Culture Codes

A comprehensive list of culture codes used for localising and in conjunction with the CultureInfo class.

The CultureInfo class specifies a unique name for each culture, based on RFC 4646 (Windows Vista and later). The name is a combination of an ISO 639 two-letter lowercase culture code associated with a language and an ISO 3166 two-letter uppercase subculture code associated with a country or region.

Asp.net MVC, Html.DropDownList and Selected Value

I recently ran into the altogether common problem of the Html.DropDownList helper rendering a drop down list with no value selected. This is a major problem when editing data as by default, the first value is selected and saving would mean the first value is used.

There have been a few issues resulting in the same error. My issue was that I was setting the Name of the drop down list to be equal to the property on my model. I was using the Entity Framework, and had an Image class with a navigation property called Category. I was using this to render the ddl:

<%= Html.DropDownList("Category", (IEnumerable<SelectListItem>)ViewData["categories"])%>

In my controller, I was setting the ViewData like this:

this.ViewData["categories"] = new SelectList(db.CategorySet.ToList(), "CategoryId", "Title", img.CategoryReference.EntityKey);

Unfortunately, even though I had set the selected value (third parameter to the SelectList constructor), the ddl had no value selected.

The fix was quite simple:

<%= Html.DropDownList("CategoryId", (IEnumerable<SelectListItem>)ViewData["categories"])%>

I just changed the Name of the drop down and handled the assignment in the controller.

The reason behind this problem is that asp.net MVC first looks for a match between the name of the drop down and a property on the model. If there’s a match, the selected value of the SelectList is overridden. Changing the name of the drop down is all it takes to remedy the issue.

Running NUnit from Visual Studio

If you are like me, I like to keep my Visual Studio environment as clean as possible, so if I can get away from adding any addins in to Visual Studio I will always go for that option.

So when it comes to testing I prefer to run with NUnit and run it as n external program.  

To do this just right click on the unit test project -> choosing the properties option -> setecting the Debug tab -> choose "start external program" and enter the NUnit assembly path, in my case this is "C:\Program Files\NUnit 2.5\bin\net-2.0\nunit.exe", next is to select the command line arguments and point this to your unit test dll,

e.g.  "C:\Program Files\NUnit 2.5\samples\csharp\money\bin\Debug\cs-money.dll" /run

The "run" parameter will automatically run the loaded project

Alternatively you can use a Visual Studio add-in such as TestDriven.Net, this also provides NCoverExplorer to provide you with code coverage.

Building up an MVC application

When you open up MVC out of the box, you get the basic configuration, after a little playing around you soon see areas that require enhancing to, not only make your application more flexable, but also easier to maintain.

Here are a number of additional tasks you can perform that will help with your application.

Which IoC to use?

Don't worry, if you use the Common Service Locator it provides an adstraction over the IoC

How to validate?

I have already covered this one in a previous post, but I'd still go with xVal

Need to generate Themes?

I think it is so important to start correctly and generating the User Interface should be configurable, the easiest way of doing this is to implement a Theme, and Chris Pietschmann has do this for us, Implement Theme Folders using a Custom ViewEngine

Here is a copy of the source for safe keeping.

ASPNETMVC_Preview5_CustomThemeImplementation.zip (226.05 kb)

Need Ajax to work in MVC

Ajax.BeginForm and PartialViews

Extend the UrlHelper

Placing all your assets in one place is not only a good idea, but it also means you can be more flexable if you want to programmically change the theme of your user interface.

Which can be used like this:

Using Strongtypes and keep away from Strings

It appears so easy with MVC to use String everywhere, just DON'T, generate an extension for the UrlHelper

Now in your view it will look like this

Testing

I've been hit before by Microsofts in build Testing within Visual Studio 2008, great to have this feature built in, BUT, and a big but in order to run the tests you need to have Visual Studio install, so if you try and setup a Continuous Integration server you will also be required to install Visual Studio.

So best to go with what works well and that is nUnit, simple and easy, and more importantly loosely coupled

Mocking

With testing comes Mocking, and which framework do you use?  I also always say keep it simple and easy, so I'm going with Moq, short for "Mock-You", as this is the only Mock Framework that is built around .Net 3.5 and LINQ.

MVC Validation

Validation is such an important part of development, and the best way I have found for the MVC is by Steven Sanderson, xVal, which is a validation framework for ASP MVC, even Scott Gu thinks it is absolutely fantastic.

If you are after using xVal with Linq to SQL then it is well worth checking out Integrating xVal Validation with Linq-to-Sql by Adam Schroder

It's worth checking out Client-side form validation made easy by Adrian Grigore to extend this validation even further.

Don't take my word for is, check out, ASP.NET MVC Validation Refresh: Best Techniques & Frameworks by Graham O’Neale

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