to prevent this always keep your datasource code for the dropdownlist inside if(!Page.IsPostBack)

 1: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

 2: {

 3:  

 4: if (!Page.IsPostBack)

 5: {

 6:  

 7: ddlCategories.DataSource = CategoryManager.PopulateCategoriesOfPost(post.PostID);

 8: ddlCategories.DataTextField = "CategoryName";

 9: ddlCategories.DataValueField = "CategoryID"; 

 10: ddlCategories.AppendDataBoundItems = true; 

 11: ddlCategories.DataBind(); 

 12: ddlUserCategories.DataSource = CategoryManager.PopulateUserCategory(BasePage.UserID); 

 13: ddlUserCategories.DataTextField = "CategoryName"; 

 14: ddlUserCategories.DataValueField = "CategoryID"; 

 15: ddlUserCategories.AppendDataBoundItems = true; ddlUserCategories.DataBind();

 16:  

 17: }

 18:  

 19: }

Now just go through the code for ddlCategories_SelectedIndexChanged and ddlUserCategories_selectedIndexChanged

 1: protected void ddlCategories_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)

 2: { 

 3: int postID = Int32.Parse(Request.QueryString["postID"].ToString());

 4: string categoryName = ddlCategories.SelectedItem.ToString();

 5: CategoryManager.RemoveCategoryFromPost(categoryName, postID); 

 6: ddlCategories.Items.Clear(); 

 7: ddlCategories.Items.Add("RemoveExistingCategories...."); 

 8: ddlCategories.Items[0].Value = "-1"; 

 9: ddlCategories.DataSource = CategoryManager.PopulateCategoriesOfPost(postID); 

 10: ddlCategories.DataTextField = "CategoryName"; 

 11: ddlCategories.DataValueField = "CategoryID"; 

 12: ddlCategories.AppendDataBoundItems = true; 

 13: ddlCategories.SelectedIndex = 0; 

 14: ddlCategories.DataBind(); 

 15: } 

 16:  

 17:  

 18: protected void ddlUserCategories_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)

 19: {

 20: int postID = Int32.Parse(Request.QueryString["postID"].ToString()); 

 21: string categoryName = ddlUserCategories.SelectedItem.ToString(); 

 22: CategoryManager.AddCategoryToPost(categoryName, postID); 

 23: ddlUserCategories.SelectedIndex = 0; 

 24: ddlCategories.Items.Clear(); 

 25: ddlCategories.Items.Add("RemoveExistingCategories...."); 

 26: ddlCategories.Items[0].Value = "-1"; 

 27: ddlCategories.DataSource = CategoryManager.PopulateCategoriesOfPost(postID); 

 28: ddlCategories.DataTextField = "CategoryName"; 

 29: ddlCategories.DataValueField = "CategoryID"; 

 30: ddlCategories.AppendDataBoundItems = true; 

 31: ddlCategories.DataBind();

 32: }

In this donot forget to clear the items otherwise you will again get creepy results which are far beyond your expectations.

So the tip of the day is whenever you want to refresh your list with the new changed database values just clear the existing values and than only start inserting the most recent values from the database.

Some people will suggest to Disable the viewstate but i have tried that it can overcome the problem of appending values i.e it stops the appendingvalues which means now it will not remember your existing state but it will cause problems in the situation mentioned above so for me this is the best solution.

If you have a better solution do leave a comment.

Configuring Spaw2 Editor for .net applications

1.Simplest possible way to use spaw editor for .net is to just copy the directory spaw2 to the root of your web application.

2.Just rename the spaw2.default.config file to spaw2.config in the config folder in spaw2 directory.

3.Add reference to the toolbar selecting Solmetra.Spaw2.dll and you are ready to go.

Repeater Control – How to get formatted date as ouput on a page having Repeater Control

If you are tired of getting dates in your repeater control as shown in the following figure

and you want to get dates in some custom format then simply you can use the ToString() method with some parameters to convert it into desired format as shown below.

You just have to enter this small piece of code to achieve this

 

For further information on DateTime formats please visit this link

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/az4se3k1.aspx