LINQ to SQL is great but like all great things at some point it does something that you don't expect and gives you a headache. An example of this happened to me this week with the differences between how connection strings are handled when you LINQ to SQL model is in a class library rather than a Website or Web Application.

What makes this issue particularly annoying is that it only appears when you try and change the database server that your code is looking at which could end up being when it's going live or moving to a staging server.

So we all know about connection strings, their quite simple and you just store them in your web.config file, which is how LINQ to SQL works when your using them in a Website. But as soon as you move them to a class library things change. First your connection string name is no longer that simple name you gave it e.g. ConnectionString, now it is prefixed with the namespace which is annoying but not the end of the world. Second discovery though is no matter what you do, it just doesn't seem to pick up the connection string from the web.config file. Reason being your original connection string has now compiled itself in the class library's dll and that is what it is using.

The Solution

Depending when you discovered this the solution is not to bad as you either have a lot of code to change or only a small amount. You can always pass a connection string to the constructor when you are creating an instance of the data context e.g.

You can also set the connection string on your LINQ to SQL model to be blank, this will remove the default constructor and force you to pass a connection string. This way you web application has the choice of what connection string to use and you can keep re-using your class library in different projects.

Irrespective of if your working on some kind of company extranet or the admin side of a public facing site, one thing that will make you're clients go ooooooo and love your work is the inclusion of a funky looking chart. It may not serve any amazing purpose, but as there looking through all the boring text area's and buttons that actually make up the functionality of the site, the inclusion of nice looking chart is going to make them go "oooo that's nice" and like you even more. For those of us working in .NET, thanks' to an update from Microsoft at the end of 2008 it's also something that've very quick an easy to do. Better yet the update was free so the only cost is the time you take to implement it. 

First off if you want to use the chart's and you haven't downloaded them then that's what you need to do. The chart's shipped after .NET 3.5 so there a separate install, .NET 4 however has them included by default. 

• Chart controls for .NET 3.5
• Add on for visual studio 2008
• Chart controls samples

Using the Chart Control

Like I said adding a chart to a page is a quick and easy thing to do. Once you have the Visual Studio add on installed you can also drag and drop everything into place. However I'm going to go into a bit more detail. 

To start your going to need a data source. In this example I'm using a SQL Data Source object for ease of use, in a production environment I heavily recommend against using them as there going to make your code a completely unmanageable mess, instead I would use something like a Entity Data Source. My chart is going to be showing a graph of mobile phone handset popularity so my SQL is simply just returning a table of phone names and how many people use them. 

Code so far: 

Next we need to add a chart, the easiest way to do this is to just drag a chart object onto the page from the toolbox, however if you do want to type it yourself it's not particularly complex. 

First you will need to register the assembly on the page.. 

And then add the chart like so...

Now we're ready to start customizing what type of chart we're going to have and what data it should show from our data source.

To actually show a chart there's two bits of information you have to describe, area's and series'. The first area's is used to define an area for a chart to appear, one interesting thing about the chart control is you aren't limited to just one area. In fact in this example I'm going to have to chart's one showing a pie chart of phone popularity that will quickly show what kind of share each phone has, and then a second bar chart making it more clear the actual numbers people have of each phone. Area's also let you set properties on what the chart is actually going to look like as well. In this instance I'm going to set for both charts to be 3D.

The second bit of information is the Series. This is where you're actually specifying what data is going to be shown in which area and what kind of chart it is (e.g. Pie, Column, Donut etc). My completed code then looks like this...

Depending on your data this should give you something like this...

This is just a simple example of what you can do, but if you download the Chart Samples Project and have a look through there is no end to the possibilities with everything from different styles of charts to adding ajax functionality even with the ability to click of different parts of the carts to trigger events.

Lazy loading isn't a new concept, it's a pattern that been around for a while to improve the performance of your apps by only loading objects when they are going to be used. For example if you have an object that contains a property of a list of customers then you only really need to populate it when you access the property not when the object was initially created, as it may never be used. At the same time though you don't want to be going off to the database every time access the property. So the simple solution is to have another private variable that stores if the customers property is populated or not and then check that in the property's get to determine if the data needs to be loaded or not.

Well now in .NET 4, lazy loading has been built into the framework with System.Lazy. Instead of the above all you need to do now is write something like this...

Lazy<Customers> _customers = new Lazy<Customers>();

What this will do is create you a customers object but only run the constructor when you actually access the objects Value property which will be of type Customers. e.g.

