Codelab Blog » Coding Practices

Areas and ASP.NET MVC Routes Tip

Tim — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 10:21:10 +0000

Lets say that you have several areas define in your ASP.NET MVC solution. You find that when you run your application you get the following error “Multiple types were found that match the controller named ‘Home’.”. This is because ASP.NET MVC finds all the routing definitions (i.e in each area.cs file or the global.asax) and sees conflicts with duplicate controller names.
Simple solution is to associate the namespace with the routes you are registering. Take the example below:

// global.asax route
routes.MapRoute(
"Default", // Route name
"{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }, // Parameter defaults
new string[] { "MyApplication.Controllers" } // Controller Namespace
);
?
// Area Registration Route
context.MapRoute(
MyArea_default,
"MyArea/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
new { action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional },
new string[] { "MyApplication.Areas.MyArea.Controllers" }
);

Credit to Steve Testa, Thanks!.

A way around page refreshes/back button problems with a simple concept

Tim — Mon, 17 May 2010 09:58:24 +0000

The problem:

You have a form in which the user fills out and clicks a “submit” button that validates their input, does some processing and output’s some results. The problem being the application needs to cater for page refreshes, back buttons and the case of the page being submitted more than once (latency/slow internet connection).

The Solution:

Possible solutions can be (this assumes not using Ajax as a solution), once the user clicks the submit button the server validates the user’s input and has processed the information. Store a unique id in session and redirect to a “complete” page. If the user clicks the back button and resubmits the page, you can build logic to check if a unique id exists in session and if it does, redirect to the complete page without having to re-process the information.

If the user is on the complete page and refreshes the page, because its on a page which has used a GET, there is no processing done and hence no duplication of data.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post/Redirect/Get

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/665399/how-do-i-stop-the-back-and-refresh-buttons-from-resubmitting-my-form

Best Coding Practices – TIP 4

Tim — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 08:15:42 +0000

Use enum’s where required. Do not use Strings or Numbers to indicate discrete values.

References:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/sbbt4032(VS.80).aspx

Best Coding Practices – TIP 3

Tim — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:52:02 +0000

The use of partial classes can help improve coding for the following reasons:

As you can split code into seperate physical files, its easier to seperate UI and Business Logic that may belong in a single class
Produces clean and organised code
No performance hit… The compiler groups all partial classes into one entity during compilation

Sample Code

MyFile1.cs

public partial class MyPartialClass

{

int foo = 0;

}

MyFile2.cs

public partial class MyPartialClass

{

public String ShowMessage()

{

return foo.ToString();

}

REMEMBER: Keep partial classes in the same namespace to avoid confusion!

Best Coding Practices – TIP 2

Tim — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 02:43:37 +0000

When you throw an exception, use the throw keyword..do not throw the original exception. This way, the original call stack is preserved.

Best Coding Practices – TIP 1

Tim — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 02:40:37 +0000

Use // or /// for comments. Avoid using /* … */

This gives you the ability to generate XML documentation from VS.