Encrypted QueryStrings in .NET

Encrypted QueryStrings in .NET

When ASP.NET first arrived to the development community a few years back it was clear that one of the primary goals of the technology was to simply front-end development patterns. Many of the troublesome kinks that made classic ASP development very cumbersome had been addressed and pre-built into ASP.NET, allowing the developer to focus on functionality rather than finding solutions to the limits of the technology.

One of these new patterns is now widely known as the post-back concept, whereby forms no longer post themselves to other pages, but rather post to themselves, containing all the form information through the new ASP.NET control objects. You no longer had to “receive” form posts and process the data.

There are certain situations however, where posting or sending information to the same page that originated the data is just not an option. So there is still a need to use either querystrings, or post form data to another page. A good example is a page with overloaded functionality, and the querystring can tell the page which “context” it should run in, thus rendering dynamic content based on the querystring.

Another example could be a page which renders a certain object from your database, such as a document, or an image. The querystring can tell the page which document to fetch and render the result on the page.

Whatever the situation may be, there are times when the querystring information should remain private, or at least inconspicuous. As you’re well aware querystring data by default is clearly visible and decipherable by the naked eye. Taking the document example, a user could simply append: documentid=number to the page and render any document they wish, possibly breaching security or permissions in your application.

In this tutorial we will explore a basic encryption/decryption pattern which will allow your querystring data to remain encoded, and unreadable. Though not recommended for mission critical enterprise applications this basic pattern will alleviate the most common problems associated with unencrypted data.

Multi-Level Forms Authentication with Dreamweaver and ASP.NET: Roles Logins

Authenticating users is a common task—one with which all web application developers should be familiar. In Classic ASP, Dreamweaver developers have long had the convenience of the built-in Macromedia Server Behaviours for implementing forms based authentication and authorization schemes. Needed security features such as Login User or Login User with Levels (Roles in Windows parlance) and Create New User are a simple point and click away.  When the Dreamweaver team implemented support for ASP.NET these familiar—and easy to use, server behaviours somehow never made it into the package. While many have wondered why this important functionality seems to have been left out, I wondered what it would take to implement it. And that leads to numerous and interesting questions.

But first before you get too involved, let’s see if you’re ready. This tutorial makes some assumptions about your skill level--that is, this tutorial is intended for intermediate users. If you’ve never configured a new site in Dreamweaver, never configured a database connection string, or never used the Dreamweaver database connectivity tools, this tutorial is probably not for you as you’ll need to be familiar with these concepts and techniques. If you have done these things but have very little or no experience hand coding, writing SQL statements, using the Dreamweaver advanced Dataset Dialog, don’t worry we’re doing this together and I’ll to do my part to bring you along.  

Free! - Insert a Record across 2 Pages (PHP Version)

Inserting a record over two pages > Insert a Record accross 2 Pages (PHP Version)

Size: 9.50 mb

Download Source Code / PDF Help File:

Date Created: 2006-03-02

In this tutorial we'll show you how to let an end-user sumbit information for the same record accorss 2 pages.   This is great to know if you have a case want to split a form in half.  

Here's the demo: (end result) http://shoestore.dmxtutorials.com/admin/shoe1.php

Data Driven Email Templates

It can easily be argued that sending email notifications is a part of almost any Web application. Whether you’re developing small 2-tier apps to full n-tier enterprise apps you are more than likely going to wind up with the requirement to interact with customers/clients/users via email notifications.

There is literally and endless supply of email components available on the net today. Most of them are free to download and distribute, while other more advanced components can be purchased for a reasonable price. For me personally, I would rather implement my own functionality majority of the time rather than reading through support documentation and code samples trying to figure out how to make 3^rd party components function with my existing application.

Tip: If you do not have Microsoft Access installed on your machine you can download the .mdb file for this tutorial and setup your database connection in Dreamweaver to point to this file.

Free! - Create a dynamic slide show with ASP.NET and Active Slideshow Pro

I was asked to write this tutorial after posting some code on how to get active slide show to work with asp.net. Actually it is easier then you would expect. In the following tutorial I’ll explain on a step by step basis the approach. I haven’t seen a cooler slide show, except for the slide show on an apple Macintosh, which looks exactly the same as Active Slide Show Pro (and also uses the same Ken Burns effects). But the benefit of Active Slide Show Pro is that you can use it on your website and let the whole world enjoy your slideshows. Feel free to ask any questions if you cannot get things to work.

An example can be found on http://www.mijnvakantievrienden.nl In this example I show 20 random images out of the database, combined with text at the top and per slide a link to another page.

Learn more about Active Slideshow Pro>>

Creating an Editable DataGrid in Dreamweaver

The ASP.NET DataGrid component is a very powerful interface control that supports a myriad of features and functionality. It is however, often misused and misunderstood. Due to the depth of functionality built into the DataGrid component developers are often “reinventing the wheel” in certain situations simply because they are unaware the DataGrid already provides the required functionality, or they discover the functionality simply too complex to work with.

Here are some features provided by the DataGrid component out-of-the-box:

• Automatic generation of an HTML table when bound to a DataSource
• May be bound to several DataSource objects, such as DataSet, DataTable, DataView, ArrayList
• Provides built in column sorting
• Provides built in data paging and Next/Back navigation
• Allows row selection with highlighting
• Supports full row by row customization of data presentation through the ItemDataBound event
• Provides built in Edit/Update/Cancel functionality

When we say built-in what we really mean is that the basic plumbing for using this functionality is already built into the component, however the definitions of these features must be programmed because they are dependent on your specific needs for your application.

In this tutorial we will examine the built in functionality for Edit/Update/Cancel. We will implement a bound DataGrid component and see how we can edit the fields in the DataGrid right on the page, and update those fields to the database.

