Phil Hustead Blog

Site was down

Philip Hustead — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:02:34 +0000

My site was down since yesterday due to some server configuration issues. I’m back up and running now.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1

Philip Hustead — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:13:41 +0000

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 is also now available. This is a very exciting release with support for:

Silverlight 2 SDK Beta 2 & Silverlight Tools Beta 2
MVC Preview Release #3
ASP.NET Extensions/Dynamic Data Preview
VC 2008 Feature Pack
VB PowerPack Controls (2.0 & 3.0)
Expression Studio 2 (RTM)
SQL Server 2008
.NET Framework 3.5 SDK
XSLT Profiler
VSTA 2.0 SDK
Visual Studio 2008 SDK

I can’t wait to dig into the new MVC Framework. You can download the service pack here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=FBEE1648-7106-44A7-9649-6D9F6D58056E&displaylang=en

Now Available: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1

Philip Hustead — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:08:23 +0000

Microsoft has released Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1.

Download Here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=AB99342F-5D1A-413D-8319-81DA479AB0D7&displaylang=en

ASP.NET MVC (Module View Controller) in 3.5 SP1

Philip Hustead — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:45:38 +0000

So I’ve been looking a little into the new MVC framework that will be included in .NET 3.5 SP1 (Currently avalible in Preview version 4). Check out Scott Guthrie’s blog series starting at http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/10/14/asp-net-mvc-framework.aspx

I can’t wait to start playing with it. Also check out the asp.net MVC home page at: http://www.asp.net/mvc/ Scott Hanselman has some really good videos on MVC. Especially check out the Storefront Starter Kit. Not only does it go over MVC but also TDD (Test Driven Development). I’ve never used TDD before and it looks very intresting. I will be looking into that as well.

Updated Blog Software

Philip Hustead — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 19:29:58 +0000

I just updated WordPress to 2.6. I did lose some stuff in the process but no big deal. I also changed the look of the site some too. Now I just need to work on getting more posts out. I have a lot of ideas so look forword to reading those soon.

Asynchronous Transfers (AJAX) made easy

Philip Hustead — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 05:29:54 +0000

I have been doing a lot of research on AJAX and have recently purchased a WROX book called Professional AJAX (amazon). I haven’t gotten far in the book but it starts off with a little history on AJAX starting with Google suggest. As I read on they were talking about many different methods for pulling data asynchronously and one thing that came up was how Google Maps and Gmail uses frames. Well this got me to thinking and I wanted to see if I could find a good way to do this using an iframe. So this is what I came up with.

First off I created a simple .net webservice and enabled webservices to accept HTTP-GET requests. Then dynamiclly using javascript I created a along with an event listener for its onload event to call the SomeWebserviceCall_Complete() function when the iframe is loaded. Then I set the iframe’s src property to the webservice address with the proper attributes for the service call and this sends the HTTP-GET request through the iframe. Because I setup the event listener on the "onload" event, once the iframe is loaded from the webservice call the SomeWebserviceCall_Complete() function is fired.

Here is the code simplified for IE:

    function SomeWebServiceCall(idParam)
    {
        var myframe = document.createElement("iframe");
        myframe.id = ‘frameCompany’;
        myframe.style.width = ‘0px’;
        myframe.style.height = ‘0px’;

        // Creates the asynchronous handler event
        myframe.attachEvent(’onload’, SomeWebServiceCall_Complete);

        // Calls the webservice
        myframe.src = ‘http://www.example.com/webservice?id=’ + idParam;
    }

    function SomeWebServiceCall_Complete()
    {
        // Parse out content from iframe
        // and use the data for whatever

    }

This is really easy to setup for a simple AJAX request to a web service.

UPDATE ——————-

Here I put it into action

This implementation just places the contents of the iframe (webservice response) into a div element on your page with an id of ‘mydiv’

JSON Documentation

Philip Hustead — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 23:08:18 +0000

I have yet to find a good website on the JSON standard. Maybe this is because the concept is not that difficult and is grasped quickly. I have been spending a lot of time at http://www.json.org and at first found the site to be very hard to read. I get turn off pretty quick by websites that don’t look like any time was put into them. The more I access it though the more I am getting used to it. I will keep trying to find a better site, or at least a better looking easier to follow site.

Getting turned on to JSON only recently I really like working with it. I have been using it with ASP.NET AJAX and WebServices and it is real easy to create and use. So for those out there who are just finding out about JSON and are finding it difficult to find good documentation… don’t fret. It’s easier then the json.org site makes it seem at first. You can also get information on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON but still not as detailed as I would like. If anyone knows of any good json sites please let me know.

ASP.NET AJAX Officially Released! Sweet!!!

Philip Hustead — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 07:33:28 +0000

I just read the announcement from the www.asp.net website that ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 has been released. Read more from Scott Guthrie’s Blog for details:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/01/23/asp-net-ajax-1-0-released.aspx

These tools have been an enormous help to me in many of my projects. Thanks guy’s.

XML to JSON Converstion

Philip Hustead — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 00:00:26 +0000

Here is a good article on converting XML to JSON using a webservice: http://www.codeproject.com/soap/xml2json.asp

AJAX Suggest / Intellisense / Auto-complete

Philip Hustead — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 21:29:41 +0000

I am working on an ASP.NET project that uses a dropdown list with so many records that it is not practical to download them all on a page load. What I have done is created a Google Suggest like Ajax enabled dropdown that pulls records based on the first few characters entered and the number of records returned. This makes for a much faster page load and better user experience. I plan on writing up an article and submitting it to www.codeproject.com. After I right it up I will post a link to it here. Look for it in the next week….