I like the compiler to catch as many errors as possible before I start debugging or release my application. This also applies to code nuggets in ASP.NET MVC views, especially since these are not easily unit-testable. But views are not validated at compilation, at least not when using the standard settings for ASP.NET MVC projects.

Tools like Resharper can notify you of syntax errors within your views, but you can still build the project and not get a single error. Instead, your application will crash when trying to evaluate the buggy view.

Fortunately you can easily make Visual Studio compile your views along with the rest of your code. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the top good practices for ASP.NET MVC is not to use the ViewData Dictionary, but to put your data in a strongly typed ViewModel instead. Many people seem to be using Linq to SQL entities as a ViewModel, because it’s a very comfortable approach. But what do you do if your view should contain data that is not included in any of your linq entities? Scott Gu’s chapter 1 preview of his upcoming ASP.NET MVC book recommends using a custom-shaped ViewModel for those cases. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve decided take Microsoft’s brand new ASP.NET MVC framework for a small test drive by building a small proof of concept application with it. The frame work sure looks promising, even despite it’s early stage of development and relatively small features as compared to ASP.NET web forms.

It seems there are no good books available on the subject yet. The few that are already in stock at Amazon are based on the community preview, and it seems that there have been quite a few changes in the the framework since then.

Fortunately, ScottGu hat just released a free sample chapter of his upcoming “Professional ASP.NET” (Wrox) book. It contains a 200-page walkthrough guide on how to build a simple ASP.NET MVC application.

The chapter is available for download here.

Mike Dulin has just published an interview we recorded at last year’s European Shareware Conference. We talked a bit about shareware games vs. casual games, how I got into the games business and the current market climate in both areas. The Interview is available here.

Hi,

It’s been a while since I posted the first version of my generic base class for LINQ2SQL data layers. The idea behind this class was to provide a quick and simple way to implement a repository with LINQ2SQL and therefore also a solid foundation for implementing your n-tier architecture data layer. If you missed the article, you can read more about the base class here.

The version I previously posted has worked fine for me, but it was still lacking a way to retrieve the ID and version attributes of saved entities. Due to a typo, it also did not work with entities that have more than one unique identity column. Thanks to Mike and Fabrizio for pointing out these limitations!

Version 0.2 available here fixes both of these issues:

Download RepositoryBase Demo Website

Download RepositoryBase Source Code Only