Zero7Web

Cheshire Wood Flooring approached us for a website to promote their services and to expand onto the web.

The site is now looking great and is online.

I thought I would do a quick post about Creating and more importantly Deleting cookies in ASP.NET as it’s not quite as obvious as it may seem with the misleading .Remove() method which doesnt do as you would expect.

I hope this helps someone get started with cookies if your just getting started with the .NET framework.

Creating a cookie

This is a basic example of how to create a cookie in ASP.NET C#

//Create a new cookie, passing the name into the constructor
HttpCookie cookie = new HttpCookie("MyCookie");

//Set the cookies value
cookie.Value = "CookieValue";

//Set the cookie to expire in 1 day
cookie.Expires = DateTime.Now.AddDays(1);

//Add the cookie
Response.Cookies.Add(cookie);

Deleting a cookie

When deleting a cookie all you need to do is amend the HttpCookie object so it has an expiry date in the past, then re-save the cookie to push the new value to the client.

// Clear cookie Info
            if(Request.Cookies["MyCookie"]!=null){

                HttpCookie cookie = Request.Cookies["MyCookie"];
                cookie.Expires = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-1);

                Response.Cookies.Add(cookie);
            }

NAB Communications approached us for a website to promote their services and to help to reach new clients. The site has it’s own basic Content Management System and has been built to a custom specification.

We will now be keeping a close eye on the sites traffic and we will be working closely with Deborah to help her achieve the online success she deserves.

NAB Communication Header

Google has added the Winter Olympics slopes to its Street View , allowing people to see the same view down a mountain as a skier about to push off in their quest for gold.

Engineer Dan Ratner explained: “In typical scrappy Google fashion, we were able to put this together over a few weekends. We used extra pieces from our Street View cars, some 2×4s, some duct tape, and a lot of extra hard drives.

If you wan’t to allow hyphens in your URL’s you will need to change the way the routing works in your Global.asax file.

First create a new class which extends the MvcRouteHandler and place this in the Global.asax file after the main MvcApplication class.

C#:

public class HyphenatedRouteHandler : MvcRouteHandler{
	protected override IHttpHandler  GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext)
	{
		requestContext.RouteData.Values["controller"] = requestContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString().Replace("-", "_");
		requestContext.RouteData.Values["action"] = requestContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString().Replace("-", "_");
		return base.GetHttpHandler(requestContext);
	}
}

VB:

Public Class HyphenatedRouteHandler
    Inherits MvcRouteHandler
 
    Protected Overrides Function GetHttpHandler(ByVal requestContext As System.Web.Routing.RequestContext) As System.Web.IHttpHandler
        requestContext.RouteData.Values("controller") = requestContext.RouteData.Values("controller").ToString.Replace("-", "_")
        requestContext.RouteData.Values("action") = requestContext.RouteData.Values("action").ToString.Replace("-", "_")
        Return MyBase.GetHttpHandler(requestContext)
    End Function
 
End Class

Then you need to replace the routes.MapRoute with an equivalent routes.Add specifying the new handler as the MapRoute does not allow you to specify a custom route handler.

C#:

routes.Add(
	new Route("{controller}/{action}/{id}", 
		new RouteValueDictionary(
			new { controller = "Default", action = "Index", id = "" }),
			new HyphenatedRouteHandler())
);

VB:

routes.Add(New Route("{controller}/{action}/{id}", 
	New RouteValueDictionary(New With {.controller = "Home", .action = "Index", .id = ""}), 
		New HyphenatedRouteHandler()))

I hope this is useful, any questions feel free to get in touch.

Would like to say thanks to John from here for answering the original question on Stackoverflow

Today ASP.NET MVC 2 RC2 has been released.

To download it click here

It seems there are only a few changes to this release which you can find here: Release Notes

A few words from Phil Haack’s blog:

The biggest change in this release was described by Brad Wilson in his blog post on Input Validation vs. Model Validation in ASP.NET MVC. Also included in this release are an assortment of bug fixes and performance improvements.

The window to provide feedback on this release is going to be very short as we are closing in on the RTM. If you want to provide input into this release, please do take the bits for a spin as soon as possible. I’m pretty excited about this release as I can see the end of the tunnel fast approaching.

At this point, we’ll only be taking recall class bugs for ASP.NET MVC 2. All other bug reports will be filed against ASP.NET MVC 3. Sometime in the near future, I’ll start sharing some of our planning around that. How exciting!

Yesterday Facebook launched HipHop, a converter from php to c++ so your apps can run twice as fast due to them being compiled not interpreted.

Today I’m excited to share the project a small team of amazing people and I have been working on for the past two years; HipHop for PHP. With HipHop we’ve reduced the CPU usage on our Web servers on average by about fifty percent, depending on the page. Less CPU means fewer servers, which means less overhead. This project has had a tremendous impact on Facebook. We feel the Web at large can benefit from HipHop, so we are releasing it as open source this evening in hope that it brings a new focus toward scaling large complex websites with PHP. While HipHop has shown us incredible results, it’s certainly not complete and you should be comfortable with beta software before trying it out. – Haiping Zhao (Facebook)

HipHop is for scaling large multiserver high traffic sites like Facebook. In your regular application, you will get no great advantage from it. It is definately something to be aware of but it does make you think if your trying to compile PHP using a tool like this why not develop in C# (ASP.NET MVC 2 maybe?) that is compiled anyway?