_customers.Value.CustomerData 

It's that simple, but can get even better. The constructor may not be the only thing you want to run when you access the property the first time. In this case you would write something like...

_customers = new Lazy<Customers>(() =>
        {
            // Write any other initialization stuff in here
            return new Customers();
        });

I must point out though while as great as this is, it does have some limitations so you probably won't want to use it in all scenarios.

For more information check out the Lazy initialization page on MSDN

The Real Time Search this article relates to is a dll that comes included in the Web Client Software Factory one of Microsoft's patterns and practices downloads. What it can do and what this example will demonstrate is adding the ability cause a post back that will refresh an update panel as the users types into a search box. This can give a great effect and make a web app really user friendly in scenarios like searching photo's, emails or any general list.

First late me state though that this is in no way the most optimal way program. In most scenarios you could built a better result using something like JSON as their will be a lot less data transfer, which is also a general reason to avoid update panels. However this is also very quick and very easy to implement, not to mention if you've ever used update panels before you already know 90% of what's needed. This can also only work in situations where you have a good search that is going to return the result quickly, rather than leaving the user sitting there trying to work out why nothing's happening and where the search button has gone.

Implementing Real Time Search

For this example I will be filtering a table from a DB based on the search criteria and refreshing a Grid View with the results. I will be using a normal C# Web Site project with the Adventure Works sample DB from Microsoft. DB connection will be done using LINQ to EntityFramework, however there is no need to use this it is just my preference for the example.

First off set up you're website and db and make sure both are working with no problems. As results will be displayed in an Update Panel, get one of these along with a script manager added to your page, so it looks something like this:

Next let's get the search working in the normal method, so I'm going to create my Entity Model and add a textbox and gridview to show the results. Again you can connect and show your results however you want. You should now have something like this in your aspx file:

And this in your code behind:

Next its time to add the Real Time Search. Make sure you have the dll downloaded (you may need to compile the download to get it) and add it to your bin folder. Add the following to your page in the relevant places:

Important things to notice here are the AssociatedUpdatePanelId which tells the control what it has to refresh and the controls to monitor section which sets what the control to watch is called and the event name that will be fired when the post back is created. You will now need to corresponding control in your code behind like so:

Run the site and  you should find that the grid view now updates as you type (all be it with a slight delay).

To improve you can add other controls like update progress to show something happening which will help with any delays in displaying the results.

This week I have been playing around with the Beta 1 of Visual Studio 2010 and one thing I have to say I like is the new Snippet Support. We're all used to using it's InteliSense support allowing us to only type <aso:Bu and then hit space if we wanted to add a .NET button control to the page, but Snippets takes that a step further. Have a look at this example of adding a MultiView control to the page.

Adding A MultiView Control

The normal method would be to type <asp:Multi and then hit space to complete the word, followed by adding an ID, runat etc. All of which would be made easier with the current InteliSense support. Now though you can just type <mu and the Multiview snippet will be highlighted.

Hit tab and the word will be completed as below.

Hit tab again though and all the other stuff you were about to type is entered for you.

An auto ID is given, the runat and activeviewindex properties are also written for you along with the first view automatically added.

Snippet support isn't just limited to .NET controls either, it will also work with HTML markup and JavaScript.

HTML Example

In this HTML example of an "A" tag you can see as simple as an "A" tag may be, snippets can save you time even here by automatically writing the whole thing, and then recognising that you will want to change the values of the two sections and thus makes that even easier by then letting you tab between the two sections.

So there you have it, we can now all wonder how we ever survived having to write the first couple of letters of each word, when really all we ever needed to do was write the first couple of letters of the main tag and have the rest written for us.

Update panels provide a really easy way to add partial page refresh's to a web page in order to give a more user friendly experience that's more like a common desktop App. By default a button within that update panel will cause a post back and so long as no elements outside of the update panel are affected in the post back only it will refresh. However what do you do if you need to refresh a panel based on something outside of the update panel. One option is just to place a hidden button within the Update Panel and trigger that to post back, however this appears a little hacky. The solution is to use JavaScript and the _doPostBack method.

The following bit of code is all you really need:

All you need to add is something to call the function.

The second parameter is optional and provides a way of passing some information back to the server to let it know what has just happened on the page.

When the update panel has finished refreshing the refreshUpdatePanelComplete function will fire so more JavaScript can be added if needed e.g. To reset whatever just happened on the page that caused the initial postback.