ASP.

Net Tutorial for Beginners - What is this all

about?
This chapter gives an introduction about this site and the ASP.NET tutorials we offer.

About this Tutorials

Welcome to ASP.NET Tutorial (Using VB.Net and C#). By completing the lessons and exercises in this
book, you will acquire the skill and knowledge necessary to develop large enterprise web-based
application in VB.Net or C#.
This tutorial is specially designed for the beginners and students who are in the starting point of their IT
carrier. Plain and simple English is used throughout the tutorials so that every one can understand the
concepts we are discussing.

Intended Audience
The targetted audience for this tutorials are:
Engineering and Computer Science Students
Beginner level programmers who want to develop their career in ASP.NET based web
development.
Senior programmers who like to switch over to ASP.NET web programming.

What you need to know before you start?

This tutorial required that students meet the following prerequisites:
Have a basic understanding of the Object-oriented programming concepts including classes,
properties, methods and events.

What do we offer?
The ASP.NET tutorials in this site include several chapters. We are still adding more and more chapters
everyday. These tutorials may be completed by end of the year 2005.
Many chapters in this tutorials include small small exercises you can try on your computer.

By end of this tutorials, we will start an advanced 'Shopping Cart' project. We will lead you through each
and every step of developing a large dynamic website.
Also, some of the last chapters will guide you through the webmaster world which may help you develop
and own your commercial websites and even make money from running your own websites.

What is a web server?

A Web server is a software program which serves web pages to web users (browsers).
A web server delivers requested web pages to users who enter the URL in a web browser. Every
computer on the Internet that contains a web site
must have a web server program.
The computer in which a web server program runs is also usually called a "web server". So, the term
"web server" is used to represent both the server program and the computer in which the server program
runs.

Characteristics of web servers

A web server computer is just like any other computer. The basic characteristics of web servers are:
- It is always connected to the internet so that clients can access the web pages hosted by the web
server.
- It has an application called 'web server' running always.
In short, a 'web server' is a computer which is connected to the internet/intranet and has a software called
'web server'. The web server program will be always running in the computer. When any user try to
access a website hosted by the web server, it is actually the web server program which delivers the web
page which client asks for.
All web sites in the internet are hosted in some web servers sitting in different parts of the world.

Web Server is hardware or software?

From the above definition, you must have landed up in confusion Web server is a hardware or a
software
Mostly, Web server refers to the software program, which serves the clients request. But as we mentioned
earlier in this chapter, the computer in which the web server program is also called 'web server".

Web Server Behind the Scene

Now that you are reading this page, have you ever had a thought how the page is made available to the
browser?
Your answer would be, I typed in the URL http://www.aspspider.com and clicked on some link, I dropped
into this page.
But what happed behind the scenes to bring you to this page and make you read this line of text.
So now, lets see what is actually happening behind the scene. The first you did is, you typed the URL
http://www.aspspider.com in the address bar of your browser and pressed your return key.
We could break this URL into two parts,

1. The protocol we are going to use to connect to the server (http)

2. The server name (www.aspspider.com)

The browser breaks up the URL into these parts and then it tries to communicate with the server looking
up for the server name. Actually, server is identified through an IP address but the alias for the IP address
is maintained in the DNS Server or the Naming server. The browser looks up these naming servers,
identifies the IP address of the server requested and gets the site and gets the HTML tags for the web
page. Finally it displays the HTML Content in the browser.

Where is my web server ?

When you try to access a web site, you don't really need to know where the web server is located. The
web server may be located in another city or country, but all you need to do is, type the URL of the web
site you want to access in a web browser. The web browser will send this information to the internet and
find the web server. Once the web server is located, it will request the specific web page from the
webserver program running in the server. Web server program will process your request and send the
resulting web page to your browser. It is the responsibility of your browser to format and display the
webpage to you.

How many web servers are needed for a web site?

Typically, there is only one web server required for a web site. But large web sites like Yahoo, Google
, MSN etc will have millions of visitors every minute. One computer cannot process such huge numbers of
requests. So, they will have hundreds of servers deployed in different parts of the world so that can
provide a faster response.

How many websites can be hosted in one server?

A web server can hosted hundreds of web sites. Most of the small web sites in the internet are hosted on
shared web servers. There are several web hosting companies who offer shared web hosting. If you buy
a shared web hosting from a web hosting company, they will host your web site in their web server along
with several other web sites for a Fee.
Examples of web server applications
1. IIS
2. Apache

Definitions for browser

Browser is an application, which helps us to view the Web sites and the web content.
Web sites are located in some remote systems, which needs a special kind of program or an
application to access them, such an application is called browser.
A browser is an application which you can use to retrieve web pages from web sites and view.
When you type a URL in the browser, the browser will convert it into a web request which web
server can understand. Browser will send the request to web server using the HTTP protocol.
When a web server returns a web page as a Response, the browser will understand the response
and display the body of the response to the user in browser.
In simple terms a browser can be defined as A software application used to locate and display
Web pages

 You can create your own simple browser application using C++, C#, VB.NET or any other
language you like. All you need to know is, how to compose a request which web server can
understand, how to parse and display the response from web server and communicate with
webserver using HTTP protocol.
Even though the basic job of browser is just send requests to web server and receive response
from the server, modern browser provide several other enhanced features including
Back/Forward buttons, save viewed files to disk so that they can be viewed later, cache images
so that the same images need not be downloaded again and again etc.
Internet Explorer, Netspace, Mozilla are some of the popular web browsers currently available
in the market.
Netscape was the most popular web browser till 4-5 years back, but currently more than 90% of
the internet users use "Internet Explorer" to browse the websites.

Windows Applications and Web Applications

This article gives an introduction to various types of computer programs and explains the
concepts behind a web application.

Developers are often confused about the difference between Windows Applications and Web
Applications. This chapter gives brief information about various types of computer applications and
provides an introductions to web applications.

Different types of computer applications

It is very hard to divide applications into any strict categories. There is no clear definition exists to
categorize computer applications. However, here is a small list of different types I can think of:
1. Embedded Systems
2. Windows applications (also called 'Desktop applications')
3. Web Applications

Embedded Systems

Have you ever used a digital diary (also called 'digital organiser') or a mobile phone ? Do you know when
you save a name and address, how does it get saved in it?
It is a small computer program 'Embedded' in that device. It is similar to any small address book computer
program that you can write using your favorite visual basic or c++. The only difference is, it is written using
soem special language and 'embedded' into a chip in the device inside the mobile phone or digital diary.
If you find a bug in a regular computer program, you can simply write a better program, compile it and
copy to your computer. But if you find a bug in your mobile phone's embedded program, you cannot copy
it! The manufacturer has to embed the new program in a new chip and replace the chip in your mobile
phone!!

Windows Applications
If you don't know what is a 'Windows Application', probably you have never seen a computer. Almost any
application you see on a desktop computer is called 'Windows Application'.
It is also called 'desktop applications' since they are mostly used in desktop computers.
Some common examples of desktop applications are:
1. Paint Brush program
2. Calculator program
3. MSN Messenger
4. Yahoo Messenger
The first three windows applications are written by some programmers sitting in Microsoft office and they
give it free to all who buy Windows operating system. The Yahoo messenger is written by Yahoo
programmers and they give it free to download from their web site.
If your neighbour ask you to write small 'Address book' application for his personal use, you are going to
write a 'windows application'.
Now you must have a good idea of what is windows application.

Web Applications
I am sure you have seen atleast one web application! Do you know how I guessed it?
It was easy to guess. This tutorial is a web application and you are currently reading this tutorial from our
web site (unless you copied it to somewhere...)

So, what is a web application ?

A web application is also called 'web site'. A web site is a collection of web pages hosted on a special

computer called 'web server'.

Now you are reading this tutorial. This chapter is a page among several other pages part of our web
application. The name of our web application is 'AspSpider.com'. This web site (web application) is
running in our web server, which is located in a safe place in USA. You are a 'visitor' to our site and you
are accessing our web application using a tool called 'Internet Explorer' (or, some other browser like
Netscape etc). We don't know where you are (we have several ways to find it, which we will explain in
some other chapter)
So, here is some interesting points about a web application:

A web application is a collection of web pages.

A web application needs a web server to run.
Web server can be located anywhere and visitors need not be even in the same country of the
web server.
Visitors can access the web application using a tool called 'browser'. There are many browsers
exists. Most widely used browser is 'Internet Explorer'. This is provided by Microsoft and it is
free. Another famous free browser is 'Netscape'.

Hope this chapter gave a clear picture about web applications and how they are different from windows
applications.

Infrastructure to develop a web application

(web site)
So, ready to develop a web site?
Any one who want to develop a web application must have the following systems:
1. A web server.
2. An editor to develop the web pages.
3. A browser to view the web page you develop.
4. A database program like MS Access, SQL Server etc, if your web site need to save data into a
database.
In the real world situation, a web server will be hosted on a secure server, located in a safe place and will

be always connected to high speed internet. However, to develop a web application, you don't need to
worry about security and internet connectivity. You can use your own development computer as the 'Web
Server'.
So, your development computer must have all the 4 systems mentioned above.
Since this tutorial is guiding you to develop web sites using ASP.NET, all the tools we are going to talk
here will be the ASP.NET specific tools.

Web Server
There are several types of web servers. But if you like to develop ASP.NET web applications, you need a
specific web server called 'Internet Information Server' (IIS).
IIS comes as part of Windows. But it is not installed by default, when you install Windows. Please see the
chapter 'Installing IIS' to find more about installing IIS.

Editor to develop web pages

Ideally, you do not need any special editor to develop a web application. If you are an expert, you can
simply use ntoepad to type HTML and the code for the web pages. However, who want to hand-wash the
vessels when there is a dish washer ?!
You don't need to make your hands dirty! Microsoft gives a tool called 'Visual Studio .NET' to edit web
pages and write code for ASP.NET.

Visual Studio .NET (VS.NET)

Visual Studio .NET allows to easily create web pages. Some of the benefits in using Visual Studio .NEt
are:

You can simply drag and drop html controls to the web page and VS.NET will automatically write
the HTML tags for you.
Start typing an HTML tag and VS.NET will complete it! When you start typing a tag, VS.NET will
show you the HTML tags starting with the characters you typed. So, you don't need to even
remember all the tags.

 If you type any HTML tags wrong, VS.NET will highlight the errors and tell you how to correct it.

So, even if you are not an expert, VS.NET can help you develop great web pages.

Browser
You need a browser to view the web pages you create. If you have any windows operating system in your
computer, you will already have a free browser (called 'Internet Explorer')

Database program
A database program like MS Access or SQL Server is required only if you need to save data into
database. It is not mandatory that all web sites need a database program.

Installing and configuring IIS

This article guides you on installing and configuring IIS on your machine. IIS is a required a tool to
develop and ASP.NET applications in your machine.
Internet Information Services (IIS)
If you have Windows 2000 or Windows XP Professional, you may have IIS already installed in your
computer. IIS is part of the Windows operating system, but it is not selected by default. So, if you choose
default options when you installed the operating system, you may not have the IIS installed.
To find if you already have IIS installed, go to the "Control Panel" and select "Administrative Tools". Check
if there is a shortcut for "Internet Information Services" exists as part of the "Administrative Tools". If it
does not exist, you will need to install IIS.
To install IIS, go to the "Control Panel" and select "Add Remove Programs". Select the option
"Add/Remove Windows Components". Make sure the option "Internet Information Services (IIS)" is
selected. If it is already selected, that means you already have IIS ! If the checkbox for IIS is not checked,
select it and press the "Next" button to proceed to install.

