Jun 26 2017

New 1.2.5 release of the Asp.net core Mvc Controls Toolkit

Category: Asp.net | Htnl5 fallback | MVCFrancesco @ 05:55

The new 1.2.5 release of the Asp.net core Mvc Controls Toolkit is ready for download. Play live with ajax sorting, filtering and grouping. Now, thanks to full ajax support, you may have several independent grids in the same page! Each grid may have an ajax “back button” to go back to its previous query.

Several Grid

Install in your project and follow Quickstart

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Jun 5 2017

New 1.2 release of the Asp.net core Mvc Controls Toolkit

Category: Htnl5 fallback | Asp.netFrancesco @ 23:38

The new 1.2 release of the Asp.net core Mvc Controls Toolkit is ready for download. Play live with sorting, filtering and grouping

Grouping

Install in your project and follow Quickstart

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Jul 17 2016

Available Asp.net core version of the Mvc Controls Toolkit Live Examples!

New 1.0.1 bugs fix release of the Mvc Controls toolkit! Available also Live Examples at this link!

Enjoy!  & Stay tuned

In a short time ajax update server grid and batch update server grid

Francesco

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Jul 1 2016

Ap.net Core 1.0.0 RTM Version of the Mvc Controls Toolkit Ready

Category: Asp.net core | WebApi | MVC | Htnl5 fallback | Asp.netFrancesco @ 20:00

The first Asp.net Core 1.0.0 RTM release of the Mvc Controls Toolkit is available for download! This is the link that explains how to install it, while a starting example may be downloaded here. Pay attention! You must follows all installation steps also for running the example, since the example among other things has also the purpose of becoming familiar with installation, and configuration stuffs.

Enjoy!  & Stay tuned

In a short time tutorials, live examples, and a complete documentation web site

Francesco

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Jun 25 2016

Ap.net Core Rc2 Version of the Mvc Controls Toolkit Ready

Category: Asp.net core | WebApi | Htnl5 fallback | MVC | Asp.netFrancesco @ 02:40

The first Asp.net Core Rc2 release of the Mvc Controls Toolkit is available for download! This is the link that explains how to install it, while a starting example may be downloaded here. Pay attention! You must follows all installation steps also for running the example, since the example among other things has also the purpose of becoming familiar with installation, and configuration stuffs.

Enjoy!  & Stay tuned

In a short time tutorials, live examples, and a complete documentation web site

Francesco

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May 24 2016

Html enhancements, processing, and fallback: how to organize all of them?

Category: Htnl5 fallback | TypeScript | JavaScript | Asp.netFrancesco @ 02:44

I already analyzed and classified JavaScript techniques for Web Applications in a previous series of posts. In this post I’ll propose a solution to the main problems associated with the enhancement of Html with jQuey plug-ins or with other Html post-processors.  The solution I describe here is implemented in a JavaScript library available on both bower and npm registry

But let start the story from the beginning!

Html post-processors add Widgets or further functionalities (like, for instance drag and drop based interactions). that  either are fallbacks of features not supported by the browser, or that are completely new features (features not supported by any browser and not mentioned in Htnl5 specifications).

Since Html enhancements depend strongly on browser capabilities and on the usage of JavaScript they can’t be processed on the server side with some smart server side template engine, but must be processed in the browser itself.

So there are just two possibilities:

  1. Using client templates that adapt to the browser capabilities
  2. Performing an Html post-processing, that adds widgets and/or features.

If we don’t use an advanced JavaScript framework like Angular, React.js, Knockout, or any other client-templates based framework we are left just with the post-processing option. This is the famous jQuery plug-ins way, where we enhance static Html with by selecting target nodes with jQuery css-like selectors: basically a kind of super-css with no limits on the effects we may achieve.

Also when  we use a client-side template engine, often, we are forced to use Html post-processing techniques! Why? Simple, just because often the functionality we need is not implemented in the chosen client-side framework, so we are forced to use some jQuery plug-in, in any case. This is very common, since there are several mutually incompatible advanced client side frameworks, and their average life is quite short (they either die, or evolve in a partially incompatible way), so the community hasn’t enough time to produce a complete set of useful libraries, while, on the other side, jQuery plug-ins always survive and increase since they may be easily adapted to any framework.

Moreover, Html post-processing may be applied also to the output of already existing modules and for this reason, often, it is the only viable option also when using client-side templates. Suppose, for instance, you want, to apply not supported Html5 input fallback to existing Knockout.js, or Angular.js client controls, you have just two options, either rewriting all controls to include the fallback feature, or applying somehow an Html post-processing.

