Completed 8 years in the industry

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The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep. – Robert Frost

I am very excited to share that I have completed 8 years of working as professional. In these 8 years, I have worked on various technologies and for esteem organizations. I have been fortunate to work with inspiring teams and under the guidance of great people. In infographic, I can summarize 8 years of my working as below:

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In these 8 years I was very much involved in writing technical blog posts, speaking in various tech events and organizing tech conference. I worked and wrote on WCF, SilverLight, SharePoint, Azure, Windows Phone, Windows 8 Apps, WinJS, JavaScript, AngularJS, and MVC etc.

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In these 8 years, I wrote articles on my blog, C-sharpCorner, and Infragistics blog. I was fortunate enough to start C-Corner chapters and lead conference from less than free 50 attendees to paid 500 attendees in 6 years. Due to my contribution to developer community, Microsoft has been awarding me prestigious Most Valuable Professional award for last 6 times.

 

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I am aspired to work harder in 9th year of my career and bring more value to my employer Infragistics, community site C-SharpCorner and to in work of all your readers. In this year, I will focus on MEAN, ReactJS, Ignite UI, Angular, Ionic, Hybrid Apps and Azure services.

Once again thank you so much for being with me in all these 8 years. Happy coding.

How to Implement the Repository Pattern in ASP.NET MVC Application

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Read full article on the Infragistics blog

The Repository Pattern is one of the most popular patterns to create an enterprise level application. It restricts us to work directly with the data in the application and creates new layers for database operations, business logic and the application’s UI. If an application does not follow the Repository Pattern, it may have the following problems:

  • Duplicate database operations codes
  • Need of UI to unit test database operations and business logic
  • Need of External dependencies to unit test business logic
  • Difficult to implement database caching, etc.

Using the Repository Pattern has many advantages:

  • Your business logic can be unit tested without data access logic;
  • The database access code can be reused;
  • Your database access code is centrally managed so easy to implement any database access policies, like caching;
  • It’s easy to implement domain logics;
  • Your domain entities or business entities are strongly typed with annotations; and more.

On the internet, there are millions of articles written around Repository Pattern, but in this one we’re going to focus on how to implement it in an ASP.NET MVC Application. So let’s get started!

Project Structure

Let us start with creating the Project structure for the application. We are going to create four projects:

  1. Core Project
  2. Infrastructure Project
  3. Test Project
  4. MVC Project

Each project has its own purpose. You can probably guess by the projects’ names what they’ll contain: Core and Infrastructure projects are Class Libraries, Web project is a MVC project, and Test project is a Unit Test project. Eventually, the projects in the solution explorer will look as shown in the image below:

As we progress in this post, we will learn in detail about the purpose of each project, however, to start we can summarize the main objective of each project as the following:

So far our understanding for different projects is clear. Now let us go ahead and implement each project one by one. During the implementations, we will explore the responsibilities of each project in detail.

Core Project

In the core project, we keep the entities and the repository interfaces or the database operation interfaces. The core project contains information about the domain entities and the database operations required on the domain entities. In an ideal scenario, the core project should not have any dependencies on external libraries. It must not have any business logic, database operation codes etc.

In short, the core project should contain:

  • Domain entities
  • Repository interfaces or database operations interfaces on domain entities
  • Domain specific data annotations

The core project can NOT contain:

  • Any external libraries for database operations
  • Business logic
  • Database operations code

While creating the domain entities, we also need to make a decision on the restrictions on the domain entities properties, for example:

  • Whether a particular property is required or not. For instance, for a Product entity, the name of the product should be required property.
  • Whether a value of a particular property is in given range or not. For instance, for a Product entity, the price property should be in given range.
  • Whether the maximum length of a particular property should not be given value. For instance, for a Product entity, the name property value should be less than the maximum length.

here could be many such data annotations on the domain entities properties. There are two ways we can think about these data annotations:

  1. As part of the domain entities
  2. As part of the database operations logic

It is purely up to us how we see data annotations. If we consider them part of database operation then we can apply restrictions using database operation libraries API. We are going to use the Entity Framework for database operations in the Infrastructure project, so we can use Entity Framework Fluent API to annotate data.

If we consider them part of domain, then we can use System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotationslibrary to annotate the data. To use this, right click on the Core project’s Reference folder and click on Add Reference. From the Framework tab, selectSystem.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations and add to the project.