The Windows Components Installation Wizard may prompt you to insert the CD for WIndows. So, keep
the Windows CD handy. Or, if you have the I386 folder copied in your hard drive, you can use that when
you are prompted to insert the CD.

Working with IIS and virtual directories

This article explains how to use IIS and how to work with virtual directories.
Internet Information Services (IIS) helps you manage the web applications

and web sites in your computer.

How to open IIS

There are several ways you can open the Internet Information Services tool.
Method 1: Open the 'Control Panel', select 'Administrative Tools' and then double click the shortcut
'Internet Information Services'

Method 2: Go to the "start" menu, select "Run" and then type "inetmgr". Press "OK" to open the IIS tool.
The IIS admin tool look like this:

In the above image, the name "MANJU" represents the computer name. Under the node "Web Sites", it
displays all the web sites. When you install IIS, it creates a default web site for you. Under the "Default
Web Site" node, you can see all virtual directories listed.
Only on server operating systems like 'Windows 2000 Server' or 'Windows 2003 Server', you can create
multiple Web Sites. In other systems like Windows XP, Windows 2000 Professional etc, you can have
only 1 web site (which is the 'Default Web Site' created by the system). But you can have any number of
web applications under this default web site. Each web application will need to be created as a 'virtual
directory' under any one of the 'web sites'. If you do not have a server operating system

, you have to always create your web applications under the 'Default Web Site'.
Each web application you create in your machine needs a virtual directory. In the above image, we have
two web applications (named 'WebApplication1' and 'WebApplication2')
When you create a new ASP.NET project using Visual Studio .NET, it will automatically create a virtual
directory for you.

For example, if you create a new ASP.NET project using Visual Studio .NET called "ShoppingCart", it will
create a new virtual directory with the name "ShoppingCart". After you create the ASP.NET project, you
can see the virtual directory listed in the IIS.
You can right click on the virtual directory name in IIS and select 'Properties' to view various properties of
the virtual directory. One important property is "Local Path". The "Local Path" property represents the
actual location of the web application.

By default, when you create a new ASP.NET project, visual studio creates the project under the folder
"C:\Inetpub\WWWRoot". For example, if you create a new ASP.NET project called "ShopCart", VS.NET
creates a folder called "C:\Inetpub\WWWRoot\ShopCart" and all files related to the proejct will be placed
inside this folder. This folder will be set as a "Virtual Folder" so that you can access the web site using the
URL "http://localhost/ShopCart".
If you are working on several projects, you may want to organize your projects in some specific folder
instead of "C:\Inetpub\WWWRoot". What you need to do is, create a virtual folder manually before you
create the project.
For example, if you need to create an ASP.NET applciation called "Shopcart" under the folder
"C:\MyProjects", first create the folder "C:\MyProjects\Shopcart". Now convert this folder as a virtual
folder. Now you are ready to create the project using VS.NET. If the virtual folder already exists, VS.NET
will NOT create a new virtual folder under the WWWRoot folder. It will use the existing virtual folder.

What is "localhost" ?
"localhost" represents "current machine". If you are accessing any web applications in your own machine,
you can use the url http://localhost/XXXXXXX. If your web site is in another machine, you can use the IP
Address of the computer instead of "localhost". For example, if the "Shopcart" web application is in a
computer with the IP Address "128.32.65.21", then you can access the site from your comptuer using the
url "http://128.32.65.21/Shopcart".

Stop and start IIS

You may never need to stop and start your IIS. When your computer is started, IIS is automtically started.
Actually, IIS is a 'windows service'. What you see as 'Internet Information Services' is an admin tool
provided by Microsoft to manage the real IIS which works in the background. IIS runs as a windows
service in the background and what you see is only a tool to manage the IIS service.
If you like to stop or start IIS, select the "Default Web Site" in IIS tool and select "stop" or "start" from the
right click menu. If you stop IIS, you cannot access your web sites anymore. Even, if you try to open the
ASP.NET project in Visual Studio, it will complain that web site is currently not available.

What is a Virtual Directory and how to create it?

This article explains the concept of virtual directory and how to create it manually.

What is a virtual directory ?

A virtual directory represents a web application and it points to a physical folder in your computer.
A web application is accessed using a virtual directory name instead of a physical folder name. For
example, if you have a web application called "Shopcart" in your machine, you will have a virtual directory
for this web application. You will access your web application using the URL httP://localhost/Shopcart. If
your virtaul directory name is "Test", then your web application url will be "http://localhost/Test".
Assume you have a web application called "Shopcart", created under the physical folder
"C:\MyProjects\Shopcart".
You can go to IIS and see this virtual directory listed. Right click on this virtual directory name in IIS and
see the properties. You can see that this virtual directory is pointing to the physical location
"C:\MyProjects\Shopcart".
If you have a file called "File1.aspx" under the folder "C:\MyProjects\Shopcart\", then you can access this
file using Internet Explorer with the URL "http://localhost/Shopcart/File1.aspx"

How to create a virtual directory ?

When you create a new web project using, a new virtual directory will be created automatically for you.
This virtual directory will point to a new folder created under C:\Inetpub\wwwroot.
If you like to better organize your projects and files in your favourite folder, you must manually create a
new folder for each project in your preferred location and convert it into a virtual folder manually.
There are couple of ways you can do this.
Method 1: Open the IIS. Right click on the node "Default Web Site" and select "new Virtual Directory".
When it prompt you to enter the "alias", enter the virtual directory name you want(Eg: Shopcart). In the
prompt for "directory", select the folder which you want to make a virtual directory (Eg:
C:\MyProjects\Shopcart). Select other default values and press "Finish". Now you should be able to see
your new virtual directory in IIS.
Method 2: In the explorer, go to the folder(Eg: C:\MyProjects\Shopcart) which you want to make a "virtual
directory". Right click on the folder name and select "Properties". Select the tab "Web sharing" and select
teh option "Share this folder". It will prompt you with a default Alias name same as the folder name (Eg:
Shopcart). Simply select the default values and press "OK".

How web applications work ?

Web applications work quite different from regular windows applications. This chapter explains
the fundamentals of a web application and how a web page is served when a client makes a
request for a web page.
Web applications work quite different from regular windows applications. There are several computers
involved when you view a web page.

Life Cycle of a Web Request

Viewing a web page is a simple process for a visitor. Just type the URL in a web browser like Internet
Explorer or click on a hyper link in any existing web page. The web browser will display the page instantly
to you.
But do you know that there are several computers involved in this process? Even though it is a very
complex process, we can summarize the process as shown below:
1. You type the web page address (URL) in a browser. For example, consider the current page
http://www.aspspider.com/tutorials.aspx. This URL has 3 parts:

 The protocol - http:

The server name - www.aspspider.com
The file name - tutorials.aspx

2. Browser communicates with a computer in internet called 'Domain Name Server' to find out the IP
Address of the server (Eg: www.aspspider.com).
3. Browser established a connection to the web server at that IP Address.
4. Server composes a 'Request' for the specified URL and sends the request to the web server to which it
has established a connection.
5. The web server identifies the type of the page requested. If it is an asp.net web page, then browser
knows that needs some processing by the asp.net service running as part of the web server. The request
is handed over to the asp.net service. The asp.net service processes the asp.net page and generates the
html output.
6. Web server sends the requested page to the browser.
7. When a response is received by the browser, it displays the web page to the user who typed the URL.
After you typed the URL in the browser, the request sent by the browser may go through several
computers in the internet before it reaches the actual web server.
You must be surprised to know that so many things happen and several computers are involved before a
simple web page is displayed to you. Most of the steps in the above process happens behind the screen.
A visitor need not worry about how a web page is processed and served to the browser.
So, by now you must have got a better picture about how a windows application is different from a web
application. When you run a windows application (desktop application), only one computer is involved in
the whole process. You start an application in your computer and it runs in your computer. But when you
request a web page from your home computer, the request goes through several servers in the internet
and finally it reaches a computer called 'Web Server'. The actual web page is processed in the web
server.

Switching from windows programming to web

programming
This chapter explains some challenges faced by web programmers. Also explains what are the
additional things you need to take care when you switch to web programming from windows
programming.
If I say 'web programming is more challenging than windows programming', I am sure lots of windows
programmers are going to disagree with me. Ofcourse this is an arguable topic. Both windows

programming and web programming has its own challenging areas. My intention is to explain some of the
challenges faced by programmers when they switch from windows programming to web development.
Since this is an ASP.NET tutorials site, my topics are based on ASP.NET development.

Learn a new technology

You may be a great C# or VB.NET developer. But if you want to do web development, you need to learn a
new technology called ASP.NET. ASP.NET is the latest Microsoft technology for web development. To
learn more about the ASP.NET technology, read the chapter titled < ahref='Tutorials.aspx?
TutorialId=56'>What is ASP.NET ?.
Note: ASP.NET is just one of several technologies available for web development. ASP, PHP etc are other
examples for web development.

Do not know the users

If you develop a windows application, you know who is going to use it. You can always give special
instructions to the user on how to use it, how to work around if there is any problems in the program etc.
But in case of a web application in internet, you will not know who is going to use. Any user can visit your
web site and access the application. You do not get any chance to give any special instructions to the
user. The application must be self explaining and easy to use. You must have very good error handling so
that even if the user enters wrong values, application must respond accordingly and guide user to correct
the values.

Familiarity with application

Most of the windows applications will be accessed by the same users again and again. Over a period of
time, the users will become familiar with the menu, screens and various features of the application.
But in case of an internet web site, new users may be visiting the site every day. The web application
must be self explaining and should be easy to navigate. Most of the users will take a quick look at the site
and try to find what they want. If they cannot locate what they want in few seconds, they will simply leave
your site!

Hackers
There are several hackers looking for opportunities to hack systems in the internet. There are several
security issues you must consider when you develop a web site so that you can secure your web site
from hackers.

Bad users! Bad data!!

You cannot expect all users will use your web application the way you want to. Users may try all bad data
or try to find loop holes in your application. Your application must be more secure and should have strict
validation of user inputs.

Different environments
You do not know what kind of system a user will have. Some users may have Windows XP and some
others may have Windows 98. Some people may be accesing your site using Internet Explorer and others
may be using Netscape browser. Even, within in Internet Explorer, there are several versions available.
You must take care of all these and make sure your application works well with most of the known
browsers and should support multiple versions of the version. Also, application should work well with
different screen resolutions.

Slow and fast internet connectivity

Not all users have high speed internet. Your web application should work well with low speed internet too.
If you use lot of graphics, then it may be very slow to load in low speed internet connections. But if you
completely avoid graphics, you will not be able to make the application attractive to many users. You must
choose a balanced approach, considering the majority of your users.