JQuery Basics
This post will show you some of the basics of JQuery. It is not an in depth tutorial but will give you some pointers to get you started with JQuery.
OK, the first piece of code you need to use JQuery is a link to the JQuery JS library. First, download the latest JQuery Library from the following link….
http://docs.jquery.com/Downloading_jQuery
Then link to it like any other javascript file (like so)…

<script src="./js/jquery-1.4.1.js"></script>

Obviously choosing the correct path for your version web server file system setup.
The next step after linking the JQuery library is to use it! Look at the following piece of code.

<script src="./js/jquery-1.4.1.js"></script>
	<script>
		$(document).ready(function() {
			// here is some code
		});
	</script>

This is essentially the same as calling a standard Javascript Window.OnLoad event handler, except it’s the JQuery way.
We are saying… when the document is ready (loaded) run some code.
This is your basic first step to using JQuery. You can also use other event handlers to launch your code, or even call the functions directly, but often when using JQuery, especially for styling/design features, you will want to run the code and so this is the easiest way.
At the moment this code is not very useful, as it doesn’t do anything, so let’s add a little more.
Let’s create a very basic html page.

<html>
	<head>
		<title>JQuery Basics</title>
	</head>
	<body>
		<a id="link1" class="myLink" href="#">Link 1</a>
		<a id="link2" class="myLink" href="#">Link 2</a>
		<a id="link3" class="myLink" href="#">Link 3</a>
	</body>
</html>

Ok now let’s add some JQuery….

<html>
	<head>
		<title>JQuery Basics</title>
		<script src="./js/jquery-1.4.1.js"></script>
		<script>
			$(document).ready(function() {
				$('a').click(function() {
					alert("This is JQuery in action!");
				});
			});
		</script>
	</head>
	<body>
		<a id="link1" class="myLink" href="#">Link 1</a>
		<a id="link2" class="myLink" href="#">Link 2</a>
		<a id="link3" class="myLink" href="#">Link 3</a>
	</body>
</html>

Now save the file and open it in a web browser. When you click a link you should find you get a popup.
Let’s examine this code a little further.

$('a').click(function() {
		alert("This is JQuery in action!");
	});

The first part

$('a')

is a selector, the same as in CSS. Here we are saying apply to all of the A (anchor) tags in the document.
Next we’re saying

.click(function() {

This means for all of those A tags use the click event handler.
Finally we’re saying when that click event is found on an A tag

alert("This is JQuery in action!");

This generates the popup.
In this example we chose to use

$('a')

as our selector, but there are many other ways we can select elements.

$('#link1').click(function() {

This is the same as the getElementByID function that is commonly used in JavaScript. Here we are selecting the element with the ID “link1”.
We could also use

$('.myLink').click(function() {

to select all elements with the class name “myLink”.

In our examples we have used the click event handler to launch the code when the link is clicked. We don’t have to add an event handler here if we don’t want to.
Let’s look at another example.

<html>
	<head>
		<title>JQuery Basics</title>
		<script src="./js/jquery-1.4.1.js"></script>
		<script>
			$(document).ready(function() {
				$('a').addClass("red");
			});
		</script>
	</head>
	<body>
		<a id="link1" class="myLink" href="#">Link 1</a>
		<a id="link2" class="myLink" href="#">Link 2</a>
		<a id="link3" class="myLink" href="#">Link 3</a>
	</body>
</html>

This sets all A tags in documents to have the class “red”.
This is a basic class which is built into the JQuery library, but you could just as easily add your own class.

<html>
	<head>
		<title>JQuery Basics</title>
		<script src="./js/jquery-1.4.1.js"></script>
		<script>
			$(document).ready(function() {
				$('a').addClass("myClass");
			});
		</script>
		<style>
			.myClass {
				color:blue;
				text-decoration:underline;
			}
		</style>
	</head>
	<body>
		<a id="link1" href="#">Link 1</a>
		<a id="link2" href="#">Link 2</a>
		<a id="link3" href="#">Link 3</a>
	</body>
</html>

You could also use first, last, parent and child selectors just like in CSS. For example

$('a:first').addClass("myClass");

to select the first of the link tags and apply the class “myClass” just to that first link.

These are just a few very basic examples of how you can start using JQuery, look out for more posts in the future where we will show you some of the many other exciting features of JQuery.

I found this on another blog and thought it would be very useful for a lot of the readers:
Original Blog Link

I thought this would be of interest to you all. It’s a piece of software you can get your hands on that gives you access to 30,000 Niche articles that you can use as you please. Place them on your blog to generate traffic or give them away as freebies to attract people towards your chargeable products.

You can use these articles to help create backlinks to your sites and you can even create One-of-a-Kind eBooks with the Built in eBook Creation Wizard. Bonus!

There’s a free video you can watch that shows how it works and just how easy it is to get going. The time you will save by having a massive library of articles is going to be insane!

This is highly recommended by us and we would like to hear your success stories, because there will be a lot of them! I have bought into this package myself and I can honest say I am very glad as I not how content to post on all of my other website to bring in the visitors.

Visit the site now to watch your free video explaining more…

Andi Gibson’s Photography site is now online. The simple design was requested to create a nice sleek look. The site is sat on top of a wordpress blog and will be updated regularly with portfolio and company information.

Andi Gibson Photography screenshot

Visit website