Ezequiel Jadib’s Blog

As Glenn mentioned we published a new Page Flow Guidance Package in WCSF Contrib.

What’s in the new PageFlow?

• New stand alone PageFlow guidance package that works on Visual Studio 2008. This guidance package does not require WCSF
• New XmlPageFlowProvider that does not depend on Windows Workflow Foundation
• Migrated PageFlowWithShoppingCart Quickstarts to Visual Studio 2008
• Updated Dependencies to GAT/GAX 1.4

You can get the bits here.

Note: We are not shipping the documentation in this release because we are still working on it.

Smart Client Software Factory / Web Client Software Factory / Prism / p&p Documentation Tools

• Web Client Software Factory Documentation - What is New? by Mariano Szklanny
• patterns & practices Documentation Tools on CodePlex (Spanish) by Ezequiel Morito
• Prism: Second drop by Ezequiel Jadib
• Prism: First drop published  by Ezequiel Jadib
• E-Commerce Catalog: New articles published by Ezequiel Jadib 
• SCSF Sample Application and Demo Script published on Smart Client Contrib by Ezequiel Jadib
• Prism (WPF Composite Client) Codeplex Site Launched by Ezequiel Jadib

C#

• Differences: Delegates vs Events by Damian Schenkelman
• C# by Damian Schenkelman
• Cómo: Generar tipos genéricos dinámicos (Spanish) by Ignacio Baumann Fonay

TDD

• Test driven development (TDD) by Damian Schenkelman
• Test driven development (part 2) by Damian Schenkelman

IT / VMware / openSUSE

• Permission problems virtualizing devices on openSUSE host (VMware Server) by Franco Jorge
• DHCP server problem on openSUSE - Default Declaration  by Franco Jorge

Object Oriented Programming

• Object Oriented Programming by Damian Schenkelman
• Object Oriented Programming (Part 2) by Damian Schenkelman

Architecture

• Un poco de Arquitectura (Spanish) by Leandro Boffi

New Southies

• Mi Primer dia en Southworks! (Spanish) by Leandro Boffi

Some time ago, I wrote about a new WCSF sample application we had published in WCSF Contrib. 

Now I’m writing again about this application because we’ve just published three new articles that describe the work done in each of the modules.

If you are interested in this sample, you will find the new articles very useful.

Articles

• Kick off
• Product Module - NEW!
• User Module - NEW!
• Admin Module - NEW!

Download E-Commerce Catalog

Enjoy!

Yes!! as you read in the title, I'm in Redmond for first time!. I'm very excited with this travel because is a great opportunity to grow as professional and to know a lot of people. Finally I'm putting faces to all that people with I've been working for a long time from Argentina.

During this trip I'll be working with the patterns & practices team on the new deliverable called WPF Composite Client (actually we are looking for a new name so make your suggestion here!).

But I'm not alone here, Johnny and Mariano came too as they are working on the final stage of Web Client Software Factory.

Mariano and me in Building 27.

Stay tuned!, I will be writing more about this great experience in the following days.

I’m happy to announce that we have just published in WCSF Contrib a sample application developed with Web Client Software Factory 2.0.

The application is an "E-Commerce Catalog" and is intended to:

• Show recommended practices in incremental Web development.
• Demonstrate how a WC-SF project can be faced and developed.
• Demonstrate how Web Client Software Factory 2.0 assets help to solve common technical challenges.

I recommend you to read the kick-off article in where you will find:

• How the application was designed incrementally.
• The rationale behind our technical decisions and implementations.

These are some of the technical challenges that the E-Commerce Catalog application addresses:

• Modularity
• Unit testing Web Solutions
• Authentication
• Authorization

You can find more about the technical challenges in the kick-off article.

I hope you find this new sample useful. Any feedback will be appreciated.

And stay tuned!. More articles will be published soon.

Download

OK, we have installed Smart Client Software Factory in Orcas Beta 2, but.. how about Web Client Software Factory?

In this post, I will detail the steps you have to follow in order to use WCSF June 2007 with Orcas Beta 2.

1. Install Guidance Automation Extensions Technology Preview (July 2007 Release for Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio Beta 2).
2. Download and install Orca MSI editor (which is distributed with the Windows SDK). The Orca MSI Editor is a table-editing tool that can be used to edit your .msi files. If you want to learn more about this tool, please visit this link.
   Note: If you don’t want to download the Windows SDK, a guy published the Orca.msi tool (Download from this place at your own risk).
3. Open Orca MSI editor and then go to File > Open….Select the WCSF MSI file (Web Client Software Factory - June 2007.msi).
     
4. Select the RegLocator table from the tables list.
    
5. Modify the following key values (replace the 8.0 with 9.0 in the paths) from this table:
   • FindVSInstallDir
   • VisualStudioInstallRegistry
   • VistualStudioHelpRegistrySearch

   This is how it should look after replacing these values
   

6. Save the changes.
7. Install Web Client Software Factory June 2007.
   

Known Issues

WAP and Non-WAP Issues

• Runtime exception when the project is executed
   

  This is an old issue which was discussed in this thread. In order to fix this you have to modify the line 107 of the WebClientApplication.cs file (under CompositeWebApplicationBlock\CompositeWeb) to:

  if (HttpRequestHelper.IsHandledByPageHandlerFactory(context.Request.Url.ToString()) && context.Handler != null) 
  

• Build fails after adding a Foundational or Business module with Test project

  In order to fix this you have to modify the following files inside WebClientSoftwareFactoryPackage inside Templates folder:

  • \Module.Tests.VB\*.vbproj
  • \Module.Tests.C#\*.csproj

Change:

<Reference Include=”Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.UnitTestFramework, Version=8.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a, processorArchitecture=MSIL”>
</Reference>

For:

<Reference Include=”Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.UnitTestFramework, Version=9.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a, processorArchitecture=MSIL” /> 

Non-WAP specific issues

• A dialog box is shown after the creation of the solution
   

  If you click Yes, you can go on without problem, but if you want to avoid this dialog box everytime you create a Web Client solution you will have to add the missing tags in the Web.config template.

