This is the third in a series of posts about things I found out while learning ASP.NET MVC. Today : Helpers.

Helpers are, as their name suggests, helpful things. If, for example, you want to add the current assembly version information into a page, you are likely to run into a problem or two. ASP.NET MVC doesn’t create code-behind pages for you to do this kind of useful operation in. Instead, you have to fall back to the old Classic ASP technique of coding directly into the view page. That is far from ideal. For one thing, the following code snippet doesn’t produce the correct reult directly from a page.

<%= System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().Version.ToString(); %>

My experience of that was that it would, if you were very luck, print “0.0.0.0” rather than the current version.

So, how did I achieve it? I created a helper. Basically a helper is a static class, containing static methods (including extension methods)

Here’s an example of my SiteWideHelper.cs file

using stuff;

namespace Helpers
{
    public class SiteWideHelpers
    {
        public static string SiteVersion()
        {
            return System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().Version.ToString();
        }

        public static string CurrentController(this HtmlHelper helper)
        {
            return (string)helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"];
        }
    }
}

The helper class contains one “vanilla” method and one extension method to the HtmlHelper class. The first method, SiteVersion, simply treturns a string of the current assembly version. The second method, CurrentController, returns the name of the current controller by querying the extended HtmlHelper class.

Both of these methods may now be called, and their output rendered directly to the page. (Actually, I use the Currentcontroller method to determine which bits of sub-navigation are displayed on the master page.

<span>Web site version: <%= Html.Encode(SiteWideHelpers.SiteVersion()) %></span>

Don’t forget, instead of haveing to reference the fully qualified name of your method / class, you can import the namespace into your view

<%@ Import Namespace="Helpers" %>

I’m sure I’m missing some concepts here that would make development so much simpler, but for astarting point, this is working for me

OK, so I have been given a new machine at work (more RAM, faster processor, more disk space) and I’m in the middle of migrating all my old data to the new box.

I’m the kind of person that will forget to move something across before blowing an old PC away, only to remember it about 30 minutes after losing it forever. For this reason, I’m putting together a list of the important things that one should copy over.

So far, I’ve copied the obvious* :

• My Documents
• IE, Chrome and FireFox bookmarks
• Local MSDN image files
• Drive-level data folders (e.g. c:\ImportantStuffForProcessXYZ)

But I was hoping someone else could suggest anything else I may have missed. Either leave a comment here, or send me a tweet and I’ll update the post for future reference.

* This is not an exhaustive list – nobody really want to hear about an obscure folder that contains my todo list, do they?

So far, the latest versions of CodeRush and Refactor! have been pretty impressive.  Unfortunately, I’ve just found the first bit of behaviour that I’m not too keen on.  Take the following snippet…

foreach (MyProvider provider in lps)
{
  Console.WriteLine(provider.AccountStatus);
}

  
Fair enough. Old Skool way to write a loop, but nothing too extreme. Refactor! prompted me that I may like to “Introduce ForEach Action”. I decided to take its advice, and it turned the routine into

Array.ForEach(lps,
delegate(MyProvider provider)
{
  Console.WriteLine(provider.AccountStatus);
});

 
OK, still does the same thing, but I hate the way it looks. It’s kind of a half-way house between old-skool and lambda. This was even pointed out by Refactor! – it suggested that I “Compress to Lambda Expression”.

So I did. The result was much more pleasing.

Array.ForEach(lps, provider => Console.WriteLine(provider.AccountStatus));

Lovely.

All I’d like to see in Refactor! is the ability to go from the first snippet the the last without having to take a detour through Uglytown. Is that too much to ask?

In case you hadn’t noticed, or didn’t care, I’ve changed the permalink settings on this blog to use friendlier urls (e.g. this post is at http://chillijam.co.uk/2009/04/02/updated-the-permalink-type/ – or at least, I hope it is )

Thanks to John Burns (@codeburns) for the kick in the right direction.

I’ve just got back from Devweek at the Barbican in London, and the last session I attended was something of a revelation.  You know what it’s like at a conference – it’s the last day, you’re ready to pack up and go home, but you feel you have to attend at least one more session.  In my case, that session was by Microsoft’s Eric Nelson  on Windows Azure (Developing and Deploying your first Cloud Service).

Like pretty much all windows developers these days, I’d heard of Azure and cloud computing, but my initial opinion was “Meh! Not for me”.  Then I attended this session.  There’s obviously been a lot of thought put into this by the teams at Microsoft and, although there’s still a way to go, there are some very compelling features.  I’m not going to go into any detail here (visit the website above for more details) but the standout feature for me is the fact that if you already have the knowledge to develop a web application, you can develop an Azure service. (Yes, there are a couple of gotchas around storage and so on but nothing that can’t be overcome with a little thought and learning)

I didn’t think I would, but I’ve just signed up for the CTP – if nothing else, I can play with the technology a little.  If you want to get in on the ground floor for this tuff, I’d suggest you do too.

(By the way, big thanks to Eric for a couple of great presentations this week.)

<aside>I can’t believe I used that as a subject for this post, but it is oddly appropriate.</aside>

I’ve been getting into Twitter more and more recently.  Not just since the inestimable Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) talked about it on his appearance on the Jonathan Ross (@wossy)) show – I started following him long before that, and was able to read about the process of filming the show, too.  It’s hard to describe why it is so addictive to hear what someone you’ve never met is up to, what problems they’re having on the way to the airport, or how they’re snowed in.

I guess the best description I’ve seen is by Scott Hansellman in his post How to Twitter – First Steps and a Twitter Glossary

I recommend you have a read and see if tweeting is for you, but be warned, you may never want to leave!