ISBN:0471793507Book Description
The ASP.NET 2.0 Framework introduced web developers to dozens of new server controls and components, and a greatly expanded and easier structure for writing their own server controls and components. Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Server Control and Component Development covers the breadth of server control functionality as well as the rest of the membership, role management, SchemaImporterExtension, and so on – the functionality referred to as components. Written for the experienced ASP.NET developer, Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Server Control and Component Development will show you how to write your first sever control or custom component.
The step-by-step coverage drills down to the details of the extensible part of the ASP.NET 2.0 Framework that you need to extend to write the specified type of custom control or component. Rather than present the extensible part as a black box, it presents a detailed step-by-step approach to implement functional replica of the extensible part, discusses the replica’s code in detail, and provides an in-depth coverage of the techniques, tools, and technologies used in the code. From there you get a detailed practical recipe for developing the specified type of custom control or component and book then uses the recipe to implement one or more real-world custom controls or components of the specified type that you can use in your own Web applications.
Some of the many types of controls and components you'll learn to build are:
- Ajax-enabled controls and components: four chapters on Ajax discuss and use Ajax patterns, ASP.NET 2.0 client callback mechanism, CSS, DOM, XML, and JavaScript to implement a number of Ajax-enabled controls and components.
- Web Parts: four chapters on Web Parts in ASP.NET 2.0 develop a number of custom WebPart, EditorPart, CatalogPart, WebPartZone, WebPartChrome, WebPartVerb, WebPartManager, and data-bound WebPart controls.
- 5 chapters on ASP.NET 2.0 security, membership, and role management components
- 5 chapters on ASP.NET 2.0 tabular and hierarchical data source controls and custom Parameter components
- 4 chapters on ASP.NET 2.0 tabular data-bound controls and data control fields
- Developing controls and components that can access any type of data store and automate all their data operations such as Delete, Update, Insert, and Sort.
- XML Web service, WSDL, Google XML Web service API, SchemaImporterExtension, ISerializable, and CodeDom
- XmlReader, XmlWriter, XPathNavigator, DOM, and XmlResolver
- Provider-Based Services including how to implement a RSS service provider that can feed RSS from any type of data store such as SQL Server, file system, Web services, and so on
- HTTP modules, HTTP handler factories, HTTP handlers, and control builders including developing an HTTP module and an HTTP handler factory that perform URL rewriting and an HTTP handler that generates RSS feeds
- User controls and composite and templated custom controls
- State management and custom type converters.
- Events, IPostBackEventHandler, IPostBackDataHandler, and Page lifecycle
Reviews From AMAZON.COM
Some Good Information, Bad Presentation
For me, this book was a pain to read. It's over a thousand pages because the author's writing style contains a lot of grammatic fluff.
This book is supposed to be for current ASP .NET developers that need to create custom server controls. When I turn to a book like this it's because the supplied .NET documentation didn't cover it well enough, didn't provide any useful exmaples, or there is a lack of really good tutorials on the web. I already understand the basics, and just want the steps and facts on creating custom controls, and some useful(in the real world) examples.
This book does not present those steps and facts in a concise manner. The only way I could get what I needed without taking the afternoon off was to read the bold headings and read the code blocks, ignoring the rest of the text. Also, it would be nice to use better working examples than building creditcardform1 thru creditcardform6 (this is a minor issue however, I was still able to apply what I figured out to my own project easily).
If you have time on your hands, it's a decent book. Otherwise, I would reccomend looking elsewhere.
Doctor knows best
Doctor Khosravi knows his stuff and he writes well. He also has a feel for the kind of questions his readers are going to ask first and answers them at the appropriate time. I was very pleased to see him explain how to implement a simple server control on page 16 because that's one of the first things I wanted to know after writing my first server control. It's quite possible his editor should get some credit here also.
He does an superb job of explaining why he's presenting information in the sequence he does. So often I struggle to understand why an author is showing me how to do something I consider trivial (like changing style attributes) before or even instead of something important (like interacting with other controls). I never had that problem with this book.
Server controls are a very complex and potentially confusing subject. The Wrox Profession ASP.NET 2.0 book does a very poor job of explaining them and dedicates far too little space to the subject which is why I bought this book. In comparison, Dr. Khosravi and his editor have done a very good job of organizing the subject. Even thought the resulting book is still a challenging read, I can grasp some concepts that other authors were unable to explain clearly. It may be that Dr. Khosravi had more space or that he was more skilled. I don't care - it worked.
If you are interested in developing custom server controls, which you should be, then this is the best resource you can have on your bookshelf. All ambitious ASP.NET developers should own this book.
Sometimes one very talented mind can acheive more than a host of merely smart ones. This is such a case. If you're ever in Southern California, Doctor, please let me buy you a beer. Cheers.