• Website is not being recognized as a WebProject

  This cause the following issues:

  • An exception occurs after Adding a Business Module
    

  • In the Add Foundation Module window the website dropdown is empty so the Finish button is disabled. No Foundational Module can be added to the web client solution.
    

  • The Add View (with Presenter) menu option is not visible.
     

In order to fix these you have two options:

• Closing and reopening the solution (it's just a workaround :))
• Update the CreateWebClientSoftwareSolutionCommon.xml recipe by adding the following in the Actions section:

  <Action Name=”SetIsWebProject” Type=”AddProjectGlobalsEntryAction” PropertyName=”IsWebProject” PropertyValue=”True”>
        <Input Name=”Project” RecipeArgument=”WebUIProject” />
  </Action>
  
  

  You should also modify the vwd.webinfo file by removing the IsWebProject=”true” property:

  <?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
  <!– Visual Studio global web project settings.–>
  <VisualWebDeveloper>
  <Globals>
      <UserProperties />
  </Globals>
  </VisualWebDeveloper>
  
  

Hope you find this guidance useful. Feel free to visit us at Codeplex Forum to give us feedback.

Attached you fill find a zip file that contains the files modified. Just unzip this on %program files%\Microsoft Web Client Factory\WCSF Guidance Package. Click Yes to All to replace the existing files.
Note: The zip does not includes the modified Composite Web Application Block.

Important: Keep in mind that this is just a workaround so use these steps at your own risk. This guidance is provided “as is” without warranty of any kind.

Attachment: WCSFOrcas.zip

I downloaded the last WCSF drop and I started to play again with the Guidance Package.

The first thing you are going to notice after register the guidance package is that the registration is not replacing Web Client Software Factory June 2007 version. This happens because the new guidance package has a different Guid and is going to work side-by-side with June 2007 version.

Figure 1. The new September 2007 Guidance Package

Let’s see what’s new in the guidance package regarding ASP.NET AJAX support.
Note: You need to download and install ASP.NET AJAX Extensions in order to use this new features.

As soon as you create a new Web Client Software Factory September 2007 solution you will see a new option on the wizard.

Figure 2. The Enable ASP.NET AJAX Support new option on the Create Solution wizard page.

Note: If you don’t have ASP.NET AJAX Extensions installed this option will be disabled.

As you imagine, this option enable your new solution to support ASP.NET AJAX by adding the required configuration statements to the web.config. Also add a reference to ASP.NET AJAX Extension assembly.

Figure 3. Some of the statements that are being added to the web.config.

Figure 4. The website a has reference to System.Web.Extensions assembly.

Another little gem is the possibility to enable an existing (WCSF or not) non-AJAX solution. To do this you just have to run the new recipe Enable Ajax.

Figure 5. The new Enable Ajax recipe.

This will enable your solution in the same way I have explained before.

I hope you find this useful. Enjoy this enhancements and provide us feedback.

To get a deepest knowledge about WCSF vNext and what the team has been doing, please check the following posts:

• Announcing Web Client bundles by Glenn Block
• What has the Web Client Team been doing recently? by Michael Puleio
• Web Client vNext, what’s our focus? by Glenn Block

I’m happy to announce that we have published the Web Client Software Factory Knowledge Base.

The purpose of this Knowledge Base is categorize and organize blogs posts, CodePlex pages, CodePlex posts, etc that can be valuable for the community. With this kind of information organized the community will have a new place to search for help/guidance.

Here are the categories in which we propose to organize the information:

• Composite Web Application Block
• DataBinding
• Guidance Packages
• Hands-on Labs
• Known Issues / Fixes
• Modularity
• MVP
• Navigation (PageFlow)
• Services
• Web Client Software Factory vNext
• Others

We are going to update the KB periodically, so stay tuned.

Enjoy the Knowledge Base.

The WCSF Developers Hands-on Labs for WCSF June 2007 are available to download.

By doing this labs, you will learn how to perform the following tasks:

• Create a new Web client solution.
• Create a business module.
• Expose a business module to the Web site shell.
• Create a Composite Web Application Block service.
• Create a view with a presenter and unit tests.
• Use unit testing for pages with data bound controls.
• Define role-based access to a module’s features.
• Configure exception handling and logging.
• Define and execute a page flow.

For more information, please read Blaine Wastell’s post.

A new drop of the Web Client Software Factory vNext is already available. You can download it from here.

We’ve started updating the guidance package to work with the changes we’ve added to Composite Web Application block. As part of this update we have done the following:

• Updated the Create solution recipe in order to add the default Master Page with its interface and presenter.
  
• Updated the View templates in order to use the new Dependency Injection behavior.

Also we added the following:

• A new recipe to create an User Control (with presenter).
• A new recipe to create a Master Page (with presenter).

Let me try to introduce this new recipes:

Adding a Master Page (with presenter)

Adding an User Control (with presenter)

Keep in mind that we are still working on the Guidance Package, but I find useful share this with you.

Play with the new recipes and tell us what you think. Your feedback is very valuable.