Using WSFederationAuthenticationModule with Classic ASP
I’ve recently been working with a client that is updating an existing Classic ASP application to ASP.NET MVC 5. As part of the upgrade, some of the systems currently hosted on an internal web server are being moved over to Windows Azure and the existing Windows Authentication in place, over to single sign-on (SSO) with Windows Azure Active Directory and Office 365, to leverage a cloud-based identity solution and minimise on-premises infrastructure.
Nuget Package for Managing Scripts in ASP.NET MVC 4
As per the comments on my previous post about Managing Scripts for Razor Partial Views and Templates in ASP.NET MVC, I've created a Nuget package for the HtmlHelpers used. Go take a look and leave a comment if you find them useful; I plan to add additional helpers to the package over time for general functionality that is useful in any ASP.NET MVC application.
CSV ValueProvider for model binding to collections
TL;DR
I have written a ValueProvider for binding model collections from records in a CSV file. The source code is available on BitBucket.
Model binding in ASP.NET MVC is responsible for binding values to the models that form the parameter arguments to the controller action matched to the route. But where do model binders get these values from? That’s where Value Providers come in; A ValueProvider provides values for model binding and there are ValueProviders for providing values from
Managing Scripts for Razor Partial Views and Templates in ASP.NET MVC
UPDATE 13-03-2013: I've created a nuget package for the helpers. The original ScriptContext scope had to be brought back in for MVC 4 as the TemplateStack approach no longer worked.
UPDATE 21-11-2011: After some digging through the MVC framework code, I've come up with a slightly cleaner solution that doesn't require ScriptContext to implement IDisposable and therefore removes the need to create a "scope" for the scripts. Skip to the end to see the update.
The view engine in ASP.NET MVC is flexible, very flexible. With great flexibility comes great responsibility however, and managing JavaScript files and code blocks can be particularly cumbersome in conjunction with partial views and templates.
Implement Recaptcha properly in ASP.NET MVC
Love them or hate them, the humble CAPTCHA is a tried and trusted approach to mitigating spam content from infiltrating your beautifully crafted application and flooding it with adverts selling all kinds of nefarious goods. Whilst their effectiveness is debatable and the frustration that they bring about in some high, they are relatively simple to use and catch the bulk of user defined content one would want to filter from their site.
Resolving IoC container services for Validation Attributes in ASP.NET MVC
I'm a fan of the Data Annotation Validation attributes to validate user input on both the client and server side for ASP.NET MVC applications. I'm also a fan of Inversion of Control and Dependency Injection to create loosely coupled and flexible applications. There are certain situations where one would wish to inject services into a validation attribute to use during validation; a (somewhat contrived and security cautious) example of this might be providing the user with a <select> element and ask them to choose an option from it and then validate that the option that they have chosen is one that actually exists for the type of items represented in the dropdown. Sure, the RemoteAttribute would allow you to call a server side method via AJAX to perform validation but it does not provide any server side validation, making it more of a convenience solution than a complete and robust one. What would be good is if we could
- provide services to a validation attribute that could be used in the process of validation
- Not have to explicitly resolve services from the container à la the Service Locator (Anti-)Pattern
ASP.NET MVC Permanent 301 redirects for legacy routes
Having a good url routing scheme is extremely important when developing an application. Urls should be canonical to aid in search engine optimization and discoverable in order to aid users in learning where to find application functionality for particular tasks. But there are points in an applications lifecycle where one wishes to change the url routing scheme in order to employ a better one. In such instances, URL redirection can be used to preserve search engine rankings, user bookmarks to specific pages or to allow more than one URL to serve up the same content, as is the case when employing URL shortening.
ASP.NET MVC 3 IMetadataAware and custom ModelMetadata attributes
UPDATE: I've added a simple example project up on bitbucket to demonstrate the ColorPicker attribute
ASP.NET MVC 3 introduces a new interface, IMetadataAware, for providing additional values to the model metadata at creation time:
/* ****************************************************************************
*
* Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
*
* This software is subject to the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL).
* A copy of the license can be found in the license.htm file included
* in this distribution.
*
* You must not remove this notice, or any other, from this software.
*
* ***************************************************************************/
namespace System.Web.Mvc {
// This interface is implemented by attributes which wish to contribute to the
// ModelMetadata creation process without needing to write a custom metadata
// provider. It is consumed by AssociatedMetadataProvider, so this behavior is
// automatically inherited by all classes which derive from it (notably, the
// DataAnnotationsModelMetadataProvider).
public interface IMetadataAware {
void OnMetadataCreated(ModelMetadata metadata);
}
}