Read full article on the Infragistics blog

How to Create a Custom Action Filter in ASP.NET MVC

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In ASP.NET MVC, Filters are used to inject logic at different levels of request processing and allow us to share logics across Controllers. For example, let’s say we want to run a security logic or a logging logic across the controller. To do so, we’ll write a filter containing those logics and enable them across all controllers. When we enable a filter across all controllers or actions, the filter enables the upcoming HTTP request.

Let us consider a scenario of Logging: for every incoming request, we need to log some data to the files on the basis of some logic. If we don’t create this logic inside a custom filter, then we will have to write logic for each controller’s action. This mechanism will lead to two problems:

  1. duplication of code; and
  2. violation of the Single Responsibility Principles; actions will now perform additional tasks of logging.

We can mitigate the problems above by putting the logging logics inside a custom action filter and applying the filter at all the controllers’ level.

Have you ever come across source code as shown in the image below? [Authorize] is an Authorization filter, and it gets executed before any HTPP request or Action method execution.  The Authorize filter is part of MVC, but if needed, we can create a custom filter too.

Read full article on the Infragistics blog

Different ways of injecting dependency in an AngularJS Application

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When you start learning the very first characteristics of AngularJS, you may come across something called Dependency Injection (DI): the premise that AngularJS injects dependencies whenever an application needs them. As a developer, our task is only to pass the dependency to the module and everything else will be taken care by AngularJS.

To create a controller, we pass $scope object and other dependencies to the module’s controller function. For example, to create a ProductController, we are passing $scope object and Calculator service dependencies. As a developer our job is to pass the dependencies and AngularJS will inject them whenever the application needs them.

As a developer, we really don’t care about how AngularJS injects dependencies – we don’t need to know how the injection process works to develop applications.  However, it is better if we know different ways of passing dependencies. In AngularJS, dependencies can be passed in three possible ways. They are as follows:

  • Passing a dependency as Function Arguments
  • Passing a dependency as Array Arguments
  • Passing a dependency using the $inject service

Let us explore these options one by one.

Passing a dependency as a Function Argument

Perhaps most of the time you pass a dependency as a function argument, which is perfectly fine. For example, we pass a $scope object to create a controller as shown in the listing below:

Read full article on the Infragistics blog

Understanding the Grid Layout in Bootstrap

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With each passing day, new devices with new screen sizes are popping up – and as web developers, we need to create web applications that are responsive to these various screen sizes. There are multiple ways you can create a responsive layout, however I find Bootstrap grid layout to be the easiest. In this post, we will cover various aspects of the Bootstrap Grid system with various examples. To start with let us create a four equal column layout for medium-sized devices in Bootstrap Grid system.

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4 equal columns layout

To create the layout, you need to complete the following steps:

  1. Create a div with class container for fixed width or container-fluid for the full width of the screen
  2. Create a div with class row. Div with the class row must be inside container
  3. Create 4 divs for 4 columns. Div of the column must be the immediate child of the row div
  4. Content will be inside the column div

To create four equal columns in a row, I have created four divs with the class set at col-md-3 as shown in the listing below:

Read full article on the Infragistics blog

What is a Provider () in AngularJS?

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The provider() function allows us to create a configurable service where we can set input per application for the service created using the provider (). For example, if we need to set API key to access a service on the application level, we can set that in the module config and pass input to the provider using the $provide service. All the others ways to create services internally use the $provide service.

Creating a service using $provide service in module.config

Let us start by creating a very simple service using the provider() function.

	
app.config(function ($provide) {
    $provide.provider('globalsetting', function () {
        this.$get = function () {
            var appname = "Lawyer App";
            return {
                appName: appname
            };
        }
    })
});

Let’s explore what is going on in the above snippet. To create a service using provider, we need to use the $provide service. The provider function of the $provide service takes two parameters: the name of the service and the function. A provider function must have a $get function. To create a simple service using the provider(), we need to perform following five steps:

  1. Inject the $provide service in the app config method
  2. Create a provider using the provider() function
  3. Pass two parameters to the provider() function: the name of the service and a function
  4. The provider function must contain a $get function
  5. Return an object literal from the $get function

We can use the globalsetting service created using the provider by injecting it in a controller as shown in the listing below:

Read full article on the Infragistics blog

Hosting (74th Free) workshop in Chandigarh on AngularJS and Repository Pattern in MVC.

