Create the Project
In this tutorial you will create, review, and run the default project in Visual Studio, which will allow you to become familiar with features of ASP.NET. Also, you will review the Visual Studio environment.
What you'll learn:
- How to create a new Web Forms project.
- The file structure of the Web Forms project.
- How to run the project in Visual Studio.
- The different features of the default Web forms application.
- Some basics about how to use the Visual Studio environment.
Creating the Project
- Open Visual Studio.
- Select New Project from the File menu in Visual Studio.
- Select the Templates > Visual C# > Web templates group on the left.
- Choose the ASP.NET Web Forms Application template in the center column.
- Name your project WingtipToys and choose the OK button.
The project will take a little time to create. When it’s ready, it shows the
Default.aspx page.
You can switch between Design view and Source view by selecting an option at the bottom of the center window. Design view displays ASP.NET Web pages, master pages, content pages, HTML pages, and user controls using a near-WYSIWYG view. Source view displays the HTML markup for your Web page, which you can edit.
Reviewing the Project
In Visual Studio, the Solution Explorer window lets you manage files for the project. Let’s take a look at the folders that have been added to your application in Solution Explorer. The web application template adds a basic folder structure:
Visual Studio creates some initial folders and files for your project. The first files that you will be working with later in this tutorial are the following:
|
File |
Purpose |
|
Default.aspx |
Typically the first page displayed when the application is run in a browser. |
|
Site.Master |
A page that allows you to create a consistent layout and use standard behavior for pages in your application. |
|
Global.asax |
An optional file that contains code for responding to application-level and session-level events raised by ASP.NET or by HTTP modules. |
|
Web.config |
The configuration data for an application. |
Running the Default Web Application
The default Web application provides a rich experience based on built-in functionality and support. Without any changes to the default Web forms project, the application is ready to run on your local Web browser.
1. Press the Ctrl+F5 key in Visual Studio. The application will build and display in your Web browser.
There are three main pages in this default Web application: Default.aspx (Home), About.aspx, and Contact.aspx. Each of these pages can be reached from the top navigation bar. There are also two additional pages contained in the Account folder, the Register.aspx page and Login.aspx page. These two pages allow you to use the membership capabilities of ASP.NET to create, store, and validate user credentials.
ASP.NET Web Forms Background
ASP.NET Web Forms are pages that are based on Microsoft ASP.NET technology, in which code that runs on the server dynamically generates Web page output to the browser or client device. An ASP.NET Web Forms page automatically renders the correct browser-compliant HTML for features such as styles, layout, and so on. Web Forms are compatible with any language supported by the .NET common language runtime, such as Microsoft Visual Basic and Microsoft Visual C#. Also, Web Forms are built on the Microsoft .NET Framework, which provides benefits such as a managed environment, type safety, and inheritance.
When an ASP.NET Web Forms page runs, the page goes through a life cycle in which it performs a series of processing steps. These steps include initialization, instantiating controls, restoring and maintaining state, running event handler code, and rendering. As you become more familiar with the power of ASP.NET Web Forms, it is important for you to understand the page life cycle so that you can write code at the appropriate life-cycle stage for the effect you intend.
When a Web server receives a request for a page, it finds the page, processes it, sends it to the browser, and then discards all page information. If the user requests the same page again, the server repeats the entire sequence, reprocessing the page from scratch. Put another way, a server has no memory of pages that it has processed—page are stateless. The ASP.NET page framework automatically handles the task of maintaining the state of your page and its controls, and it provides you with explicit ways to maintain the state of application-specific information.
Web Application Features in the Web Forms Application Template
The ASP.NET Web Forms Application template provides a rich set of built-in functionality. It not only provides you with a Home.aspx page, an About.aspx page, a Contact.aspx page, but also includes membership functionality that registers users and saves their credentials so that they can log in to your website. This overview provides more information about some of the features contained in the ASP.NET Web Forms Application template and how they are used in the Wingtip Toys application.
Membership
ASP.NET membership stores your users’ credentials in a database created by the application. When your users log in, the application validates their credentials by reading the database. Your project's Account folder contains the files that implement the various parts of membership: registering, logging in, changing a password, and authorizing access. Additionally, ASP.NET Web Forms supports OAuth and OpenID. These authentication enhancements allow users to log into your site using existing credentials, from such accounts as Facebook, Twitter, Windows Live, and Google.
By default, the template creates a membership database using a default database name on an instance of SQL Server Express LocalDB, the development database server that comes with Visual Studio 11 Beta.