What is ASP.NET ? How is it different from VB.NET

or C# ?
This article explains the ASP.NET technology and how different it is from programming languages
like C# or VB.NET
Many new programmers are confused about how ASP.NET is different from C# or VB.NET. Many new
programmers mis understand that ASP.NET is just another programming launguage.

What is ASP.NET ?

ASP.NET is the name of the Microsoft technology used for web site development.
ASP.NET is NOT a programming language like C# or VB.NET
ASP.NET development requires a programming language like C# or VB.NET to write code.
ASP stands for Active Server Pages.
There are several other technologies exist for web development (Eg: PHP). ASP.NET is the
technology from Microsoft and it he widely used one.
ASP.NET technology comes with a rich set of components and controls that make the web
development very easy.
Visual Studio .NET is the editor from Microsoft which helps you develop ASP.NET web sites faster
and easily.
IIS is the web server from Microsoft which supports ASP.NET. To develop ASP.NET web sites,
you must have IIS installed in your computer.

In ASP.NET programming, a web page is developed using HTML and a .NET programming language like
C#, VB.NET or J#. You can choose your favourite .NET language to develop ASP.NET pages.
So, now you must be clear that ASP.NET is not a programming language and it requires a language like
C# or VB.NET to develop ASP.NET web sites

What you should know to become an ASP.NET

web developer
.

The article talks about what you must learn to become an ASP.NET web developer.
You must have read in the earlier chapters that ASP.NET is a technology which includes several other
technologies.

So, unlike C# or VB.NET windows programmers who need to know only the programming language, an
ASP.NET developer must learn several things.

HTML
HTML is a very simple language used to develop web pages. It may not take more than a couple of days
to to become a reasonable good HTML programmer.

Programming language - C#, VB.NET or your favourite

language
You can develop a simple, static web site using plain HTML. You don't need to know C# or VB.NET to
develop a web site.
But, to display dynamic content in the ASP.NET website, you must use a programming language like C#
or VB.NET. For exampe, if you want to display data from database, you will need to write C# or VB.NET
code in the web page to access the database and retrieve database.
So, you must learn atleast one programming language like C# or VB.NET to become a good ASP.NET
developer.

Client side scripting language

In addition to HTML and C#/VB.NET, you may need to learn one more programming language like
Javascript or Vb script for client side scripting. Javascript is the most popular and widely used client side
scripting language. You can read more about client side scripting in another chapter.

Internet Information Services - IIS

IIS is the engine that drives the ASP.NET web sites. But just like a car driver need to know much about
the engine of the car, you need not be an IIS expert to develop web sites. Just like your car starts when
you turn the key, the IIS is started when you start windows. There are separate chapters for IIS in this
tutorials.

Visual Studio .NET - VS.NET

Visual Studio .NET is the editor from Microsoft which allows you to write code easily. Ideally, you do not
need VS.NET to develop ASP.NET web sites. You can simply use notepad to type your code and use
command line options to compile the code.
But you may not want to use notepad to write web pages, if you want to finish your learning in the next
couple of years!!

VS.NET makes the life of a programmer very easy. It does lot of work in the backgroud for you. When you
create a new web project, it automatically creates a virtual directory for you in the IIS. If you use notepad
to develop web site, you will have to manually create virtual folder in IIS, which requires some knowledge
about IIS. Also, it is 1-click operation in VS.NET to compile and build all web pages. In addition, VS.NET
creates lot of default files and code for you, which you will have to do manually if you are not using
VS.NET. If you want to display a text box or a button control, just drag and drop the control in VS.NET.
There is no need to type even a single line!!

Create your first web page

In this chapter, we will guide you to create a new web site step by step, without using Visual
Studio .NET
Visual Studio .NET is tool that help you automate lot of work related to creating a web site or web
application. However, in this chapter we are going to see how to create a small web site manually, without
using VS.NET. This help you understand some of the background work done VS.NET when you create a
new project.
Let us create a new web site called "ShoppingCart".
Step 1: Create folder
The first step is, creating a folder for this web site. So, go to explorer and create the following folder:
C:\ShoppingCart
Step 2: Create virtual directory
Create a new virtual directory called "ShoppingCart" pointing to the folder we just created. Refer to this
chapter for more information about creating virtual directories and working with IIS.
Step 3: Create a web page
Let us create a simple page to get started. Open notepad and copy the following content:

<html>
<head>
<title>Thisismyfirstwebpage</title>
</head>
<body>
<br><br><br><br>
<center>

<fontsize=5color=red>WelcometoSpiderShop!</font>
<BR><BR>
<fontsize=3color=darkgreen>Buysoftwaresandtoolsonlineatvery
lowrates....</font>
</center>
</body>
</html>
Save the above text into a file called "index.html" into the folder "C:\ShoppingCart".
You are done with your first web site. Since you have configured your folder as a virtual directory, you can
access all html files in that folder using a web browser.
Open internet explorer and type the URL

http://localhost/ShoppingCart/index.html
You can see the following output in Internet Explorer:

Welcome to SpiderShop !
Buy softwares and tools online at very low rates....
Try to alter the html in the file and see how it appears in internet explorer. Also, you can create more html
files in the same folder (like index2.html, AboutMe.html etc) and access them using the url
http://localhost/FileName (Eg: http://localhost/ShoppingCart/AboutMe.html)
If your file is already open in Internet Explorer (IE) and you make some changes in the html file, the
changes will not be visible in IE until you refresh the page in IE. Just hit F5 button in IE to reload the page
after you make any changes to the file using notepad.

Moving from HTML to ASP.NET

The chapters explains how you can convert an HTML file into as ASP.NET page and how to
develop ASP.NET pages.
In this chapter, you learned how to create a simple website with an html page. Our aim is to learn
ASP.NET. So, let us see how to develop ASP.NET pages.

An html file can have the extensions .htm or .html. An ASP.NET page has the extension .aspx. So, the
very basic difference between an html page and an ASP.NET page is, they have different file extensions.
By looking at the file extension, the web server understands what type of file it is and decides how to
process them. An html file and ASP.NET need to be processed differently by the server.
We said the basic difference is, html and ASP.NET pages have different extensions. So, you may ask
"what if simply change the extension of the file?"
You are right. You can simply change the extension of an html file to make it an ASP.NET page!
In an earlier chapter, you created a simple web site called "ShoppingCart" with an html page
"index.html". Go to the folder "C:\ShoppingCart" and rename the file to "index.aspx". You have created
your first ASP.NET page!

How to test the ASP.NET page ?

Just like the way you opened your html page in Internet Explorer, open the ASP.NET page. Open Internet
Explorer and type the following URL:

http://localhost/index.aspx
You can see the same output as the html file.

How did it work?

If you want to change your small grocery store to a big super market, what will you do? You can simply
put a big board in front of your store saying "Super Market" and claim that you have a super market.
This is exactly what we did with our html page. We simply renamed it. But changing the name is not
enough to convert a grocery store to a super market. There is a lot more to go!
In the coming chapters, you will learn more about how to convert a grocery store into a super market
(well, we mean how to switch from simple html to complex asp.net pages)

How browsers understand ASP.NET web pages?

This chapter explains how browsers display dynamic pages.
There are several several technologies exist to develop dynamic web sites and pages. Some of them are
ASP, ASP.NET, PHP etc.

Whatever technology you use to develop the dynamic web pages, a standard browser should be able to
display the page to the visitors.

How browsers understand ASP.NET or PHP pages?

If visit any web site, no matter what technology is used to develop the site, your browser will be able to
display the page for you.
The only thing a browser can understand is "HTML". It does not know ASP.NET or PHP. So, even if your
web site is developed using ASP.NET, still your browser can understand only HTML.
This is how it works:
You type a URL in your browser. (Eg: http://www.aspspider.com/tutorials/Tutorials.aspx?TutorialId=61)
Your browser will compose a request for this page and send to the web server in internet.
The web server analyzes the request and it understands that the request is for an ASP.NET page called
"Tutorials.aspx". So, the web server hand over the request to the aspnet service running as part of the
web server. (If the page is a .php file, then there must be a php service running on the webserver).
The aspnet service loads the page "Tutorials.aspx". Inside this page, we have written code to read the
TutorialId passed as a parameter (parameters are called "Query String"). Our code gets this tutorial id and
then retrieves the corresponding content from the database. Then our code embeds this content into the
page and returns the dynamically modified page content to the web server.
Web server returns the dynamically generated page to the browser. This dynamically generated page has
only HTML in it, even though this html came from database.
When the browser receives the page, it has only HTML. So, as far as a browser is concerned, it does not
care what type of web site it is. It can be any technology like ASP.NET or PHP. It is the responsibility of
the web server to generate dynamic content from database or wherever and give only HTML page
content to the browser.

Other than HTML, what else browsers understand?

We said that browsers understand only HTML. That is not fully true. Modern browsers understand
something more than HTML, like Javascript, Flash etc. We will talk about these in the coming chapters.

How ASP.NET is converted to HTML?

This article how ASP.NET pages are sent as HTMl to browsers.

In an earlier chapter you learned that browsers can understand only HTML (and some client side scripts
like javascript).
So, what does that mean? Does it mean you cannot develop ASP.NET pages to view in a browser?
This is the concept:
You can use web development technologies like ASP.NET, PHP etc to develop web sites. But what
is happening behind the scenes is, the above technologies are used to dynamically generate html.
What is sent from web server to the browser is just plain html. That why browsers are able to
display web pages developed using ASP.NET.
Whatever technology you use to develop web pages, what is sent from server to browser is just plain
html. Depdning on various conditions, ASP.NET generate different html. I will prove this with an example.
If you have NOT logged In to this site, you can see a link called "Login" in the top left corner. If you are
logged in, you will see Welcome TONY. (You will see your name instead of TONY, but I am using my
name for this example)
We use ASP.NET to determine wether user has logged in or not. If logged in, then our ASP.NET code will
generate the following html:

<ahref=ViewProfile.aspx?UserId=tony>WelcomeTONY!</a>
If the user is NOT logged in, then our ASP.NET code will generate the following HTML:

<ahref=Login.aspx>Login</a>
Did you notice that the above samples show plain html? Depending on various conditions, ASP.NET
generate appropriate HTML. This is what sent to browsers. You can right click on in any web page and
select View Source to see the actual HTML. Try to see the source html of this page.
Browsers always see plain html (the same html you see by Right click -< View Source) . They dont care
how the html is generated, what is the technology or programming language (ASP or ASP.NET or PHP)
used to generate those html etc. . Even if some other company comes up with a new technology for web
development, all browsers will still work as long as those technologies generate proper html.
This is the fundamental concept behind web development. It is very important to understand this concept
clearly before you proceed with ASP.NET programming.

Static and Dynamic web pages

The chapter talks about the difference between Static web pages and Dynamic web pages.
We can broadly classify web sites and web pages into two categories:
1. Static web pages
2. Dynamic web pages

Static Web Pages

A static web page is a page which has the same content always.
In case of static web pages, content is written in the page itself as plain html. Until the author of the web
page updates the content, the content remains the same in the static pages.
Static web pages are meant for providing information which does not change often. For example, visit
http://www.google.com/intl/en/about.html. This page is a static page. The content is always the
same (until they update the content by uploading a new html file to the web server).
HTML files are used to create static web pages.

