ASP.Net Cookbook

ASP.NET Cookbook Authors: Michael A Kittel and Geoffrey T. Leblond Published by O'Reilly Books ISBN 0596003781 Reviewed by Steven Mullins, HuNTUG member This was a hot book for me, I really get the feeling after reading this book that I can comfortably start to write my own code and see some success instead of just errors and copying open source. If you want to see some of the basics of what the book is actually doing you can go to the website and see a host of examples. www.dominiondigital.com/aspnetcookbook/errata.aspx and you can find the controls and how they work and what the end result looks like by chapter and example. This book is well laid out in its basic approach to teaching going from the first look to the more custom data controls. The highlight for me that I had not seen anywhere else was the section on displaying user friendly-error messages. The one thing I disagree with is instead of including the information in the book there are a lot of references to other O'Reilly books. I am aware that is the livelihood of some but not all of us want to buy twelve books for reference. I enjoyed the common sense way the book flowed, the Problem, Solution, and Discussion format added to the ease of explanation of the coding and why things are done in a certain manner. There are huge amounts of code and examples in both VB and C#. The chapters are well covered from user controls through tracing and debugging. The chapter on configuration was well covered and even covered adding personal tweaks to the web.config. The book then leads into the area of real time for all users and that's getting the info out on the web, to include the aspects of imaging and caching information. I really appreciate the way the hints and tips were covered as well as the cautions. Overall there were many areas of the book that were just what the coder ordered and serve's the average beginner to intermediate user. Those in the community that have the skill set already down may not be as impressed with the information. As a beginner myself I thought the book was well worth the read and I plan on using the information on my first web based application I am starting to write.

When I picked up a copy of the ASP.NET Cookbook, I was expecting to find a couple of very simple "recipes" and a couple of more complex ones. What I found was a book that goes through everything you need to know to go from a beginning ASP.NET developer to a really advanced developer. I was very surprised with how complete and thorough this book is in helping developers become advanced ASP.NET developers. This book assumes that you have some knowledge of ASP.NET. The first chapter takes off immediately with a discussion on datagrids. If you pick up this book without a basic knowledge of how to even create an ASPX page, you'll be lost. If that is the case, go for one of O'Reilly's other ASP.NET books like Programming ASP.NET or ASP.NET In A Nutshell. If you already have that groundwork, then you'll find this book to be a natural picking-up point. After a very thorough discussion on tabular data (nearly 180 pages), the authors take the reader through data validation (with server validation controls), forms (which include tasks like getting the Enter key to work like the submit button), and user controls. At this point, the book really starts to shine. The authors begin a discussion of custom controls, which is both very interesting and very useful for the growing ASP.NET programmer. The remainder of the book (which is still quite a bit of content), goes over such useful (and slightly more advanced) concepts like maintaining state, how and why to modify web.config, error handling, performance tuning, web services, and caching. Like I mentioned, I was surprised at both the depth and breath of content covered in this book. O'Reilly does list this book in their "cookbook" series and can certainly be used in that way. However, I think many readers will find it quite easy and useful to read this book from cover to cover. I would highly recommend this book for all levels of ASP.NET developers. The authors have done a very good job of including content that all levels of developer will benefit from.

Had the book only a day before it paid for itself. The code examples are excellent, and the authors are well aware of best practices. This is not a bunch of hack recipes, but recipes to build durable, production code.

Another in O'Reilly's ongoing series of cookbooks and hacks. Here, we are looking at ASP.NET. Probably still relatively new to a lot of you, which may explain why you are considering this book. Undoubtedly, you've heard of, and maybe tried using, the official texts put out by Microsoft Press. By definition, those are authoritative. But the sheer verbosity, while probably necessary in order to teach you the subject, can be offputting. Suppose, though, you know the rudiments. Maybe via those books. You are now working on a problem and face well defined smaller problems within it. The remit of this book. It does not try to teach you ASP.NET as a pedagogic whole. Rather, each chapter is offered largely independent of its predecessors. And within a chapter, the various hacks are logically related but can often be understood by themselves. Care has gone into the descriptions of hacks in the Contents pages. So, for example, we have "Creating a Web Service" and "Caching Pages". Concise but detailed enough to direct you to the material. The bulk of the book is also in its favour. Due in large part to extensive code listings that often accompany the hacks. Remember, you can easily get to and read only what you need. The code may turn out to be a huge timesaver.

I haven't read all of the recepies. However, at the moment I am very happy with this book. The chapter on input validation is really well done. It is easy to start with what the book offers and extend it to something else. The chapters on error handling and tracing are also very good. This book has clear examples and good code. I am happy with it.