Archive for February, 2010

HTML Tutorial – Lesson 2: Structure and Method

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

I’ll bet you’re thinking “Structure and Method? What is this… some kinda textbook???” Well, no, in this lesson you’ll be learning about the Structure of HTML and the Method that is used to make them.

HTML does not need to be coded with some special “HTML tool”, and you don’t even need some special program like Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia Dreamweaver (In fact, I discourage their use until you know the ins and outs of HTML code). All that you DO need is a simple text editing program like windows built in Notepad. You’re probably thinking “Wait just one second, you’re telling me I can code up another Yahoo! with my puny little Notepad? Yes! That’s part of the beauty of HTML! In fact, this entire tutorial was created in TextPad, a simple and very cheap text editor.

When you make a Web page the first thing you need to do is gather your content. For our first page ever, we’ll be making an informative page about ourselves. For example here is mine:

Welcome to Justin’s Web Page!

Hi, My name is Justin. I built this web page because I love writing HTML code! I could do it all day long (and sometimes, i do). I am a lover of programming languages, and love to design and produce web content. Thanks for visiting my page!

Yours Truly,
-Justin

Go ahead and think up a few paragraph’s like this, and meet me at the next lesson.

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HTML Tutorial Lesson 1: Introduction to HTML

Monday, February 8th, 2010

Welcome to my HTML tutorial!

Soon you shall be on your way to building great Web Pages and vast Web Sites, but first lets go over a thing or two about what a “Web Page” is, how they work, and what we can do with them.

For this tutorial you will need:

  • An Internet ready computer
  • A web browser

Because you are reading this on my blog, I will assume that you have both of these things.

Let’s jump right in to the lesson!

In the beginnings of the Internet, it was very hard to exchange data. So with great vision and foresight, Tim Berners-Lee created a way to connect text on the Internet through Hypertext Links (References to other text on the Internet). This wasn’t a new idea, but his Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) was very popular and caught on better than other competing projects.

HTML is not a “Programming Language” per se, but rather a scripting language that marks up the page with formatting commands. Your Web Browser then reads these commands and shows the formatted page on your screen. Because the popularity of the Web programmers began writing Web Browsers that could display graphics and a wide range of other content. Thousands of people started to create web pages ranging from personal “homepages” to business information pages and rich internet applications.

Today billions of people access the web, and a there is a huge diversity of sites that have sprung up for their each of their needs. Before going on to the next lesson, I suggest that you go out and view many pages that are out there on the Web. As you are viewing them, to view the HTML behind the page click View->Source if you’re using Microsoft Internet Explorer, or View->Page Source with Firefox.

Lesson 2

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Data Binding using ASP.NET

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Data Binding creates a link between a particular control to a specific column of a table in the database or to an entire table in the database. With ASP.NET data binding you can also bind any server control to the output of different methods and expressions.

On ASP.NET pages when we are doing databinding it is necessary to use the basic syntax for all expressions.

For example:

<%# EmpID %>  This syntax is for a simple property.

<asp:ListBox datasource=’<%# firstArray %>’ runat=”server”>  This syntax is for a collection.

<%# (emp.First Name + ” ” + emp.LastName ) %>  This syntax is for an expression.

<%# GetSalary(EmpID) %>  This syntax is for the result of method GetSalary().

If you are using a list control the following syntax is used:

<asp:Label runat=”server”

Text=’<%# Container.DataItem(“EmployeeName”) %>’

If you are using a RadioButtonList control to bind data then the syntax is:

<html>

<body><form runat=”server”>

<asp:RadioButtonList runat=”server” />

</form></body>

</html>

In multiple data bound Values in a Hyperlink Control with a GridView:

<form runat=”server”>

<asp:SqlDataSource runat=”server”

ConnectionString=”server=localhost;database=Northwind;uid=x;pwd=y”

SelectCommand=”SELECT ProductID, ProductName, QuantityPerUnit,

UnitPrice, UnitsInStock, Discontinued FROM Products” />

<asp:GridView DataSourceID=”datasource1″ runat=”server” />

</form>

If one wants to navigate between the fields then the syntax is:

DataNavigateUrlFields=”ProductID,SupplierID,ProductType”

In the following example, the code below uses a feature to provide a hyperlink that contains two values, both extracted from the current row of the employees table, for the href attribute:

<asp:SqlDataSource runat=”server”

SelectCommand=”SELECT EmpID, CompanyName, City FROM employees”/>

<asp:GridView DataSourceID=”datasource1″ runat=”server”

AutoGenerateColumns=”False”>

<Columns>

<asp:BoundField DataField=”EmpID” HeaderText=”BoundField” />

<asp:HyperLinkField runat=”server”

DataTextField=”employeeName”

DataNavigateUrlFields=”EmpID,City”

DataNavigateUrlFormatString=

“http://yoursite.com/showemployee.aspx?id={0}&city={1}” />

</Columns>

</asp:GridView>

The resulting value for the href attribute will be something like this:

“http://yoursite.com/showemployee.aspx?id=00123&city=Mumbai”

In the above example city of the employee is “Mumbai” and employee id is “00123”.

Databinding simplifies applications; and with less code a fast execution is done. .Net helps the programmer by reducing his/her work and time spent coding a data abstraction layer.

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