ASP.NET 4.0- Menu control enhancement.

Till asp.net 3.5 asp.net menu control was rendered through table. And we all know that it is very hard to have CSS applied to table. For a professional look of our website a CSS is must required thing. But in asp.net 4.0 Menu control is table less it will loaded with UL and LI tags which is easier to manage through CSS. Another problem with table is it will create a large html which will increase your asp.net page KB and decrease your performance. While with UL and LI Tags its very easy very short. So You page KB Size will also be down.

Let’s take a simple example. Let’s Create a menu control in asp.net with four menu item like following.

<asp:Menu ID="myCustomMenu"  runat="server" >
 <Items>
     <asp:MenuItem Text="Menu1" Value="Menu1"></asp:MenuItem>
     <asp:MenuItem Text="Menu2" Value="Menu2"></asp:MenuItem>
     <asp:MenuItem Text="Menu3" Value="Menu3"></asp:MenuItem>
     <asp:MenuItem Text="Menu4" Value="Menu4"></asp:MenuItem>
 </Items>
</asp:Menu>

It will render menu in browser like following.

Now If we render this menu control with tables then HTML as you can see via view page source like following.

Now If in asp.net 4.0 It will be loaded with UL and LI tags and if you now see page source then it will look like following. Which will have must lesser HTML then it was earlier like following.

So isn’t that great performance enhancement?.. It’s very cool. If you still like old way doing with tables then in asp.net 4.0 there is property called ‘RenderingMode’ is given. So you can set RenderingMode=Table then it will load menu control with table otherwise it will load menu control with UL and LI Tags.

That’s it..Stay tuned for more..Happy programming..

Technorati Tags: Menu,Asp.NET 4.0

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ASP.NET Error Handling: Creating an extension method to send error email

Error handling in asp.net required to handle any kind of error occurred. We all are using that in one or another scenario. But some errors are there which will occur in some specific scenario in production environment in this case We can’t show our programming errors to the End user. So we are going to put a error page over there or whatever best suited as per our requirement. But as a programmer we should know that error so we can track the scenario and we can solve that error or can handle error. In this kind of situation an Error Email comes handy. Whenever any occurs in system it will going to send error in our email.
Here I am going to write a extension method which will send errors in email. From asp.net 3.5 or higher version of .NET framework its provides a unique way to extend your classes. Here you can fine more information about extension method. So lets create extension method via implementing a static class like following. I am going to use same code for sending email via my Gmail account from here. Following is code for that.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Net.Mail;

namespace Experiement
{
  public static class MyExtension
  {
      public static void SendErrorEmail(this Exception ex)
      {
          MailMessage mailMessage = new MailMessage(new MailAddress("from@gmail.com")
                                     , new MailAddress("to@gmail.com"));
          mailMessage.Subject = "Exception Occured in your site";
          mailMessage.IsBodyHtml = true;

          System.Text.StringBuilder errorMessage = new System.Text.StringBuilder();

          errorMessage.AppendLine(string.Format("<B>{0}</B>:{1}<BR/>",
                       "Exception",ex.Message));
          errorMessage.AppendLine(string.Format("<B>{0}</B>:{1}<BR/>",
                       "Stack Trace", ex.StackTrace));

          if (ex.InnerException != null)
          {
              errorMessage.AppendLine(string.Format("<B>{0}</B>:{1}<BR/>",
                        " Inner Exception", ex.InnerException.Message));
              errorMessage.AppendLine(string.Format("<B>{0}</B>:{1}<BR/>",
                        "Inner Stack Trace", ex.InnerException.StackTrace));
          }

          mailMessage.Body = errorMessage.ToString();

          System.Net.NetworkCredential networkCredentials = new
          System.Net.NetworkCredential("youraccount@gmail.com", "password");
        
          SmtpClient smtpClient = new SmtpClient();
          smtpClient.EnableSsl = true;
          smtpClient.UseDefaultCredentials = false;
          smtpClient.Credentials = networkCredentials;
          smtpClient.Host = "smtp.gmail.com";
          smtpClient.Port = 587;
          smtpClient.Send(mailMessage);

        
      }
  }
}

After creating an extension method let us that extension method to handle error like following in page load event of page.

using System;

namespace Experiement
{
  public partial class WebForm1 : System.Web.UI.Page
  {
      protected void Page_Load(object sender,System.EventArgs e)
      {
          try
          {
              throw new Exception("My custom Exception");
          }
          catch (Exception ex)
          {
              ex.SendErrorEmail();
              Response.Write(ex.Message);
          }
      }

  }
}

Now in above code I have generated custom exception for example but in production It can be any Exception. And you can see I have use ex.SendErrorEmail() function in catch block to send email. That’s it.

Now it will throw exception and you will email in your email box like below.



That’s its. It’s so simple…Stay tuned for more.. Happy programming..

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ASP.NET Performance tip- Combine multiple script file into one request with script manager

We all need java script for our web application and we storing our JavaScript code in .js files. Now If we have more then .js file then our browser will create a new request for each .js file. Which is a little overhead in terms of performance. If you have very big enterprise application you will have so much over head for this. Asp.net Script Manager provides a feature to combine multiple JavaScript into one request but you must remember that this feature will be available only with .NET Framework 3.5 sp1 or higher versions.

Let’s take a simple example. I am having two javascript files Jscrip1.js and Jscript2.js both are having separate functions.

//Jscript1.js
function Task1() {
alert('task1');
}

Here is another one for another file.

////Jscript1.js
function Task2() {
alert('task2');
}

Now I am adding script reference with script manager and using this function in my code like this.

<form id="form1" runat="server">
<asp:ScriptManager ID="myScriptManager" runat="server" >
<Scripts>
<asp:ScriptReference Path="~/JScript1.js" />
<asp:ScriptReference Path="~/JScript2.js" />
</Scripts>
</asp:ScriptManager>
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
Task1();
Task2();         
</script>
</form>

Now Let’s test in Firefox with Lori plug-in which will show you how many request are made for this. Here is output of that. You can see 5 Requests are there.

Now let’s do same thing in with ASP.NET Script Manager combined script feature. Like following

<form id="form1" runat="server">
<asp:ScriptManager ID="myScriptManager" runat="server" >
<CompositeScript>
<Scripts>
<asp:ScriptReference Path="~/JScript1.js" />
<asp:ScriptReference Path="~/JScript2.js" />
</Scripts>

</CompositeScript>
</asp:ScriptManager>
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
Task1();
Task2();         
</script>
</form>

Now let’s run it and let’s see how many request are there like following.

As you can see now we have only 4 request compare to 5 request earlier. So script manager combined multiple script into one request. So if you have lots of javascript files you can save your loading time with this with combining multiple script files into one request. Hope you liked it. Stay tuned for more!!!.. Happy programming..

Technorati Tags: ASP.NET,ScriptManager,Microsoft Ajax

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