TE RI AL Getting Star ted MA Developing sites and applications for the Web finally comes of age with the release of Microsoft Visual Web Developer (VWD 2005 Express Edition) and version 2.0 of the .NET Framework. VWD is one of the “Express” products that Microsoft provides as an expansion of the Visual Studio product line. These are lightweight, easy-to-use, and easy-to-learn tools aimed at hobbyists, students, and novice developers.
Chapter 1 About the Example Application In this book, you will be building a Web site that displays and sells products — a common scenario for many Web developers today. It is not a complicated site in comparison to many “out there” but is extensive enough to demonstrate most of the features of ASP.NET 2.0 and VWD, as well as showing you the prime techniques and approaches that are used as the foundations for almost all Web sites built using version 2.0 of .NET.
Getting Started Installing Visual Web Developer Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition is available along with SQL Server 2005 Express Edition on the CD-ROM included with this book. Both are also available for download (along with other “Express” products) from Microsoft at http://msdn.microsoft.com/express. You can install it on Windows 98, Windows 2000 Professional or Server, Windows XP with Service Pack 2, or Windows Server 2003.
Chapter 1 3. Click Next. In the Destination Folder page (see Figure 1-3), confirm the path where VWD will be installed. It is recommended that you leave it set to the default. This page shows a summary of the products for installation, and the disk space requirements. Figure 1-3: Destination Folder page 4 4. Click Install to start the installation. After it completes, you will find entries in the Programs section of your Start menu for Visual Web Developer and SQL Server.
Getting Started Figure 1-4: Start Page 6. VWD is extremely configurable, so you can change many features to suit your preferences. Click Options on the Tools menu to open the Options dialog (see Figure 1-5). Here you see a simplified view of the options you can set.
Chapter 1 Figure 1-5: Options dialog box 7. You can also exert a lot more control over a wider range of settings by ticking the “Show all settings” checkbox at the bottom left of the Options dialog (see Figure 1-6). This displays a tree with literally hundreds of settings available in more than 75 pages of options. Some of these of these are not applicable to the kinds of files you will create in VWD, or when writing code using Visual Basic 2005.
Getting Started After installing the Visual Web Developer tool, you should install the example files for the Pizza Pretty Quick application described in the book. To download the examples (or to see the application running online), go to www.daveandal.net/books/8079. You can also download the examples from the Wrox Books Web site at http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0764588079.html. The examples download file contains two versions of the PPQ application.
Chapter 1 2. If you are running Windows XP and you have Internet Information Services (IIS) installed, you must now grant the accounts named ASPNET and NETWORK SERVICE (under which ASP.NET executes, depending on whether you installed SP2) the required permissions to access the database provided with the example files. (This and the remaining steps are not required in Windows Server 2003, or if you do not have IIS installed.
Getting Started Figure 1-9: Selecting the Write option If you cannot see a Security tab in the App_Data Properties dialog, you have Simple File Sharing enabled. Select Folder Options from the Tools menu, and select the View tab. At the bottom of the list, uncheck the option named Use Simple File Sharing. This option does not appear in Windows Server 2003 because this operating system does not support simple file sharing.
Chapter 1 Viewing the PPQ Example Database With Visual Web Developer up and running, you can now look at the example database used for the PPQ application. This demonstrates the database access features that VWD provides and will give you a feeling for the way that the sample data is organized and used within the application. Step by Step — Viewing the PPQ Database Follow these steps to view the PPQ database: 1.
Getting Started 2. The Web site is loaded into VWD, and the files that make up the application can be seen in the Solution Explorer window. (If the Solution Explorer window is not visible, open it by selecting Solution Explorer from the View menu.) As shown in Figure 1-11, notice that the database in the App_Data folder is also visible. Figure 1-11: Solution Explorer window 3. In fact, VWD has automatically attached the database to SQL Server Express.
Chapter 1 Figure 1-12: Database Explorer window The Solution Explorer and Database Explorer windows dock at the right-hand side of the main VWD window by default, but you can drag any of the windows to a docked or floating position using their title bars. As you drag, small arrow indicators become visible allowing you drop the window into another one, or dock it at the side of the main VWD window.