Dynamic Web Pages

Dynamic web pages get content from database. Content is NOT hard-coded in the page itself.
Dynamic pages are created using "serverside code" when the page is loaded every time.
An example for a dynamic page is this tutorial page itself. See the file name in the URL. The file name is
"Tutorial8.aspx". We have used only one file to display any tutorial chapter. The chapter number is there
as part of the URL (the chapter number is 8 for this chapter).
When you type the URL in the browser, this page is dynamically created from database, based on the
chapter id in the URL. The content of each chapter is stored in our database, not in the file itself. When
you access the page, our server side code will check what is the TutorialId in the URL. Based on the
TutorialId, it will retrieve appropriate chapter content from the database and dynamically create the web
page. (You can try to change the TutorialId in the URL to some very large number and try. The page will
give an error because our code will fail to get the corresponding chapter content from the database). This
entire site has only very few files (like index.aspx, Tutorial.aspx etc)
Dynamic web pages are created using technologies like ASP, ASP.NET, PHP etc.

HTML pages cannot be dynamic. All HTML files are static pages. If you want to write dynamic pages, you
must use some technologies like ASP.NET.

Client side scripting and server side scripting

This chapter gives an introduction to client side and server side programming.
Ever wondered the what is the difference between client side code and server side code? If your answer
is YES, this chapter is for you.

Server side code

In a previous chapter, you learned that dynamic pages are created using code in asp.net web pages.
When you request a page, the web server executes the code in the web page and generates an HTML
content for that page. It is this HTML content that is sent back to the browser so that it can be displayed to
the user.
The code that is executed by the web server to generate the dynamic page is called "server side code". It
is called "server side code" because it is executed by the web server.
When you develop ASP.NET pages, you will use C# or VB.NET (or any other .NET compatible code) code
to write the server side code. Server side code is used to retrieve and generate content for the dynamic
pages. You may be using the code to retrieve the content from database or something like that.
When a dynamic page is requested, the server side code is executed on the server and a page is
generated. Once the generated page comes to the browser, there is connection with the server. You
cannot do anything from the browser to communicate with the server, othen than requesting another page
or same page again. So, if you want to access the database or something like that once the page is
displayed, it is not possible.

Client side code

Client side code is used to do some kind of basic operations in the browser when the page is displayed to
the user.
As you read above, it is not possible to access the server once the page is displayed. Morover, the
browser does not knwo anything about ASP.NET or .NET. The browser undersands only HTML and client
side scripting languages.
Client side coding is used to do basic operations on the browser. It cannot be used to access the server
or database on the server etc.
Client side coding is done using scripting languages like Javascript, VbScript, JScript etc. These scripting
languages are easy to learn (they are different from vb.net and C#). The scripting languages provide only
very minimal functionality.

The main use of client side scripting is to validate user input before submitting a page to server. For
example, suppose you have a "Registration" page. Once user enter all data and press the "submit"
button, all the user input will be sent to server. In the server side, you may have written vb.net or C# code
to validate all user inputs like Name cannot be empty etc. If the user do not enter a name and press
submit, your server side code will generate an error message and return the page to you.
In this case, the page was sent to the server and came back with an error message. It was an expensive
operation. It consumed lot of resources to send a page to the server and get it back to the browser with
an error message.
If we can catch this validation error in the browser itself, instead of sending to server and coming back
with an error, that will save lot of time and resources. User need not wait to send the page to server and
come back.
Since, a browser does not know VB.NET or C#, you cannot write such code to validate it in the browser.
Client side scripting comes here to help. You can write Javascript, VBScript or JScript code to validate the
name field in the browser itself and submit it to the server only if all user inputs are correct.
You can learn more about client side scripting in coming chapters.

Your first dynamic page

You will learn to create a dynamic page in this chapter.
In an earlier chapter, you learned how to create a small Shopping Cart web site with a simple HTML
page in it. In another chapter you larned how to convert the simple html page to an ASP.NET page.
That was fun! You simply renamed the html page to an aspx page.
In this chapter you are going to do some real work by writing server side code, which make it a real
dynamic page.
To write server side code, you must choose a .NET language. It can be any .NET language like C#,
VB.NET, C++.NET or J#. For this chapter, let us choose VB.NET.
Go back to your index.aspx page in your folder "C:\ShoppingCart\". Open the file using notepad. You can
see the following content in the index.aspx file.

<html>
<head>
<title>Thisismyfirstwebpage</title>
</head>

<body>
<br><br><br><br>
<center>
<fontsize=5color=red>WelcometoSpiderShop!</font>
<BR><BR>
<fontsize=3color=darkgreen>Buysoftwaresandtoolsonlineatvery
lowrates....</font>
</center>
</body>
</html>
As you can see, it is plain HTML even though the page is an aspx page. Yes, you can have plain HTML
inside an ASP.NET page. In this case, there is no server side code and the server has no processing to
do, other than simply returning the HTML content as it is, to the browser. Only when there is some server
side code is present in the code, the server will process it and return the output embedded in other HTML
content.

How to write server side code in a page ?

Our index.aspx page has only plain HTML now. We are going to embed some server side code inside it
so that the server will process it and generate some output dynamically.
Anything you write inside a special tag as shown below will be trated as server side code:

<%
%>
You can write your favourite C# or VB.NET code inside the <% %> tags and it will be processed by the
.NET runtime to generate html output.
Change the content of your index.aspx as shown below:

<html>
<head>
<title>Thisismyfirstwebpage</title>
</head>
<body>
<br><br><br><br>
<center>
<fontsize=5color=red>WelcometoSpiderShop!</font>
<BR><BR>
<fontsize=3color=darkgreen>Buysoftwaresandtoolsonlineat
verylowrates....</font>
<br><br>
Nowtheservertimeis:
<%
Response.Write(DateTime.Now.ToString)
%>
</center>
</body>
</html>
Now access your page using the URL http://localhost/ShoppingCart/Index.aspx. You will see the following
output in browser:

Buy softwares and tools online at very low rates....

Now the server time is :

4/28/2005 6:33:45 PM
You can see the actual server time displayed in your browser. (Since you are using your own machine as
the server and client, you will see your computer time. )
Let us see how it worked. You have writtena piece of code as shown below:

Nowtheservertimeis:
<%
Response.Write(DateTime.Now.ToString)
%>
Since this page has an extension .aspx, the page will be given to the aspnet service to process it. The
aspnet service will use the .NET runtime to process all lines enclosed between <% and %>.
In the above case, there is only one line of server side code.

Response.Write(DateTime.Now.ToString)

The code Response.Write is used to generate output.

DateTime.Now.ToString will return the current date and time.

So, the resule of the following code is the current date and time and Response.Write() will return that
result to the asp.net page which embeds the code.
In the page, we have

Nowtheservertimeis:
<%
Response.Write(DateTime.Now.ToString)
%>

In the above lines, Nowtheservertimeis:is a plain HTML. The next part gets executes
in the server and returns the current time. So, the final output is:

Nowtheservertimeis:
4/28/20056:33:45PM
What a browser gets back from the server is just the above lines. Your server side code is not there
anymore. It is processed by the server to produce some output!
Now you must have got a better picture about how the server side code works.
In the coming chapers, we will explain how to write advanced code to write a more dynamic page, which
access database and retrieve content just like this Tutorial page.

Default programming language for ASP.NET

This article talks about the default programming language and other supported programming
languages supported by ASP.NET
In the previous chapter, you learned how to display server time using ASP.NET. The code you wrote was,

Nowtheservertimeis:
<%
Response.Write(DateTime.Now.ToString)
%>
Now let us make some minor changes to the code so that we can explain some concepts better. Change
the server side cide in your file Index.aspx under the folder C:\ShoppingCart as shown below:

Nowtheservertimeis:
<%
dimcurrentTimeasstring=DateTime.Now.ToString
Response.Write(currentTime)
%>
We have declared a string variable and assigned the current time to it. Then we are doing a
Response.Write ( currentTime ) so that the value is sent to the page output.
Let us view the new page now in browser. Type the URL

http://localhost/ShoppingCart/index.aspx. You will see the same old result.

You may have noticed that we are using VB.NET syntax to write server side code.

In one of the previous chapters we mentioned that ASP.NET supports any programming language. Let us
try it.
Change your server side code to C# syntax:

Nowtheservertimeis:
<%
stringcurrentTime=DateTime.Now.ToString();
Response.Write(currentTime);
%>
Try to view the page. You will get an error. What happens is, ASP.NET is trying to compile the server side
code using vb compiler and it is giving an error (because it does not understand C# syntax).

How to use C# in ASP.NET ?

VB.NET is the default language for ASP.NET. This does not mean that VB.NET is a better choice than C#.
Both VB.NET and C# are equally good for ASP.NET.
If you like to use a language other than the default VB.NET language, you must explicitely specify what
language you are using so that ASP.NET can use appropriate compiler to compile your server side code.
Now we have changed our code to C# syntax. So, we must specify that we want to use C# compiler.
What you need to do is, go to the top of the index.aspx page in notepad and type the following line:

<%@Language="C#"%>
The above line must be the first line in the aspx file. This statement tells the aspx page that it has to use
C# compiler to compile the page.
We cannot mix more than one language in one page. If a page uses C# syntax, then you cannot use
VB.NET syntax for some portion of the code in the same page.
You will learn about User Controls in one of the coming chapters. You can develop each User Control
using a different language and place all those controls in one page.

Supported languages for ASP.NET

You can use any .NET programming language to write server side code in ASP.NET. The following are the
.NET languages provided by Microsoft:

 C#
VB.NET
C++
J#

Other companies are developing more .NET languages, which you will be able to use with ASP.NET.
However, the widely used programming languages for ASP.NET are VB.NET and C#

Difference between ASP and ASP.NET

This article explains what is ASP.NET and how different it is from ASP.NET
ASP stands for Active Server Pages. ASP.NET is the next generation of ASP. After the introduction of
ASP.NET, old ASP is called 'Classic ASP'.
Classic ASP uses vb script for server side coding. Vb Script is not supported any more in ASP.NET.
Instead, ASP.NET supports more languages including C#, VB.NET, J# etc. VB.NET is very similar to vb
script, so it should be easy for old Visual Basic or ASP programmers to switch to VB.NET and ASP.NET
VB Script is a simple scripting language, where as VB.NET or C# are modern, very powerfull, object
oriented programming languages. Just for that reason, you will be able to write much more robust and
reliable programs in ASP.NET compared to ASP.
In classic ASP, there was no server controls. You have to write all html tags manually. ASP.NET offers a
very rich set of controls called Server Controls and Html Controls. It is very easy to drag and drop any
controls to a web form. The VS.NET will automatically write the required HTML tags automatically for you.

ASP is interpreted, ASP.NET is compiled

Since ASP uses vb script, there is no compilation. All ASP pages are interpreted when th page is
executed.
ASP.NET uses modern .NET languages like C#, VB.NET etc. They can be compiled to efficient Microsoft
Intermediate Language (MSIL). When you compile an ASP.NET application, the server side code is
compiled to assemblies. These assemblies are loaded at run time which makes the ASP.NET pages
perform better than classic ASP.

ADO and ADO.NET

Classic ASP uses a technology called ADO to connect and work with databases. ASP.NET uses the
ADO.NET technology (which is the next generation of ADO).