This functionality can be entirely designed through Dreamweaver’s wizards and dialogue boxes and requires absolutely no coding on behalf of the developer.

Free! - Build a Body Mass Index Calculator in PHP

This video tutorial  shows you how to create a body mass calculator application in PHP and Dreamweaver.

This great tutorial shows you how easy it is to create a calculator using PHP. It uses a step by step teaching method that takes you all the way from setting up your PHP page to testing the final application.

Image Catalogue Web Service with Dreamweaver

The posts are all over the newsgroups, Dreamweaver developers trying to use Web Services in their website and applications but to no avail. The most common error being posted is the “Unable to Generate Proxy” message when users try to implement a WSDL file from a Web Service.

It’s clear Dreamweaver developers are trying to use this feature but are having a hard time understanding exactly how to do so. There seems to be very limited help regarding the subject as well. In fact, a well known author has even stated that it’s “impossible” and to just use Visual Studio.NET.

The fact is using Web Services with Dreamweaver is not impossible at all; it simply requires a thorough understanding of the .NET framework and its commands. The average developer is not going to have this kind of expertise, especially regarding something as daunting and complex as the .NET framework.

In this tutorial we will accomplish two things: First we will implement a demonstration Web Service which returns a list of thumbnail images, and second, we will learn how to implement this Web Service correctly within Dreamweaver and create a demonstration page which will dynamically render the thumbnail images onto a Web Form in ASP.NET.

Because the Web Service itself is built using Visual Studio.NET you must have it installed in order to follow through the steps of building the Web Service. If you don’t have Visual Studio.NET you can still use the portion of this tutorial regarding the implementation of the Web Service, however you need to have the full .NET SDK installed, not just the .NET framework.

Creating a Custom DropDown Control

Creating a Custom DropDown Control

When working with a true OO (Object Oriented) language framework such as .NET it’s sometimes difficult to know exactly what is available to you as a developer. Some developers who come from C++ or Java backgrounds have a strong grasp of OO concepts, what they mean, and most importantly how to use them in everyday situations. A lot of developers are familiar with OO concepts but fail to grasp precisely how they can use them in real world development scenarios.

In this tutorial we will look at one of the more widely known OO concepts called inheritance. Instead of reviewing the meaning of the concept we will put in into direct action, in a visible demonstration to literally watch inheritance in action on a web page and design-time environment with Visual Studio.NET.

To demonstrate the concept we will build our own custom DropDown web component. We will see how we can derive from the existing ASP.NET DropDownList component, and how we can extend the component to include our own customized functionality.

Additionally, we will see how we can interact with our custom DropDown component in the visual designer of Visual Studio.NET to update and reflect changes made to our custom component at design-time. By being able to watch our custom component visually on a Web Form the concept of inheritance becomes much clearer as we can literally see the inheritance in action in real time.

Note: The custom DropDownList component will be implemented in both VB.NET as C#

Using SQL Server and Datagrids in Dreamweaver

Dreamweaver supports several different kinds of server programming models. One of these models is ASP.NET for both VB.NET as well as C#. As a Dreamweaver developer it’s sometimes difficult to understand exactly what you can or cannot do with ASP.NET. Working with the .NET framework can seem daunting to those who are not familiar with the technology.

Probably the best advantage of working with a RAD tool such as Dreamweaver is that the developer is protected from the complexities of OO design patterns and does not need a thorough understanding of the .NET framework in order to work with ASP.NET. Through the use of extremely powerful and highly intuitive wizards and input forms you can implement most of the components and features of ASP.NET without writing a single line of VB.NET or C# code.

In this tutorial we will explore two basic but powerful concepts in ASP.NET: Connecting to an SQL Server database, and using the data within that database to populate a DataGrid component to display a dynamic table on an ASPX Web Form.

We will deploy a simple test database with a single table for testing purposes and then learn how we can connect to this database through Dreamweaver. We’ll then learn how to retrieve data from our test table and use it to populate a DataGrid component.

Using Custom Session Objects

When it comes to the topic of using session objects within a web based application there is certainly a lot of controversy and discussion. Some developers believe the session should never be used or even be considered no matter what the design may be, while others grossly overuse it and stick massive amounts of information within it without considering the performance impact. A more reasonable middle of the road approach can be used in most situations without radically affecting performance while still providing some niceties to the end user experience.

In this tutorial we will build a simple functional ASP.NET web application which leverages a reasonable approach to implementing session objects. We will see how we can use an object oriented approach to this implementation in order to keep the session maintainable and the code very clean and easy to read.

The web application will be comprised of two main session object classes, one login page and one home page for displaying a welcome message and the session details. Providing even basic customized user data creates a personalized look and feel in your application where the user feels more involved in your application since they are given a sense that the application knows who they are and details about their previous visits.

Creating a Reusable Navigation Menu

Nearly all web sites and web applications on the internet today have some form of user friendly navigation system that allows you to jump from page to page with ease from any location in the website. Most interface developers know how cumbersome it is to place this navigation menu on every single page in the website. Moreover, when something in the navigation changes such as a page name or title, every instance of the menu needs to be updated across all pages.

Dreamweaver developers are probably familiar with the use of templates to solve this recurring problem, whereby a single template for the menu may be defined and then placed onto the web pages requiring the navigation menu. You can then manage a single template and when you make changes, those changes are automatically propagated across all web pages using that template.

VS.NET developers have access to a similar style of implementation, but its design is slightly more object oriented. It also takes advantage of the code-behind pattern, where a front end HTML designer can implement an interface separately from the server side code.

In this tutorial we’ll examine this reusable pattern called a Web User Control, and implement a simple demonstration of how this user control can be used to construct a navigation menu component that can be placed on any page in your web application.