Code On Time: ASP.NET Membership

Blog

ASP.NET Membership

Thursday, June 7, 2012Print Subscribe

Both name and id of a user selected in a lookup window can be captured in a database table when necessary. Let’s set up a lookup field to capture both properties of the user identity.

Start SQL Server Management Studio. In the Object Explorer, right-click Database / Northwind / Tables / dbo.Orders table node, and select Design option.

Add two columns with the following settings:

Column Name	Data Type	Allow Nulls
OwnerID	uniqueidentifier	True
OwnerName	nvarchar(50)	True

Save the table modification. Refresh the Orders controller.

Regenerate the project. Navigate to the Orders page, and edit a record. The OwnerID and OwnerName fields will be visible at the bottom of the form, but are currently only simple text boxes.

Let’s configure the OwnerID field as a User Id Lookup and have it copy the user name into OwnerName field. The OwnerName will become an alias of OwnerID data field. Only Administrators will be allowed to modify the owner of the record.

Start the Project Designer. In the Project Explorer, switch to the Controllers tab. Double-click on Orders / Fields / OwnerID field node.

Make the following changes:

Property	New Value
Items Style	User Id Lookup
Copy	OwnerName=UserName
“Write” Roles	Administrators

Press OK to save the field. In the Project Explorer, double-click on Orders / Views / editForm1 / c1 – Orders / OwnerID data field node.

Assign an alias for the data field:

Property	New Value
Alias	OwnerName

Press OK to save the data field. In the Project Explorer, right-click on Orders / Views / editForm1 / c1 – Orders / OwnerName data field node, and select Delete option.

Confirm the operation. On the toolbar, select Browse option to regenerate the web application.

Navigate to the Orders page, and edit a record. If your user account belongs to the Administrators role, then the field is rendered as a lookup.

Activate the lookup, and a lookup window will open and display a list of users.

Select a user from the lookup, and the name of the user will be copied into the field Owner Name.

Save the field. If you look at the record in the database, both UserId and UserName fields have been populated.

Labels: ASP.NET Membership, Database Lookups, Designer, Security, Tips and Tricks, Web Application Generator

Monday, June 4, 2012Print Subscribe

Items Style User Id Lookup

ASP.NET Membership offers a prefabricated registry of users and roles. There are situations in which the membership User ID needs to be referenced in the database. You can reference a User ID with the User Id Lookup items style.

Create an Owner field in the Orders table.

Start SQL Server Management Studio. In the Object Explorer, right-click on Databases / Northwind / Tables / dbo.Orders node, and select Design option.

Add a column with the following properties:

Column Name	Data Type	Allow Nulls
OwnerId	nvarchar(50)	True

Save the table design modifications.

Note that the data type of the field may be configured as uniqueidentifier if you are working with SQL Server. If your database engine is MySQL, then int type can be used instead.

Start Code On Time web application generator. Click on the project name, and refresh the Orders data controller.

Press Generate to regenerate the web application. When it opens in a browser window, navigate to Orders page and edit a record. The OwnerId field is just a simple text box. It needs to be converted into a User Id Lookup.

Start the Project Designer. Switch to the Controllers tab, and double-click on Orders/ Fields / OwnerId node.

Give this field the following properties:

Property	Value
Label	Owner
Items Style	User ID Lookup

Press OK to save the field. On the toolbar, press Browse, and wait for the application to load.

Navigate to the Orders page, and edit a record. The Owner field will now be a lookup.

Click on the lookup link, and it will show a list of users.

When you select a user, the User Id will be inserted into the field.

Labels: ASP.NET Membership, Business Rules/Logic, Database Lookups, Web Application Generator

Thursday, October 20, 2011Print Subscribe

Northwind Sample

Many of Code On Time tutorials are using Northwind sample database created by Microsoft to illustrate concepts of database design and implementation with Microsoft SQL Server.

The database is somewhat outdates and does not reflect the latest advancements in Microsoft SQL Server features and capabilities. Nevertheless it provides a perfect dataset to illustrate the concepts of code generation.

We have included the script creating the Northwind sample database with the code generator. The script can be used to create a sample dataset for Microsoft SQL Server 2005, 2008, and SQL Azure.

Please follow this instructions if you want to create your own Northwind database sample.

Getting SQL Server on Your Computer

Download and install Microsoft SQL Server Express edition if you have not done so already. You can download the server along with free development tools that will help you customizing generated web applications at http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx. The link provides access to Microsoft Web Platform Installer, which makes the download and installation process extremely simple and pain-free.

If you do have a retail or development version of Microsoft SQL Server then this step is not needed.

If you are developing with other types of databases, such Oracle, DB2, MySQL, Microsoft Access, then getting Microsoft SQL Server Express installed will still help to get started with Code On Time. Generated web applications use provider-independent model to access data. It means that there is no code specific to Microsoft SQL Server in the generated application framework. If your back-end database server is Oracle 11g then exactly the same code will be generated.

Creating a Database

Run Code On Time and start creating a new Web Site Factory project.

Enter project name and choose your programming language (C# or Visual Basic.NET):

Click Next button to advance to Database Connection page of the project wizard.

Click the button next to the Connection String field to open the connection configuration window.

If you just have installed Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition on your computer then enter the following text in the Server field :

.\SQLExpress

The dot in front of “\SQLExpress” indicates that you are connecting to your own computer.

If you already have a database server or working with SQL Azure then enter the actual server name or IP address.

Enter Northwind in the Database field and click Create button to create a blank database. You should see a message stating that the database has been created successfully.

Select Northwind in the drop down under Sample Tables and click Install button. You will notice the activity log displaying various SQL statements executed against the database. A message indicting completion of the process will be displayed.

Click Add button under Membership section to create optional support for ASP.NET Membership in your database. This option is not available in DotNetNuke Factory projects.

Azure Factory project offers additional section to configure session state support for multi-server deployment.

Wait for membership installation to complete and click OK button to save the settings.

Click Next button several times until you reach the summary of data controllers that will be implemented in your web application.

Click Generate to start the code generation.

A browser window will open up when code generation has been completed.

Start using and customizing your own Northwind sample.

You can reference the same database in other projects whenever you need.

Labels: Application Factory, ASP.NET Code Generator, ASP.NET Membership, Azure, SQL Server, Web App Generator