Event driven programming

If you have written Visual Basic programs before, you would love the event driven programming
approach. It is so easy to drag and drop a button control and double click on the button to write the event
handler for the button click event. When you click on the button at turn time, it will execute whatever code
you have written in the event handler.
This type of event driven programming was not available with classic ASP. You cannot drag and drop a
button and write a 'on click' event handler with ASP.
With ASP.NET, this is changed. It works pretty much like your Visual Basic program. You can write event
handlers for several events like button click event, text changed event etc.
However, there is big difference between the way event handling works in regular Visual basic and
ASP.NET. In ASP.NET, a page is loaded in the client browser. And the server may be in another location
(may be in another country). When you click on the button in an ASP.NET page, the 'click event' handler
has to be executed on the server, not on the client.
How does the server know when you click on a button your browser? This is a tricky thing in ASP.NET.
When you write an event handler for a button lick or something like that in ASP.NET, lot of things happens
behind the screens. ASP.NET will produce lot of client side javascript code to handle this and embed this
javascript in the html page it sends to the browser. When you click on the button in the browser, the client
side javascript will get executed. This javascript will generate some information required for the server
and and submit the page request to the server. There is enough information embedded in this request so
that the server will understand that user has clicked a specific button in the browser and it has to execute
some 'specific event handler' code in the server side. So, when the user clicks on a button, the page is
submitted automatically to the server with some special information. In the server side, it will process the
event handler for the button click event and send back the output page to the browser again. Similary, you
can write other event handlers like text changed event for Textboxes etc.
As a user of the web page, you will not even know what happened in the background. All you can see is,
when you clicked the button, it executed the button click event handler in the server side and you got the
result. However, you may notice a delay because the page has to be submitted to the server to execute
the event handler.
NOTE: The event handling we just discussed is server side event handling. In addition to that, you can
handle any events in the client side using Javascript. This is supported even in classic ASP. The client
side event handling is used for simpel client side validation, displaying messages to the user etc. You
cannot do any server side programming in client side java script (like accessing the database etc).

Download Visual Web Developer 2005 Express

Edition
This article talks about the Visual Web Developer (VWD) express edition.
This tutorial is all about ASP.NET and web development. The ideal environment to develop ASP.NET
pages is, using Visual Studio 2005.
However, if you cannot spend lot of money to buy the VS.NET license, you can go for VWD (Visual Web
Developer). VWD is free, if you download and register the product from Microsoft web site before
November 2006. (This means VWD will be free for ever, if you download and register before November
2006).

What is VWD ?
VWD is a light weight version of Visual Studio 2005. It has most of the features of Visual Studio so that
you can develop web applications. it comes with all interesting features like intellisense, drag and drop
designer etc.
However, if you are an advanced web developer or if you need to work on windows applications and web
applications at the same time, you may need to go for Visual Studio instead of VWD.
Also, VWD supports only web projects. You cannot create windows applications using VWD. Microsoft
has released separate express editions for windows application development.

Where can I download Visual web Developer

(VWD)?
You can download VWD from this Microsoft page - http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/vwd/. There is
a download link on the right side of the page.

Sample projects
Our tutorials are targetted for beginners and we assume most of them are using VWD. So, we provide
majority of our sample projects and code in VWD. Most of the screenshots we show in the tutorials are
refering to VWD.
If you are using Visual Studio, then all the sample projects can be opened in Visual Studio. The only issue
will be, the screens and pictures we refer in the tutorials may be different in Visual Studio.
Make sure you download and install VWD before you proceed with the rest of the tutorials.

SQL Server 2005

This article explains ...

Built-in web server for VWD

Learn more about the Built in web server that is part of the new development environment.
Installing and configuring IIS is a painful job for beginners. Here is the good news. VWD comes with a buil
in web server. Now you can build and test applications locally using the built-in Web server, without
needing IIS.
Just create a new web project using VWD and run it. Your built in web server will automatically start and
you can view the web pages.
However, the free builtin web server is only for development and testing purpose. If you need to develop a
website in a server, you need to install IIS on the server.

ASP.NET tutorials for beginners

A huge collection of simple tutorials will guide you through various stages of web programming.

Project file in ASP.NET 2.0

This article explains what happened to the concept of "project file" in ASP.NET
If you are an experienced .NET developer, you must be familiar with the project files with the extension
.csproj or .vbproj (depending on the language you choose to develop your project).
In ASP.NET 2.0, there is no concept of "project" for web sites. All web pages and related files are
organized directly under the "solution".
You create a new web site using VWD and a solution will be automatically created for you. If you look at
your web site folder using windows explorer, you will just see a couple of default files, but no project files.
The solution files are located in your "Documents and Settings" folder by default. After you create a new
web site using VWD, look into the folder C:\DocumentsandSettings\<YourWindows

LoginName>\MyDocuments\VisualStudio
2005\Projects\MyFirstProject. You will see a file called "MyFirstProject.sln" (assuming
"MyFirstProject" is the name of your web site.)
You will also notice that there is no "Bin" folder and no binary executable created for the web site you
build the web application. The source files are compiled dynamically in ASP.NET 2.0.
Read more about the Bin folder in ASP.NET 2.0.

Your first web application using VWD

Let us get started with a new VWD web site.

In the previous chapter you learned the first step to create an application is to create a new web site. Let
us take a look at VWD and see how can you create a new web site.
Go to Start Menu > Programs and select "Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition". This
will launch the VWD application. Go to the File menu and select "New Web Site". You will get a screen as
shown below:

The screen shows different options to create a web site. For time being, let us start with a ASP.NET web
site. You will learn more about other types of projects later.
Select "ASP.NET Web Site" from the top part of the dialog box.
Now, look at the bottom left corner. It gives you the option to select the language for your ASP.NET
project. You learned in an earlier chapter that ASP.NET is a technology and you need to select a
programming language to develop ASP.NET projects.
Select Visual C# or Visual Basic as the language. We will be using "Visual C#" for this example. So, we
reccommend you also select Visual C#.
The next step is selecting a location. Just above the Language option, you will see an option to select the

location. Select "File System" and in the right side of it, specify the location where you want the project to
be created.
Let us organize all our projects in one location. have you already created a folder called "AspSpider" in
your C drive? If not, create now. We will be keeping all our sample projects under C:\AspSpider.
Now, in the space provided to specify the project location, type the path

C:\AspSpider\MyFirstProject and press OK. You are done! VWD has created a new
project for you. In this case, "MyFirstProject" is the name of your project and "C:\AspSpider\" is the
location where the project will be created.
Go to windows explorer and look at the folder C:\AspSpider\. You will see that VWD has created a
new folder called "MyFirstProject". This is how VS.NET or VWD organize the projects. For each project
(or, web site), a new folder will be automatically created. If you navigate to this folder, you will see that a
set of files are automatically created for you. This is another advantage of using VWD or VS.NET
compared to using notepad. Many required files will be automatically created for you by VS.NET or VWD
and save lot of time for you.
You will notice that there is no solution file and project file under the web site folder. You can learn more
about the location of the solution file in this chapter.

Your first web application using Visual Studio

We have been trying with small web pages created without using Visual studio. In this chapter,
you will learn how to use VS.NET to create a web application.

This chapter talks about Visual Studio .NET. If you are using Visual Web Developer Express
instead of Visual Studio .NET, you may skip this chapter.

Do you need Visual Studio to create web pages?

In an earlier chapter you learned how to create a simple web page without using VS.NET. You simply
used notepad to type your code and save as a .aspx page.no
You can follow the same approach to develop more complex web pages. But using VS.NET can help you
develop web pages much faster than using notepad.

What is Visual Studio .NET ?

Visual Studio .NET is the editor from Microsoft which allows you to write code easily and fast. Ideally, you

do not need VS.NET to develop ASP.NET web sites. You can simply use notepad to type your code and
use command line options to compile the code.
But you may not want to use notepad to write web pages, if you want to finish your learning in the next
couple of years!!
VS.NET makes the life of a programmer very easy. It does lot of work in the backgroud for you. When you
create a new web project, it automatically creates a virtual directory for you in the IIS. If you use notepad
to develop web site, you will have to manually create virtual folder in IIS, which requires some knowledge
about IIS. Also, it is 1-click operation in VS.NET to compile and build all web pages. In addition, VS.NET
creates lot of default files and code for you, which you will have to do manually if you are not using
VS.NET. If you want to display a text box or a button control, just drag and drop the control in VS.NET.
There is no need to type even a single line!!

How to create a web application using Visual Studio .NET

Open the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET from your programs menu. It will come up with a default start up
page. The default startup page shows the list of projects you recently worked under the title Open an
Existing Project. If you are using VS.NET for the first time, you may not see any existing projects.
In the bottom of the page, you can see two buttons:
1. New Project
2. Open Project
Click the New Project button to create a new project.

If for some reason, the start up page is not visible for you, or if you cannot locate the New Project button,
you can go to the menu of VS.NET and select File > New > Project
This will popup a screen as shown below, asking you to select a project type.

On the leftside of the screen, you can see the section for Project Types. Here you can select the language
you want to use for your asp.net application. For this sample, let us choose "Visual Basic Projects".
See the section called "Templates". This section allows us to select the type of the project you want to
create. There are several options like "Windows application", "Class Library", "ASP.NET Web Application".
Since we want to create a web application, let us select the template "ASP.NET Web Application".
The last option you have to select the is the location. If you are creating a windows application, you have
to select the folder where you want the project need to be created and the name of the project. In case of
a web application, we have to select the web server and the application name.
The default value for the location may be something like this:

http://localhost/WebApplication1
The first part represents your web server. localhost means you are creating the web site on the local web
server on your own computer.
The second part (WebApplication1) is the name of the web application. The VS.NET will create a new
folder with this name and convert this folder to a virtual directory.
Let us leave the default location (http://localhost/WebApplication1) as it is and press
OK. VS.NET may take few seconds to create a new web application for you.

If your IIS is not properly configured, you may get an error. If the VS.NET fails to create a web application
in the above step, read how to install IIS properly.
If everything is configured correctly, VS.NET will perform the following tasks:
1. Create a new folder called "WebApplication1" (or, whatever name you select)
2. Convert the folder to a virtual directory.
3. Create couple of files for you. (If you use notepad, you will have to create each of these files manually
and type the content. See how much time you saved by using VS.NET)

Files created by VS.NET

Now, let us go to the explorer and see where the project and files are created.
When you created the project, you didnt specify a physical location. Instead, you said "http://localhost/". In
this case, the project will be created in the default location of your web server.
The default location for a web server is C:\Inetpub\wwwroot. Go to this folder and you will see that there is
a new folder called "WebApplication1" created here. Inside that, there are several other files created by
VS.NET.

Virtual Directory
Now let us go to the IIS and see the virtual directory created by VS.NET. If you do not remember how to
open and work with IIS, read this chapter.
If you expand the node Default Web Site in IIS, you will notice that there is new virtual directory created
with the name WebApplication1. You can right click on this virtual directory name and see various
properties of this.