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Register for FREE to attend the event

In June last year, I hosted a workshop on AngularJS in beautiful city Chandigarh. I was overwhelmed seeing self-motivated and energetic developers attending the event. It’s their love and continuous request on various social media channel that I am excited to back again.

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Yes, I am hosting 5 Hrs. session on AngularJS and Repository Pattern in Chandigarh on 31st January. As always, I will represent Infragistics and whole show is managed by C-SharpCorner.com.

Event will be hosted in Kisan Bhawan Sector 35A, Chandigarh starting at 9 AM and as always it is FREE to attend.

Register for FREE to attend the event

I will be taking two sessions,

Building MVC Application using Repository Pattern (60 minutes)

  • Introducing Repository Pattern
  • Introducing Dependency Injection
  • Creating application using Repository Pattern

AngularJS in a Nutshell (150 minutes)

  • What is AngularJS
  • Controller and controller as syntax
  • $scope and $rootScope
  • Filter and custom filter
  • Routing
  • Services in AngulrJS
  • Provider in AngularJS
  • Service(), Provider(), Factory(), value() and constant()
  • Unit Testing in AngularJS using Jasmine and Karma
  • Getting started with Directives
  • Scopes in directives
  • Components in AngularJS
  • Angular JS project structure

I am very excited for upcoming Chandigarh session. I am sure we will become better developer together. Once again to reiterate some important points about event is given below:

  1. Its absolutely FREE to attend
  2. Venue is : Kisan Bhawan Sector 35A, Chandigarh
  3. Registration starts at 9 AM.

Register for FREE to attend the event

Creating a photo album for ASP.NET MVC 5 Users using Azure BLOB storage

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In this blog post, we will integrate ASP.NET MVC with Azure BLOB Storage by saving an image for an ASP.NET Identity 2.0 user in Azure BLOB Storage. We’re going to cover a lot of ground in this post, including:

  • Using ASP.NET Identity 2.0 user as reference in other table.
  • Creating a one to many relationship with ASP.NET Identity 2.0 user table
  • Connecting an ASP.NET MVC application to Azure Storage
  • Creating or Uploading a BLOB
  • Deleting a BLOB
  • Downloading a BLOB
  • Uploading a file from MVC form to a Azure BLOB

The final output of the blog post we plan on creating in this post will look more or less like the image below. As you can see, a user can upload a photo to her album, delete a photo, and of course, view photos too.

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Architecture of the Application

The High-level architecture of the application can be drawn as shown in the image below:

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Creating tables to save images

When we create an ASP.NET MVC application using the given MVC template in Visual Studio, by default, a basic authentication gets created using the ASP.NET Identity 2.0. In a default MVC project, a template for the authentication and authorization purpose ASP.NET Identity 2.0 creates the tables as shown in the image below:

Read full article on the Infragistics Blog

Hosted Step by Step ASP.NET MVC workshop for beginners

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Each month on the behalf of Infragistics , I host at least one Infragistics Day for the community. Infragistics days are free to attend and we cover various topics such as AngularJS, MVC, JavaScript, WCF, C# etc.

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On 17th January 2015, I hosted Infragistics Hours in C# Corner Noida office. I this, we did a step by step workshop on ASP.NET MVC. This workshop was targeted to beginners. Five hours workshop was attended by around 80 developers. In the workshop, we covered following topics,

  • What is MVC
  • Understanding Controllers , Actions, and Child Actions
  • Understanding Models
  • Understanding Views
  • Understanding Routings
  • Performing CRUD operation using the database first approach
  • Integrating Ignite UI in ASP.NET MVC

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Looking forward to host more such events. See you in next event.

Creating Unit Tests for ASP.NET MVC Controllers

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In this blog post, we will learn to write unit tests for various MVC controller’s behaviors, such as view’s return types, redirecting to different actions etc. Specifically, we’ll cover writing Unit Tests for:

  1. ViewData of the Controller
  2. TempData of the Controller
  3. ViewBag of the Controller
  4. View of the Controller

Let’s get started!

Creating the MVC Project under Test

Let us go ahead and create a MVC project under Test. To keep things simpler, I have selected ”No Authentication” for the project. In this example we are going to write unit tests for the HomeController. The HomeController contains two action methods:

  1. Index
  2. Details

We are going to write tests for these actions. The HomeController contains code as shown here:

Read full article on the Infragistics Blog