ASP.Net Developer's Cookbook

The .NET Framework can be a pleasure to use but there's so much to use and master that it's an all-too-often event when we start out with something basic only to realise we've forgotten exactly how it's done. For that very reason, the concept of cookbooks exists-references whose sole existence is to refresh the memory and suggest best practices.Cookbooks often suffer from being too subjective. What the public tend to get is a set of tips specific to the author's line of work; very useful in places and sorely lacking in others. What makes this book different is that the whole ASP Alliance community has sourced the material for this book and filtered through Smith and Howard a comprehensive and well-considered collection of some 250 basic techniques. If there is a bias to any given topic, it's because an ASP.NET developer has more problems and solutions to remember in that topic and not because it's the author's area of speciality. Perhaps there's a slight bias to the classic ASP origins of the alliance with all the examples in VB.NET, but C# equivalents can be downloaded from the book's support website as required.The first half of the book looks at the core topics in ASP.NET and ADO.NET-controls, state management, XML, and data handling-while the second covers more generic .NET tasks which are just as applicable to ASP.NET applications as they are elsewhere-text and image manipulation, collections, Web services, and so on. Each topic is given its own chapter and each technique follows the same pattern for easy access. A problem is stated, followed by a brief description of the technique used as a solution and some sample code to demonstrate it. A concise but complete discussion of what has been done is then given along with links and references for further information. Indeed, these links are one of the stand-out features of this book, making it more useful than most other tomes of the same ilk. At the same time then, we are presented with an easy-to-follow, basic working solution for each problem, and are confident that we can use the links to work on a more complex version of the solution should the need arise.If there is a flaw in this book, it's in the decision to make the solutions code-only and not cover using development IDEs at all. Surely a chapter each on the most common tips and tricks for use with, say, Visual Studio .NET, Dreamweaver MX and Web Matrix wouldn't be out of scope for a book such as this? I know I'd much rather use an IDE to generate a basic paging solution for a DataGrid than type it out by hand. You could also debate that there isn't enough `sticky' contextual text in the book itself to inspire readers to give new areas a go without them having already decided that they'll need to anyway, but the simple counter is that ASP.NET Cookbook is a pure reference book and a damn fine one at that. Beginners won't learn ASP.NET development by reading it, but established ones will remember a whole lot they've probably forgotten.St

If Lance Armstrong was an ASP.NET developer, this is the book he'd write. There are many many great ASP.NET books, and it'd be impossible to say that one is the 'best'. But I can say for sure that this book hits the ground running and just takes off from there.As far as the recommended audience, I think you need a little ASP.NET experience to really appreciate this book (although if you are a total newbie, it's still a superb resource). Everything in here, Everything, is pure gold. Example after Example after Example of just cool stuff, with great implementations, cleary written x25.There's a lot to ASP.NET and I think you need to read more than a few books before you really 'get' it, but if you are developing professional ASP.NET apps, this book pays for itself by the time you hit page 30.If you aren't into 'cookbooks' and you want an academic discussion of ASP.NET, then this book isn't for you. However, if you want some great practical examples, you'll fall in love with this book quickly.

The collaborative effort of Steven A. Smith, Rob Howard, and The ASP Alliance, ASP.NET Developer's Cookbook is a definitive resource designed especially for experienced programmers who are using (or aspire to use) ASP.NET, Microsoft's platform for designing data-driven web applications. Demonstrating useful, practical, effective solutions to common problems, the text is enhanced with a wealth of examples, straightforward instructions and easy-to-adopt techniques. ASP.NET Developer's Cookbook is a confidently recommended instruction manual and dilemma-solving answer guide that lets the code speak as plainly as written advice.

After carefully following the launch of .NET over the last 2 years, this is the first year that we at our company decided to start developing applications using .NET for clients. After going through all the books out there that cover the same basic topics giving you very little extra knowledge (guess - 70% of books in the market cover the same topics in the same inadequate fashion), I ran across 4-5 books that take you to the next level. This book takes you to the highest level possible in ASP.NET. How does this book help you in taking you to the highest level of expertise as an ASP.NET developer? After mastering the basic concepts and trying to design and develop some basic database driven websites, you will quickly understand the limitations of ASP.NET as it stands right now. The .NET framework comes with all the namespaces, classes with methods and properties you can imagine but you still have to code a lot of event handlers before you can accomplish anything beyond the most basic website. And you also have to write a lot of code to connect different classes and eventually integrate everything. At this point, you realize that it would be great to have access to such code without having to write so many of these event handlers or integration code yourself. That's where this book comes in. It is meant for the advanced user and it doesn't spend any time describing any of the basic concepts. It just goes straight to addressing 210 different practical problems you may be faced with. Each recipe is very simple - there is a very short description of the problem (usually 1-2 lines), a description of the technique to apply, the working code, and some very helpful comments on the topic (1-2 paragraphs). These 210 recipes should cover a majority of the problems (maybe 60%) you are likely to encounter when doing ASP.NET programming. You can download all the source code from The ASP Alliance's website.There have been some complaints that the code doesn't work. After encountering the same problem, we realized that most of these problems trace back to the unpredictable nature of Visual Studio .NET 2003 (that's the version we are using on a Windows Server 2003 machine). We haven't tried all the recipes yet but the ones we tried haven't had anything majorly wrong with the code. Sure, we had to customize it for the particular application we were writing and we did spend a lot of time setting up the Visual Studio .NET 2003 environment to work right with our Windows 2003 Server OS. But we actually didn't have to wrestle with incorrect code from this book. If you have reached the stage where you are ready to just find code snippets that fit different situations and you are tired of writing tons of event handlers (we are), grab a copy of this book. It also happens to be one of the most inexpensive book in the market. It is kind of surprising that the most valuable book is also the most inexpensive. In a nutshell, after buying this book I have been able to handle ou

As an aspiring ASP.NET developer, this book fills a void that I've had in my bookshelf since I began learning ASP.NET. I've been searching for months for a concise, in depth resource to turn to when I have those specific "how-to" questions. Unlike many other titles, this book focuses only on solving specific problems - which may save you hours of scouring the web looking for "just the right example."In the first week that I've had the book, I've used the following recipes: sending email with attachments, validating credit card numbers, encrypting and decrypting strings, and creating graphic thumbnails. The code samples are clean and direct, and are available as a .zip download from the book's website. In instances where an error or omission was made in the code, the support team and author have been very quick to respond with corrections and updated examples.As a tool to help the intermediate ASP.NET developer find quick, specific solutions, this book is great. Considering the number of times I've already used it to solve application issues, this book has already paid for itself 3 times over!