Creating a new web application

- behind the scenes
This article explains what happens behind the scenes when you create a new web application
using Visual Studio .NET.
In the previous chapter, you created a new web application using Visual Web Developer (Or, Visual
Studio.NET). Even though you did not do much work other than simply pressing few buttons, VWD
created a web application for you.
Files created by VS.NET
Now, let us go to the windows explorer and see where the project and files are created.

You selected C:\AspSpider\MyFirstProject as the web site location. So, go to explorer and see the folder
C:|AspSpider. You will notice that VWD has created a new folder called "MyFirstProject". This shows that
when you create a new project, VWD creates a new folder with the name of the web site you choose.
(If you used Visual Studio.NET, look into the folder
C:\AspSpider\.)

C:\Inetpub\wwwroot instead of

Look inside the folder "MyFirstProject". You will see couple of files:
Default.aspx
Default.aspx.cs
In addition to the above files, there will be a folder called "App_Data". The "default.aspx" if a web page
created by VWD for you, even though you did not specify it.
Look at the contents of the file default.aspx:

<%@PageLanguage="C#"AutoEventWireup="true"
CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs"Inherits="_Default"%>
<!DOCTYPEhtmlPUBLIC"//W3C//DTDXHTML1.0Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1transitional.dtd">
<htmlxmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<headrunat="server">
<title>UntitledPage</title>
</head>
<body>
<formid="form1"runat="server">
<div>
</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>
Most of the above content is non visible html. Which means, if you run this web site now, you will see a
web page with no content. Select the menu Debug>StartWithoutDebugging (or press
"Ctrl + F5").
This will compile and run the default web page. You will see that internet explorer will be automatically
opened and your web page will be displayed. But as you can see from the content of your page in VWD,
there is no visible content in the page. But if you right click on the web page in internet explorer and view
the source, you will see that the source has the exact same content as what you see in the default.aspx
file in VWD.
Let us try a quick change. Go back to VWD and see the file

default.aspx. See the part:

<title>UntitledPage</title>
Change it to

<title>MyFirstWebSite</title>
Now compile and run the page again. You will see that the title of the page in the browser is changed to
what you specified.

Adding content to the page

If you need anything to be displayed in your web page, you must add it inside the <body> tags.
Add a welcome message as shown below, inside your BODY tags:
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
Welcome to my first web page!
</div>
</form>
</body>
Note that, in ASP.NET, you must place content inside <Form> tags, within the <BODY> tags.
Now build and view the web page by pressing Ctrl + F5. You will see the following text displayed in your
web page in Internet Explorer.

Welcometomyfirstwebpage

The "Build" process

This article gives an introduction to the "build" and "debug" process using VWD.
We have mentioned the term couple of times earlier in this tutorials. If you are very new to programming
, you may be wondering what is meant by "build".
Any one with basic programming knowledge will know that you must compile a source file before you can
execute it. A compilation process will convert the source file into a binary executable file.
If you have 10 web pages in a web project, you must compile each of these 10 files into 1 or more binary

executables. If you are using notepad to develop web applications, you have to use command line tools to
compile each file.
VWD and VS.NET comes with a handy feature to compile and organize all source files. This process is
usually referred to as "build" process.
Before you can run a web site, you must build the project - which means that you must compile all files
files of the project.
Compiling files from command line is a pain. You have to pass several parameters to the compiler
command. You must specify the source file to compile, the name of the binary executable to be generated
etc.

How to build a web site using VWD ?

When you use VWD to build a web site - it is just one button click. There are couple of ways you can do
this in VWD:
1. Click on the shortcut toolbar for Build
2. Use the menu option Build>BuildSolution
3. Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+B
When you use any of the above optiosn to build a solution, VWD does the following:
1. Identifies all the files part of the project.
2. Checks for compilation errors for each file in the solution.
Older versions of ASP.NET projects used to compile all the source files into an assembly and put them
into a folder called "Bin". From ASP.NET 2.0 onwards, there won't be any "bin" folder created. Instead,
source files will be compiled dynamically when a request is made for that particular piece of code.
However, when you "build" the solution using VWD, it verifies each file for compilation errors to avoid any
compilation error during run time.

How to run the web site from VWD ?

Pressing Ctrl+Shift+B will only build the web site, but it will not launch the site. There is
another short cut to build and launch the web site with one step. There are different ways you can do this:
1. Click on the shortcut toolbar "View in Browser" (this step will not check for compilation errors)
2. Use the menu option Debug>StartwithoutDebugging
3. Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+F5
You may notice another menu option called Debug>StartDebugging. This option will also
compile and launch the web site in debug mode. You will learn more about debugging later in this
tutorials.

ASP.NET 2.0 and Bin folder

This article explains what happened to the good old "Bin" folder in ASP.NET 2.0

What happened to Bin folder in ASP.NET 2.0

If you have worked with ASP.NET 1.0 or 1.1, this may be bit confusing for you.
Older versions of ASP.NET projects used to compile all the source files into an assembly and put them
into a folder called "Bin". When you build a web application project using Visual Studio 2002 or Visual
Studio 2003, it used to compile all files into a DLL and copy them to the special folder called "Bin".
From ASP.NET 2.0 onwards, there won't be any "bin" folder created. Instead, source files will be compiled
dynamically when a request is made for that particular piece of code. However, when you "build" the
solution using VWD, it verifies each file for compilation errors to avoid any compilation error during run
time.

Where does the referenced assemblies go ?

If you have worked with .NET projects before, you must know that a web application may refer to several
other class libraries and assemblies. When you add a reference to another DLL using Visual Studio, the
DLL will be copied to the Bin folder automatically.
This concept still exists. If you add a reference to another DLL using VWD, the "Bin" folder will be
automatically created under the web site folder and DLL will be copied to the Bin folder.

Solution Explorer
This chapter explains what is "Solution Explorer" in Visual Studio .NET
Solution Explorer
Solution Explorer is a window within the VS.NET editor, which allows you to manage various files part of
the solution (web site). This windows displays all the files part of the web site. You may select any file and
view properties, rename, delete or move to other folders through the solution explorer.
By default, Solution Explorer is located on the top right corner of the VS.NET editor. This windows may be
minimized on the top right bar. If for some reason, you cannot view the solution explorer, go to the menu
and select "View > Solution Explorer". This will launch the solution explorer window.
You may click on the tab to expand the solution explorer, as shown below.

The solution explorer shows the list of files associated with the project. You may double click on any file to
open it in the editor.
Note the icons in the top of the solution explorer.

These icons allow you to do certain things related to the project. Some of the icons will be active only
when an aspx page is open in the editor.
The first icon in the above image allows you to view the source code (code behind file) of an aspx page.
The second icon allows you to view the aspx page itself.
See the 5th icon. This allows you to view all files which are in the same directory as the web project but
not included in the project. Click on this to view the files in the same folder which are not included in the
project. Probably you may not have any files to see. Add some files manually to the project folder and
then click on this icon. It will show you the files you copied manually.
You can right click on any file and include in the project or exclude from the project.
Click on the same icon again to hide non-included files.

Design mode and HTML mode

This chapter explains what is design mode and HTML mode in VS.NET
An aspx page can be opened in 2 modes in VS.NET
Design mode
HTML mode

Design mode
In design mode, you can actually view how the page is going to look like when it is displayed in the
browser. It will show you all the controls like textbox, labels etc. You can drag and drop controls to the
page when it is opened in design mode.

HTML mode
In this mode, you can see the actual content of the aspx page in plain text. Whatver controls you see in
design mode, you will see the corresponding code here.

How to switch between design and html modes ?

You can easily switch between modes when an aspx file is opened in VS.NET. Double click on an aspx
file in the solution explorer to open it in the editor. Now you can see 2 buttons as shown below in the
bottom left corner of the page.

To switch between modes, click on the Design/HTML links.

If you drag and drop a control in design mode and switch to the html mode, you can see the
corresponding html code. Similarly, you can type code in html mode and switch to design mode to view it.

Files created by default by VS.NET

In this chapter you will learn the various files created by Visual Studio when you create a new web
project.
This chapter talks about default files generated by Visual Studio .NET 2003. We have not yet
updated this page for files generated by VS.NET 2005 or Visual Web Developer Express.
Let us learn more about the default web page created by Visual Studio in the previous chapter.

Ideally, a web page is just one file. For example, if you are viewing a web page called 'Hello.aspx', there
will be one physical file called 'Hello.aspx' located in the web server.
But when you use Visual Studio to create ASP.NET project and web pages, Visual Studio creates several
files for you. Let us look at the solution explorer of the sample project we created in the previous chapters.

The solution explorer shows the following files:

AssemblyInfo.vb
Global.asax
Styles.css
Web.config
WebForm1.aspx

We will learn more about each of the above files later. Now let us go to the folder
'C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\WebApplication1'. You will see the physical files created. Here you can see more
files than what you see in the solution explorer.

 WebApplication1.vbproj
AssemblyInfo.vb
Global.asax
Global.asax.resx
Global.asax.vb
Styles.css
Web.config
WebForm1.aspx
WebForm1.aspx.resx
WebForm1.aspx.vb

WebApplication1.vbproj is the project file. This file is not visible in solution explorer. The project file is just
a list of other files included in the project. When you double click on a project file in windows explorer,
Visual Studio will open the file and find out the list of files included in the project. Then it displays those
files in solution explorer.
If you like to see the contents of the project file, open WebApplication1.vbproj in notepad. If you can
understand the format of the project file, you can even edit and make changes it in notepad. Remember
that you alter the content of the project file, it may get corrupt and will become useless. So, edit the
project file outside VS.NET only after you become an expert!
The files shown in brown font are not visible in solution explorer. Why? Those are files depending on
other files. The file Global.asax.vb and Global.asax.resx are related to Global.asax. Similarly,
WebForm1.aspx.resx and WebForm1.aspx.vb are related to WebForm1.aspx.
VS.NET hides such related files in the solution explorer so that they are better organized.
If you want to see those hidden files in VS.NET, there are couple of ways.
1. Right click on Global.asax or WebForm1.aspx in solution explorer and select 'View Code'. The .vb file

will be opened in VS.NET

2. Click on the project name 'Web Application 1' in the solution explorer. Now click the icon 'Show All
Files' in the top portion of the solution explorer. Now the solution explorer view will slightly change and it
will show the hidden files also. You can click on the + sign to expand and view all the hidden files. Double
click on any file to open and view it in VS.NET

Click on the icon 'Show All Files' again to hide the related files.
Now let us try another thing now. Go to the physical folder (C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\WebApplication1) of our
project in windows explorer. Right click inside the folder and create a new text file called 'Hello.txt'.
Now come back to the Visual Studio. Since you created this file inside our project folder, you must be able
to view this file in the solution explorer. If you do not see the file, click on the icon 'Show All Files' couple
of times to make sure the view is refreshed. You will see the file 'Hello.txt' with a slightly different icon.
This indicates that this file exists in the folder, but included in our project. If you like to include this file in
the project, right click on the file and select 'Include In Project'. Now the icon will change and the file will
become part of the project.
Since 'hello.txt' is a text file, this file will not be compiled. But if you rename the file to .vb or .cs, then this
file also will be compiled along with other source files and if there is any compilation error, VS.NET will
complain.
Let us learn more about the 'WebForm 1.aspx' in the next chapter.

