Routing in ASP.NET 4

ASP.NET 4 adds built-in support for using routing with Web Forms. Routing lets you configure an application to accept request URLs that do not map to physical files. Instead, you can use routing to define URLs that are meaningful to users and that can help with search-engine optimization (SEO) for your application. For example, the URL for a page that displays product categories in an existing application might look like the following example:

http://website/products.aspx?categoryid=12

By using routing, you can configure the application to accept the following URL to render the same information:

http://website/products/software

Routing has been available starting with ASP.NET 3.5 SP1. However, ASP.NET 4 includes some features that make it easier to use routing, including the following:

· The PageRouteHandler class, which is a simple HTTP handler that you use when you define routes. The class passes data to the page that the request is routed to.

· The new properties HttpRequest.RequestContext and Page.RouteData (which is a proxy for the HttpRequest.RequestContext.RouteData object). These properties make it easier to access information that is passed from the route.

· The following new expression builders, which are defined in System.Web.Compilation.RouteUrlExpressionBuilder and System.Web.Compilation.RouteValueExpressionBuilder:

· RouteUrl, which provides a simple way to create a URL that corresponds to a route URL format within an ASP.NET server control.

· RouteValue, which provides a simple way to extract information from the RouteContext object.

· The RouteParameter class, which makes it easier to pass data contained in a RouteContext object to a query for a data source control (similar to FormParameter).

Routing for Web Forms Pages

The following example shows how to define a Web Forms route by using the new MapPageRoute method of the Route class:

public class Global : System.Web.HttpApplication

{

void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

RouteTable.Routes.MapPageRoute("SearchRoute",

"search/{searchterm}", "~/search.aspx");

RouteTable.Routes.MapPageRoute("UserRoute",

"users/{username}", "~/users.aspx");

}

ASP.NET 4 Beta 2 introduces the MapPageRoute method. The following example is equivalent to the SearchRoute definition shown in the previous example, but uses the PageRouteHandler class.

RouteTable.Routes.Add("SearchRoute", new Route("search/{searchterm}",

new PageRouteHandler("~/search.aspx")));

The code in the example maps the route to a physical page (in the first route, to ~/search.aspx). The first route definition also specifies that the parameter named searchterm should be extracted from the URL and passed to the page.

The MapPageRoute method supports the following method overloads:

· MapPageRoute(string routeName, string routeUrl, string physicalFile, bool checkPhysicalUrlAccess)

· MapPageRoute(string routeName, string routeUrl, string physicalFile, bool checkPhysicalUrlAccess, RouteValueDictionary defaults)

· MapPageRoute(string routeName, string routeUrl, string physicalFile, bool checkPhysicalUrlAccess, RouteValueDictionary defaults, RouteValueDictionary constraints)

The checkPhysicalUrlAccess parameter specifies whether the route should check the security permissions for the physical page being routed to (in this case, search.aspx) and the permissions on the incoming URL (in this case, search/{searchterm}). If the value of checkPhysicalUrlAccess is false, only the permissions of the incoming URL will be checked. These permissions are defined in the Web.config file with settings such as the following:

<system.web>

</authorization>

</system.web>

</location>

<system.web>

</authorization>

</system.web>

</location>

</configuration>

In the example configuration, access is denied to the physical page search.aspx for all users except those who are in the admin role. When the checkPhysicalUrlAccess parameter is set to true (which is its default value), only admin users are allowed to access the URL /search/{searchterm}, because the physical page search.aspx is restricted to users in that role. If checkPhysicalUrlAccess is set to false and the site is configured as shown in the previous example, all authenticated users are allowed to access the URL /search/{searchterm}.

Posted in: asp.net | Tags: xml asp.net asp.net 4.0 eventargs routing pageroutehandler httprequest requestcontext routevalueexpressionbuilder web form page authorization location configuration

Best blog system – WordPress, using php and mysql

WordPress started in 2003 with a single bit of code to enhance the typography of everyday writing and with fewer users than you can count on your fingers and toes. Since then it has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.

Everything you see here, from the documentation to the code itself, was created by and for the community. WordPress is an Open Source project, which means there are hundreds of people all over the world working on it. (More than most commercial platforms.) It also means you are free to use it for anything from your cat’s home page to a Fortune 500 web site without paying anyone a license fee and a number of other important freedoms.
About WordPress.org

On this site you can download and install a software script called WordPress. To do this you need a web host who meets the minimum requirements and a little time. WordPress is completely customizable and can be used for almost anything. There is also a service called WordPress.com which lets you get started with a new and free WordPress-based blog in seconds, but varies in several ways and is less flexible than the WordPress you download and install yourself.
A Little History

WordPress was born out of a desire for an elegant, well-architectured personal publishing system built on PHP and MySQL and licensed under the GPL. It is the official successor of b2/cafelog. WordPress is fresh software, but its roots and development go back to 2001. It is a mature and stable product. We hope by focusing on user experience and web standards we can create a tool different from anything else out there.