Getting Started Figure 1-13: Selecting New Query 5. This opens the Query Editor in the main central section of the VWD window. (You can close or auto-hide the Toolbar window to make more room as shown in the screenshot.) The Add Table dialog also appears automatically, showing a list of tables in the database that you can use in your new query, as shown Figure 1-14.
Chapter 1 6. Select the table named MenuItems, and click Add to add this table to the Diagram pane at the top of the Query Editor window. Then click Close. In the list of columns that appears in the Diagram pane, select the columns named MenuItemType, ItemName, PizzaToppings, and GraphicFileName. You can either tick the checkboxes to add them to the grid, or drag and drop them there. Notice how VWD creates the equivalent SQL statement in the section below the grid, as shown in Figure 1-15.
Getting Started 7. The Criteria grid section specifies not only the columns for the query, but also any sorting or filtering you require. As a simple example, use the drop-down lists in the Sort Type column of the grid to set the sort order for the rows as Ascending by ItemName, then Descending by ItemPrice, as shown in Figure 1-16. Select the columns named MenuItemType, ItemName, PizzaToppings, and GraphicFileName. Again, you will see the equivalent SQL statement appear in the SQL pane below the grid.
Chapter 1 Figure 1-17: Results of query execution You can also use VWD to work with data that is located in a remote SQL Server or other database, as well as with local data (as we do in this book). Right-click on the root entry named Data Connections at the top of the Database Explorer window, and select Add Connection. . . . This opens the Add Connection dialog where you specify details of the database server to which you want to connect.
Getting Started Figure 1-18: Adding a connection to a database server other than SQL Server After specifying the data source type, you can use the drop-down Server name list to see all the databases of the type you selected that advertise their presence and are available. You can also type an instance name directly.
Chapter 1 Figure 1-19: Connecting to the Northwind database on a remote machine named DELBOY Figure 1-19, you must specify details of a suitable account within SQL Server. If, for any reason, you cannot install SQL Server Express or want to experiment with a different database, you can use the process just described to connect to a suitable database. You can confirm that the connection to the target database is working by clicking the Test Connection button before you close the Add Connection dialog.
Getting Started Figure 1-19 is the option to connect to a SQL Server (MDF) database file. In this case, you specify the file location using the Browse button near the bottom of the Add Connection dialog. As before, you must specify the database server name to which the file will be attached and the authentication type you want to use. Another feature is the ability to specify the fine details of the connection.
Chapter 1 Reading and Displaying Data with ASP.NET Now that you have set up VWD and SQL Server Express, and have seen some of the features that allow you to access data, this chapter concludes by showing you just how quickly and easily you can build an ASP.NET page that uses the values stored in a database. The task is to create a list of the types of pizza and drinks available from Pizza Pretty Quick (PPQ), by extracting and displaying values from the MenuItems table in the database. 1.
Getting Started 2. In the Open Web Site dialog, ensure that File System is selected in the top left of the dialog, and navigate to the skeleton folder within the C:\Websites\PPQ folder where you installed the example files (see Figure 1-22). Figure 1-22: Navigating to the skeleton folder 3. Click OK, and you then see the files that make up the site in the Solution Explorer window. Switch to the Database Explorer window, and you see the database that is in the App_Data folder of the site.
Chapter 1 Figure 1-23: Expanding the tree to see the contents of the database If you cannot see the Solution Explorer or Database Explorer windows, use the options on the View menu to make them visible. Alternatively, select Reset Window Layout from the Window menu. You can also close the Start Page now. 4. Switch back to Solution Explorer and right-click on the top-level entry (C:\...
Getting Started 5. Click Add and the new page is added to the site (it appears in the Solution Explorer window) and is displayed in the main VWD window. At the same time, the Toolbox is populated with a list of all the available ASP.NET controls. At the moment, you are in Source view (as shown by the indicator just below the main editor window shown in Figure 1-25), so the HTML and an empty code section (delimited by