SQL Server Express LocalDB
SQL Server Express LocalDB is a lightweight version of SQL Server that has many programmability features of a SQL Server database. SQL Server Express LocalDB runs in user mode and has a fast, zero-configuration installation that has a short list of installation prerequisites. In Microsoft SQL Server, any database or Transact-SQL code can be moved from SQL Server Express LocalDB to SQL Server and SQL Azure without any upgrade steps. So, SQL Server Express LocalDB can be used as a developer environment for applications targeting all editions of SQL Server. SQL Server Express LocalDB enables features such as stored procedures, user-defined functions and aggregates, .NET Framework integration, spatial types and others that are not available in SQL Server Compact.
Master Pages
An ASP.NET master page defines a consistent appearance and behavior for all of the pages in your application. The layout of the master page merges with the content from an individual content page to produce the final page that the user sees. In the Wingtip Toys application, you modify the Site.master master page so that all the pages in the Wingtip Toys website share the same distinctive logo and navigation bar.
HTML5
The ASP.NET Web Forms Application template uses
HTML5, which is the latest version of the HTML markup language. HTML5 supports new elements and functionality that make it easier to create Web sites. For example, the Wingtip Toys application uses HTML5 in the
Site.Master master page to create a navigation bar by placing a list of links inside the <nav> element. You can easily modify the
nav element in the Site.Master page to create navigation for your own web applications.
Additional HTML5 elements in the ASP.NET Web Forms Application template include
<header>,
<footer>,
<article>,
<section>, and
<hgroup>.
The <header> element encloses a group of navigational aids.
The <footer> element typically contains information like who authored the section, copyright information, and links to related documents.
The <article> element encloses content that can stand on its own and potentially be distributed independently of other content on the page.
The <section> element’s role is to enclose a thematic grouping of content, usually with a heading.
The <hgroup> element is useful when you want a group of a set of <h1> to <h6> elements that will be considered as a unit within the overall document outline.
Modernizr
For browsers that do not support HTML5, you can use Modernizr. Modernizr is an open-source JavaScript library that can detect whether a browser supports HTML5 features, and enable them if it does not. In the ASP.NET Web Forms Application template, Modernizr is installed as a NuGet package.
NuGet Packages
The ASP.NET Web Forms Application template includes a set of NuGet packages. These packages provide componentized functionality in the form of open source libraries and tools. There is a wide variety of packages to help you create and test your applications. Visual Studio makes it easy to add, remove, and update NuGet packages. Developers can create and add packages to NuGet as well.
When you install a package, NuGet copies files to your solution and automatically makes whatever changes are needed, such as adding references and changing your web.config file. If you decide to remove the library, NuGet removes files and reverses whatever changes it made in your project so that no clutter is left. NuGet is available from the Tools menu in Visual Studio.
jQuery
jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. The jQuery JavaScript library is included in the ASP.NET Web Forms Application template as a NuGet package.
Unobtrusive Validation
Built-in validator controls have been configured to use unobtrusive JavaScript for client-side validation logic. This significantly reduces the amount of JavaScript rendered inline in the page markup and reduces the overall page size.
Unobtrusive validation is added globally to the ASP.NET Web Forms Application template based on the setting in the <appSettings> element of the
Web.config file at the root of the application.
Anti-XSS Library
The ASP.NET Web Forms Application template provides encoding routines that help to protect your application against cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. XSS attacks attempt to inject client-side script into the pages of your web application. The Anti-XSS library also helps you to protect your application against LDAP injection attacks that are possible if user input is not properly validated.
Universal Providers
ASP.NET Universal Providers add provider support for all editions of SQL Server 2005 and later, as well as SQL Azure. By default, the ASP.NET Web Forms Application template includes the ASP.NET Universal Providers package from NuGet. This means that cloud storage of membership data can quickly be published to SQL Azure.
Entity Framework Code First
Besides the features in the ASP.NET Web Forms Application template, the Wingtip Toys application uses Entity Framework Code First, which is a NuGet library that enables code-centric development when you work with data. Put simply, it creates the database portion of your application for you based on the code that you write. Using the Entity Framework, you retrieve and manipulate data as strongly typed objects. This lets you focus on the business logic in your application rather than the details of how data is accessed.
Touring Visual Studio
The primary windows in Visual Studio include the Solution Explorer, the Server Explorer (Database Explorer in Express), the Properties Window, the Toolbox, the Toolbar, and the Document Window.
For more information about Visual Studio, see Visual Guide to Visual Web Developer.
Summary
In this tutorial you have created, reviewed and ran the default Web forms application. You have reviewed the different features of the default Web forms application and learned some basics about how to use the Visual Studio environment. In the following tutorials you'll create the data access layer.
Additional Resources
Choosing the Right Programming Model
Web Application Projects versus Web Site Projects
ASP.NET Web Forms Pages Overview
By Erik Reitan, Erik Reitan is a Senior Programming Writer at Microsoft. During his spare time he enjoys developing Windows Phone and Windows 8 apps. Follow him on Twitter at @ReitanErik.
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