Summing up, unluckily, Html post-processing still has a fundamental role in Web Applications development. I said, “unluckily”, since while all new advanced client-side frameworks were conceived to improve the overall quality of the client side code, the html enhancement/post-processing paradigm suffers of well known problems;

  1. .While initial page content is processed automatically, dynamically created content is not!  So each time we receive new Html as a result of an Ajax call, or as a result of the instantiation of client-side templates, we need to apply manually all transformations that were applied to our initial static Html, in the same order!
  2. Transformations must be applied in the right order, and this order is not necessarily the order implied by the JavaScript file dependencies. For instance, say module B depends on module A, so A script must come before B script, However, in turn, this implies that all transformations defined in A are applied before the ones defined in B,…but we might need that B transformations are applied before A transformations.
  3. Usually transformations are applied on the document.ready event so it is very difficult to coordinate them with content loaded asynchronously

Summing up, all problems are connected with dynamic content, and with operations timing, so after, analyzing the very nature of these problems, I concluded they might have been solved by creating a centralized register of all transformations to apply and by organizing the overall processing into different stages.

Transformations register

If we register all transformations in a centralized data structures then on one side we may decide with no other constraints their order of application, and on the other side we may apply all transformations, in the right order to each chunk of Html with a single call to the an “apply-all” method of the centralized data structure.That “apply-all” method might be applied at page load after all needed asynchronous modules (if any) have been loaded,and each time new dynamic content is created.

Invoking, the “apply all” method is easy also in most of the client framework based on client templates, that usually allows the application of some processing to all dynamically created content, 

3 Different stages

The complete freedom in choosing the right order of application isn’t enough to deal with several interconnected cooperating modules.In fact, the overall relative order constraints network might admit no solution! Moreover, also when relative order constraints may be satisfied the addition of a new module might break the stability of the application. In a few words: application order constraints undermine software modularity and maintainability.

So we need to reduce relative order constraints by removing all order constrains that depend on the way the modules are implemented and interact and not on the transformations very nature.

For instance if a module applies a validation plug-in while another module performs not supported Hrml5 input fallbacks the very nature of these two transformation implies that the validation plug-in must be applied after the fallback, since it must act on the already transformed input fields (the original ones are destroyed).

However, if modules A, B, C, D,  furnish further features to the main transformation applied by M, it would be desirable that there are no order constraints among them. Imagine, for instance, M transforms some Html tables into grids, while A, B, C, D apply additional features like for instance grouping, sorting, and virtual scrolling.

Order constraints among A, B, C, D may be avoided only if they act in a coordinated way, by exploiting extension points provided by M. In other terms when, A, B, C, D transformations are registered, instead of operating directly on their target Html, they should connect to extension points of M that then applies all of them properly and at the right time during the Grid construction.

If A, B, C, D were explicitly designed as extensions of M the designer would take care of their coordination, but what if we are putting together software from different authors?

We must build wrappers around them, and we must use a general framework that takes care of the coordination problem.  A three stages protocol may do the job, and ensure transformations are applied efficiently:

  1. Options pre-processing. During this stage each module connects to extension points of another module it is supposed to extends.
  2. Options processing. during this stage each module configure itself based on its options and extension. Since, this stage is executed just once all processing that doesn’t depend on the nodes to transform should be factored out here. This way it will be executed just once, and not, on each transformation call.
  3. Actual node transformation. This is the step we previously called “apply all”. It is automatically invoked on the initial content of the page, and then it must me invoked on the root of each newly created content.

All above steps are applied in sequence (all modules perform 1, then all modules perform 2, etc.)

Since, module coordination, is handled in step 1 there is no need to impose order constraints to ensure coordination of cooperating modules. This way order constraints are minimized. Only the “natural” constraints easy to figure out just by the definition of each transformation, should remain.

In the software implementation of the above ideas, called mvcct-enhancer, for registering a module we specify 3 functions each executing one of the threes stages described above. All module options are specified within an overall options object where each module has its own sections (i.e properties). Connections, to other modules extension points take place by adding option values (that may be also functions) in the options section of the target module. The functions that process steps 1 and 2 receive just the overall option object as argument, while the actual transformation function receives two arguments, the root node of the chunk to transform and a bool set to true only for the initial processing of the page static content.

mvcct-enhancer has functions for applying all transformations on a dynamic node, for initiating the three steps protocol, and for waiting for async JavaScript loading. It has also a basic Html5 input support detection and fallback module that has extension points to add jQuey widgets.

We implemented also a module that provides widget extensions based on Bootstrap, called bootstrap-html5-fallback. It is a good example on how to build wrappers around existing software to use it with mvcct-enhancer. In fact the the main purpose of mvcct-enhancer is to provide a framework for coordinating several already existing modules written by different authors, at a price of writing a few lines wrappers.

That’s all for now!

In the next post we will see an example of how to use mvcct-enhancer to provide, Html5 fallback, and globalized validation to Asp.net Core Mvc with the help of the Asp.net core new version of the Mvc Controls Toolkit.

Francesco

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