Analyze the default web page created by Visual

Studio
In this chapter you will learn the various elements and HTML tags in the default web page created
by the Visual Studio.
To view the contents of a file, double click on the file name in solution explorer. Open the default aspx file
'WebForm1.aspx' in HTML mode.

The contents of the default web page ('WebForm1.aspx') created by Visual Studio looks like this:

<%@PageLanguage="vb"AutoEventWireup="false"
Codebehind="WebForm1.aspx.vb"
Inherits="WebApplication1.WebForm1"%>
<!DOCTYPEHTMLPUBLIC"//W3C//DTDHTML4.0Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>WebForm1</title>
<metaname="GENERATOR"content="MicrosoftVisualStudio.NET
7.1">
<metaname="CODE_LANGUAGE"content="VisualBasic.NET7.1">
<metaname=vs_defaultClientScriptcontent="JavaScript">
<metaname=vs_targetSchema
content="http://schemas.microsoft.com/intellisense/ie5">
</head>
<bodyMS_POSITIONING="GridLayout">
<formid="Form1"method="post"runat="server">
</form>
</body>
</html>

Let us analyze each line of the aspx file and try to understand some basic concepts. We will explain only
the simple elements now and leave the complex portions for later study.

<%@PageLanguage="vb"AutoEventWireup="false"
Codebehind="WebForm1.aspx.vb"
Inherits="WebApplication1.WebForm1"%>
The element Codebehind="WebForm1.aspx.vb" says that this file uses the vb file
"WebForm1.aspx.vb". The next element Inherits="WebApplication1.WebForm1 says this aspx page is
inherited from the class WebForm1 which is part of the namespace WebAppliaction1. (You can learn
more about namespaces here.)
So, the above statement binds the 2 files together - WebForm1.aspx and WebForm1.aspx.vb. This is how
VS.NET understands that these files are related and thus hide the .vb file in solution explorer.
WebForm1.aspx.vb is known as the 'Code behind File' for WebForm1.aspx. You will learn more about the
code behind files in the next chapters.

<html>
<head>
<title>WebForm1</title>
<metaname="GENERATOR"content="MicrosoftVisualStudio.NET
7.1">
<metaname="CODE_LANGUAGE"content="VisualBasic.NET7.1">
<metaname=vs_defaultClientScriptcontent="JavaScript">
<metaname=vs_targetSchema
content="http://schemas.microsoft.com/intellisense/ie5">
</head>
<bodyMS_POSITIONING="GridLayout">
</body>
</html>
You must be already familiar with the HTML tags <html>, <head>, <title>, <body> etc. They are
mandatory tags for any html and aspx files. Withotu these tags, any web page is not a valid web page.
<title>WebForm1</title> represents the title of the web page when displayed in the browser. You can see
this title in the top left corner of the web browser when this web page is displayed. If you like, you can
change this title to anything yoiu want.

The following tags are called META TAGS. They are not displayed to the user. They are only for
documentation purpose and for the attention of browsers and other search engines etc who will analyze
and study the web pages in a different way. Even if you delete the below meta tags from your web page,
nothing will happen.

<metaname="GENERATOR"content="MicrosoftVisualStudio.NET
7.1">
<metaname="CODE_LANGUAGE"content="VisualBasic.NET7.1">
<metaname=vs_defaultClientScriptcontent="JavaScript">
<metaname=vs_targetSchema
content="http://schemas.microsoft.com/intellisense/ie5">
You will learn more about META TAGS later.
The following tag is very important for any aspx page.

<formid="Form1"method="post"runat="server">
</form>
The <Form> tags are not mandatory for a web page, but is required for any aspx page if you like to use
any of the web controls provided by ASP.NET. All the web controls must be places within the <Form>
</Form> tags. It is reccommded you place all your html code within these tags.
Let us try a simple example:
Add some simple html to your Form tags as shown below.

<formid="Form1"method="post"runat="server">
<fontsize=5color=red>helloWorld</font>
</form>
Now execute the web page. To compile and run any project in VS.NET, you can simply press Ctrl + F5.
(Or, go to the menu 'Debug > Start without debugging.) This will compile your project and launch the web
page in Internet Explorer.
Sometimes, VS.NET will complain that there is no 'Start Page'. In that case, you can right click on the file
'WebForm1.aspx' in the solution explorer and select 'Set as Start Page'.
When your web page is displayed in the browser, you will see the following:

Hello World
Now you can play around with this file by changing the HTML content. Try your html experience here and
see how the page works.

In the above example, you used an aspx page, but didn't try any real aspx controls. You simply used
some basic html tags in an aspx page. In the up coming chapters you will learn how to use the advanced
asp.net controls to create rich html pages.

Code Behind Files

This article explains the concept of code behind files in VS.NET
In the solution explorer, you can double click and open any aspx file. Also, in one of the previous chapters
you learned you can click on "Show All Files" icon to view the related hidden files.
You may have noticed that when VS.NET creates an aspx file, it creates 2 other files too. One with the
extension .resx and one with the extension .vb (or .cs if you choose C#).
When VS.NET created the default file 'WebForm1.aspx', it created the following files also:
WebForm1.aspx.resx
WebForm1.aspx.vb
(When a file name has more than one dot (.) in it, only the last one will be considered for the extension of
the file. So, the full file name is WebForm1.aspx.resx and the extension of the file is .resx.)

How to create a new ASPX file in Visual Studio?

Right click on the project name in the solution explorer. Select the menu "Add" > "Add Web Form". This
will prompt you to select a file name. Enter the name "MyProfile.aspx".
Now VS.NET will create 3 files for you:
MyProfile.aspx
MyProfile.aspx.resx
MyProfile.aspx.vb

Resource File
The .resx file is know as the resource file. You may not use this file much until you need to work on some
advanced features.
The resource file is used to store various resource objects related to the aspx file. You can store strings or
other objects as key-value pairs in this file. You will learn more about the resource files in later chapters.

What is Code Behind Files ?

Now let us come to the key of this chapter - The code behind file. In the above example,
MyProfile.aspx.vb is the code behind file. As the name indicates, it is the file which holds the code for the
aspx page.
It is a nice idea by the ASP.NET team - to separate a web page into different files. The HTML tags and
ASP.NET controls for the UI elements goes to the aspx page. The server side code (VB or C# or any
other language) goes to the code behind files. This way, the files looks very clean and neat.
With this approach, you don't need to mix the html tags and server side tags (<% %>) in the aspx pages.
In the previous chapter you learned how the aspx knows it's code behind file - by using the @Page
directive in the top of the page.

How to open the code behind file for the aspx page
?
You can right click on the aspx file name in the solution explorer and select 'View Code'. This will open the
code behind file associated with the aspx page.
Alternatively, you can press "F7" from the aspx page to open the code behind file.

How to open the aspx file from the code behind file
?
When you have the code behind file opened in the editor, you can right click on the file name in solution
explorer and select 'View Designer' to view the aspx page.
Alternatively, you can press 'Shift + F7" from the code behind file to open the corresponding aspx file.
And within the aspx page, you can switch between "Design" mode and "HTML" mode by using the links in
the bottom left corner as shown in the top of this chapter.

How to write code in the code behind file ?

Open the aspx file and select the "Design Mode". Simply double click on the designer form. This will
create an "Page_Load" event handler in the code behind file and open the code behind file automatically.

PrivateSubPage_Load(ByValsenderAsSystem.Object,ByValeAs
System.EventArgs)HandlesMyBase.Load
EndSub
The Page_Load event will be fired when the page is loaded. Let us try a small example. Write the
following code inside the Page_Load event:

PrivateSubPage_Load(ByValsenderAsSystem.Object,ByValeAs
System.EventArgs)HandlesMyBase.Load
Response.Write("Hey,mypageisloaded...")
EndSub
Now compile and run the web page by pressing "Ctrl + F5". You will see the line "Hey, my page is
loaded ..." in the web page.
Note that, you will not use Response.Write much in your asp.net programming. Instead, you will
use ASP.NET web cotnrols to display data dyamically. You will learn more about the web controls in the
later chapters.

Introduction to ASP.NET Web Controls

This article gives an introduction to ASP.NET web controls
ASP.NET web controls are the controls provided by the ASP.NET team to help you develop complex web
pages.
Some of the web controls are:

Label
Textbox
Button
Listbox
Datagrid

Let us try the most simple web control - the Label control. Label controls are used to display text in the
web page.
VS.NET allows you to drag and drop any web controls to the web page. Open your default aspx page and
select the 'Design' mode. Now click on the 'Toolbox' on the top left corner of the VS.NET. The toolbox will
be available only when you have the aspx file opened in design mode.
From the toolbox, drag and drop a Label control to the web form. Now switch to the 'HTML' mode. You
can see the difference. What happened when you dropped a Label control to the web form is, VS.NET
just added a line of code to the aspx page. The code looks like this:

<asp:Labelid="Label1"style="ZINDEX:101;LEFT:232px;
POSITION:absolute;TOP:56px"runat="server">Label</asp:Label>
In fact, you can manually type this line of code instead of doing the drag and drop. After typing this code,
if you switch to the design mode, you can see the Label control.
Note the id="Label1" in the above code. It says the id of the control is "Label1". You can use this id
in the code behind file to manipulate the Label control.
Switch to design mode and double click on the Form. This will create a Page_Load event handler. Write
the following code in the Page_Load event handler:

Label1.Text="WelcometomyFirstASP.NETPage.CurrentServer
timeis"&DateTime.Now.ToString()
Ok, now compile and run the page by pressing Ctrl + F5. You can see the above text and the server time
displayed in the web page.

Changing Properties of a Web Control

VS.NET allows you to set various properties of the web controls in design mode, saving you lot of typing.
Switch to design mode in your aspx page. Select the label control you just created and press "F4". Or,
you can click on the "Properties" window title on the right edge to open it.
This will slide and open the Properties window on the right side of the VS.NET editor. You can change
various properties of the label control.
(Sometimes, old versions of VS.NET will fail to open the Properties window. It will simply freeze up. In that
case, click on the menu Tools > Options and press the button "Reset Windows Layout".)
For our simple testing, change the Font Size property to "XX-Large". ("Size" property is located under the
property "Font". You must click the "Font" to view the sub properties.). Also, change the property
"Forecolor" to "Red".
When you change any property in the design mode, VS.NET actually puts appropriate tags in the aspx
page. You can switch to the HTML mode and see the changes.

Alternatively, you can type the tags in the aspx page in HTML mode and switch to design mode to view
your changes. Be carefull when you type the properties manually. If you make any mistakes, it will be
difficult to identify and solve the error.
Now run the application and see how the text appears in the web page. Play around with other properties
of the Label control and get familiar.
Some of the commonly used properties are:

ID
Font
Text
Width

Since this is a simple control used to display text to users, the events associated with this control are not
commonly used. But the events are important for other controls like Textbox, Button etc. You will learn
more about these controls in the coming chapters.