2005 was a very exciting year for WordPress, as it saw the release of our 1.5 version (introduced themes) which was downloaded over 900,000 times, the start of hosted service WordPress.com to expand WP's reach, the founding of Automattic by several core members of the WP team, and finally the release of version 2.0.

After 1.5 we seemed to have something people really liked and we've experienced some fairly rapid growth. Here are some metrics for 2006 and 2007.

In 2006 we had 1,545,703 downloads, in 2007 we had 3,816,965!

As for plugins we had 191,567 downloads of 371 unique plugins in 2006. In 2007 there were 2,845,884 downloads (15x growth) of 1,384 plugins.

2006 saw the introduction of the first WordCamp in San Francisco.

In 2007 we adopted a regular release schedule, putting out major feature releases roughly every 3-4 months, or three times a year.

Because of the number of improvements in version 2.5 we took an extra 3 months on it, but 2008 looks on track to do three major releases again. It will be a very exciting year.

There are now dozens of WordCamps around the world, from Vancouver to Dallas to Milan, Italy.

To run WordPress your host just needs a couple of things:

* PHP version 4.3 or greater
* MySQL version 4.0 or greater

That's really it. We recommend Apache or Litespeed as the most robust and featureful server for running WordPress, but any server that supports PHP and MySQL will do. That said, we can’t test every possible environment and each of the hosts on our hosting page supports the above and more with no problems.

Key Features

    * Full standards compliance — We have gone to great lengths to make sure every bit of WordPress generated code is in full compliance with the standards of the W3C. This is important not only for interoperability with today's browser but also for forward compatibility with the tools of the next generation. Your web site is a beautiful thing, and you should demand nothing less.
    * No rebuilding — Changes you make to your templates or entries are reflected immediately on your site, with no need for regenerating static pages.
    * WordPress Pages — Pages allow you to manage non-blog content easily, so for example you could have a static "About" page that you manage through WordPress. For an idea of how powerful this is, the entire WordPress.org site could be run off WordPress alone. (We don't for technical mirroring reasons.)
    * WordPress Links -- Links allows you to create, maintain, and update any number of blogrolls through your administration interface. This is much faster than calling an external blogroll manager.
    * WordPress Themes — WordPress comes with a full theme system which makes designing everything from the simplest blog to the most complicated webzine a piece of cake, and you can even have multiple themes with totally different looks that you switch with a single click. Have a new design every day.
    * Cross-blog communication tools— WordPress fully supports both the Trackback and Pingback standards, and we are committed to supporting future standards as they develop.
    * Comments — Visitors to your site can leave comments on individual entries, and through Trackback or Pingback can comment on their own site. You can enable or disable comments on a per-post basis.
    * Spam protection — Out of the box WordPress comes with very robust tools such as an integrated blacklist and open proxy checker to manage and eliminate comment spam on your blog, and there is also a rich array of plugins that can take this functionality a step further.
    * Full user registration — WordPress has a built-in user registration system that (if you choose) can allow people to register and maintain profiles and leave authenticated comments on your blog. You can optionally close comments for non-registered users. There are also plugins that hide posts from lower level users.

    * Password Protected Posts — You can give passwords to individual posts to hide them from the public. You can also have private posts which are viewable only by their author.
    * Easy installation and upgrades — Installing WordPress and upgrading from previous versions and other software is a piece of cake. Try it and you'll wonder why all web software isn't this easy.
    * Easy Importing — We currently have importers for Movable Type, Textpattern, Greymatter, Blogger, and b2. Work on importers for Nucleus and pMachine are under way.
    * XML-RPC interface — WordPress currently supports an extended version of the Blogger API, MetaWeblog API, and finally the MovableType API. You can even use clients designed for other platforms like Zempt.
    * Workflow — You can have types of users that can only post drafts, not publish to the front page.
    * Typographical niceties — WordPress uses the Texturize engine to intelligently convert plain ASCII into typographically correct XHTML entities. This includes quotes, apostrophes, ellipses, em and en dashes, multiplication symbols, and ampersands. For information about the proper use of such entities see Peter Sheerin's article The Trouble With Em ’n En.
    * Intelligent text formatting — If you've dealt with systems that convert new lines to line breaks before you know why they have a bad name: if you have any sort of HTML they butcher it by putting tags after every new line indiscriminately, breaking your formatting and validation. Our function for this intelligently avoids places where you already have breaks and block-level HTML tags, so you can leave it on without worrying about it breaking your code.
    * Multiple authors — WordPress' highly advanced user system allows up to 10 levels of users, with different levels having different (and configurable) privileges with regard to publishing, editing, options, and other users.
    * Bookmarklets — Cross-browser bookmarklets make it easy to publish to your blog or add links to your blogroll with a minimum of effort.
    * Ping away — WordPress supports pinging Ping-O-Matic, which means maximum exposure for your blog to search engines.