Changing properties dynamically at run time

This article explains how to change the properties of web controls at run time.
In the previous chapter, you learnt 2 ways to change the properties of a web control:
1. Change in the Properties window in design mode
2. Type the properties manually in aspx page in HTML mode.
These two methods allows you to set the properties at the time of designing the page. What if you need to
change the properties at run time?
You may have one label control in the page which you use to display the success or error message
depending some conditions. For example, in a "Login" page, if the login id or password is wrong, you
want to display the error message in Red color. If the login information is correct, you want to display a
welcome message in Green color. For the both the messages you can use same Label control. Only thing
is, you need to change the Font color at run time depending on the login status.
To try this out, let us create a sample web page and drag & drop a Label control to it. (You can use the
default web page created in the previous chapters.)

In the Page_Load event, write the following code:

Label1.Forecolor=Color.FromName("GREEN")
Label1.Text="Successfullyprocessed."
Run the page. You will see your message in green color.
Now change the code as shown below:

Label1.Forecolor=Color.FromName("Red")
Label1.Text="Anerroroccurred."
If you run the page now, it will show your message in red color.
In the above example, "Color" is a class part of .NET Framework and "FromName()" is a method of this
class.
Using the above approach, you can change any of the properties of the web controls at run time. In
addition to changing the properties, you can retrieve the values also from the web controls using the
same approach. For example, if you have a Textbox control in the web page, you can get the value typed
by user using the above approach.
You will learn more about Textbox control and its properties in the coming chapters.

TextBox and Button controls in ASP.NET

This article explains how to use various properties and events associated with web controls like
Textbox and Button.
In the previous chapters you learned how to create a new web form and add a label control to it. You also
found how to change the properties of the Label control in design time and run time.
In this chapter, you learn the most frequently used controls - the Textbox and the Button controls.

Create a new webform

Let us start fresh by creating a new web page. Right click on the project name in the solution explorer and
select Add > Add Web Form. Select the file name as 'WebForm2.aspx'.
Now you have a blank form. In the design mode, drag and drop two Label controls, one Textbox and one
Button. Select each control and change the properties as shown below:
Label1:
======================

Id - lblMessage
Label 2:
======================
Id - lblLabel
Text - What is the current day?
Textbox
======================
Id - txtCurrentDay
Text - Monday
Button
======================
Id - btnSubmit
Text - Submit
Arrange the position of the controls so that they look as shown below:

Handling events in ASP.NET

Let us write an event handler for the click event of the Button control. All you have to do is, just double
click on the button control in the designer. Visual Studio will automatically create an event handler for you,
as shown below:

PrivateSubbtnSubmit_Click(ByValsenderAsSystem.Object,ByVale
AsSystem.EventArgs)HandlesbtnSubmit.Click
EndSub
Notice the HandlesbtnSubmit.Click. This statement says this is the method that handles the
Clickevent for the button btnSubmit.

You can change the event handler name btnSubmit_Click() to whatever you want and it will still
work as long as HandlesbtnSubmit.Click is there at the end of it.

Event Handlers - Difference between VB.NET and

C#
The event handlers are created slightly different in C#. If you double click on a button in the web form in
C#, Visual Studio will create the event handler as shown below:

privatevoidbtnSubmit_Click(objectsender,System.EventArgse)
{
}
Note that there is no HandlesbtnSubmit.Click in the end of the event handler declaration.
Instead, there is another hidden lin as shown below:

this.btnSubmit.Click+=new
System.EventHandler(this.btnSubmit_Click);
The above line is hidden within the #regionWindowsFormDesignergenerated
code. You may need to click on the + sign on the left end of the line #regionWindowsForm
Designergeneratedcode to view the hidden code in this region.
In C#, the line this.btnSubmit.Click+=new

System.EventHandler(this.btnSubmit_Click); says which method need to be

called when a button is clicked.

Handling events
Ok, now you have created an event handler for the button clicked event. Let us write some code.
What we are going to try is, get the text user typed in the Textbox and compare against the current day. If
the day user typed matches with current day, we will display a success message in the label. If the day
does not match, we will display an error.
Copy and paste the following code below to your event handler.

DimuserDayAsString=txtCurrentDay.Text
DimcurrentDayAsString=DateTime.Today.DayOfWeek.ToString()
IfuserDay=currentDayThen
lblMessage.Text="Great!Yougotitright."
lblMessage.ForeColor=Color.FromName("DarkGreen")

Else
lblMessage.Text="Oops!Youarewrong.Todayis'"&currentDay
&"'."
lblMessage.ForeColor=Color.FromName("Red")
EndIf
Here is the C# code, if you are working on C#.

stringuserDay=txtCurrentDay.Text;
stringcurrentDay=DateTime.Today.DayOfWeek.ToString();
if(userDay==currentDay)
{
lblMessage.Text="Great!Yougotitright.";
lblMessage.ForeColor=Color.FromName("DarkGreen");
}
else
{
lblMessage.Text="Oops!Youarewrong.Todayis'"+currentDay
+"'.";
lblMessage.ForeColor=Color.FromName("Red");
}
Please note that there is only syntax difference between C# code and VB.NET. So, here onwards, we will
provide the example code only in one language.
Now let us run the web page to see how it works. You may need to right click on your form
(WebForm2.aspx) and select 'Set as Start Page' so that when press 'Ctrl + F5', this new page will be
launched instead of your default page.
Build and launch the web page. You will see the textbox appearing with the default value 'Monday'. Press
the 'Submit' button. If your current day is a Monday, you will get a success message. Otherwise, you will
see the error message.
The code is self explanatory. The call DateTime.Today.DayOfWeek.ToString() returns
the current system day and you are comparing aginst the data typed by the user. You can retrieve the text
typed by user by accessing the property txtCurrentDay.Text.

TextChanged event for Textbox in ASP.NET

Let us try to learn one more event called 'TextChanged' for the Textbox. This is not widely used, but let us
do it for learning purpose.
Double click on the Textbox in the designer view. This will create the TextChanged event handler.
Simply copy paste the code from the button click event handler to this TextChanged event handler. Run

the application and see.

You must press 'Tab' from Textbox to trigger the Textchanged event. But in our case, it will not fire the
event even though we have written the event handler.
We have to do one more step to fire the Textchanged event. Go to the designer and see the properties of
the Textbox. You must change the property 'AutoPostBack' to true. This is 'False' by default to avoid
triggering Textchanged events unncessarily.
Also note that, the Textchanged event will be fired only if you change the current text in the Textbox. If you
simply press 'Tab' by leaving the default value 'Monday' there, it will not be fired. Change it to 'Tuesday'
and press 'Tab'. You can see that the Textchanged event handler is executed.
In windows programming, the textchanged event will fire when you type any character, not after you move
out from the textbox control.

Write solid application

Did you notice that if you type 'monday' instead of 'Monday', it will not match? Let us modify our code so
that it will work even if user type the correct day, with a different case.

if(userDay.ToUpper()==currentDay.ToUpper())
Make a small change as shown above. Here we are converting the user typed text into all upper case. We
are converting the system day also into upper case. So, whatever user typed does not matter. Everything
is converted into upper. Now run the page and you will see that user can type in any case (upper or lower)
and it will still match. If you take care of such small small things, you can write great applications.

Write re usable code

When you made the above change (if(userDay.ToUpper()==

currentDay.ToUpper()), you had to actually change in two places because you had copied
and pasted the same code in two places.
You should never copy paste the same code in two places. Instead, you must move that code into a
method and call the same method from both the places. This way, if you need to make any change, you
need to make the change only once.
See the improved code:

PrivateSubbtnSubmit_Click(ByValsenderAsSystem.Object,ByVal
eAsSystem.EventArgs)HandlesbtnSubmit.Click
'Callthecommonmethod
ValidateUserData()

EndSub
PrivateSubtxtCurrentDay_TextChanged(ByValsenderAs
System.Object,ByValeAsSystem.EventArgs)Handles
txtCurrentDay.TextChanged
'Callthecommonmethod
ValidateUserData()
EndSub
'Thisisthecommonmethodwhichvalidatestheuserinputand
displaystheresult.
PrivateSubValidateUserData()
DimuserDayAsString=txtCurrentDay.Text
DimcurrentDayAsString=DateTime.Today.DayOfWeek.ToString()
IfuserDay.ToUpper()=currentDay.ToUpper()Then
lblMessage.Text="Great!Yougotitright."
lblMessage.ForeColor=Color.FromName("DarkGreen")
Else
lblMessage.Text="Oops!Youarewrong.Todayis'"&currentDay
&"'."
lblMessage.ForeColor=Color.FromName("Red")
EndIf
EndSub
This is a fundamental concept you have to learn. Always break your code into small small methods and
call these methods in your application.

ASP.NET Objects
This article explains various objects used in ASP.NET programming.
We mentioned in come of the previous chapters that ASP.NET uses object oriented languages like C# or
VB.NET. You can use any classes available in the .NET library to write robust programs.
ASP.NET provides some Classes which make web development easier. Some of the classes used
specifically for ASP.NET development are:

 System.Web.HttpRequest
System.Web.HttpResponse
System.Web.SessionState.HttpSessionState
System.Web.ApplicationState

Take the first example - System.Web.HttpRequest.

In the above example, HttpRequest is the name of the class, which is defined in the namespace

System.Web
In object oriented programming, if you want to create an object of a class, you may use a syntax like
below:

dimmySocketasSocket=newSocket()
In the above example, we are creating an object ('mySocket') for the class 'Socket'. Similary, if you need
to create an object of class 'System.Web.HttpRequest', it must be something like this:

dimrequestasSystem.Web.HttpRequest=new
System.Web.HttpRequest()
But the ASP.NET system has made your life easier. An object called 'Request' is already created for you,
which is ready to use. You do not need to create an object for the class System.Web.HttpRequest. The
name of the object is 'Request'.
Similary, there are objects created by default for the other classes like HttpResponse,
System.Web.SessionState.HttpSessionState and System.Web.ApplicationState. The name of objects are
'Response', 'Session' and 'Application' respectively.
In one of the previous chapters, you learned how to display the current time using the Response.Write()
method. 'Response' is the name of the object for the class 'HttpResponse' which is created by the system
for you. That is why we could use 'Response.Write()' without creating an instance of the class
'HttpResponse'.

The above mentioned 4 objects are widely used in ASP.NET programming. It is important to learn these
objects and their methods. You will learn more about these objects in the coming chapters.

ASP.NET Request Object

This article talks about the Request object in ASP.NET
Before we go deep into the ASP.NET Request object, you must understand 'What is a Request ?'.

What is a web request ?

In simple words, a web request a 'request sent from a client to the server, asking for a specific web page'.
When you type a URL in a web browser or when you click on a hyper link in any web page, your browser
is actually making a 'Request' to the server for the specific URL.

Who makes the Request ?

If you are using a browser to view a web page, then your browser is making the actual request to the
server. You simply typed a URL in the browser, but the browser does lot of work in the background. It
composes a Request in the proper format that the server can understand and sends the request to the
server using the HTTP procol.

Composing the Request

Composing and sending the request involves lot of work, even though a user need not worry about it. It is
the responsibilty of the browser to compose and send the request in the proper format.

What is in a Request ?
As you can think, a request obviously includes the URL which is requested. In addition to that, a Request
includes several other information, including:
1. Details about the browser who makes the request (like version number, browser type etc)
2. Computer information like screen resolution, IP address of the user etc.
3. Cookies - the information stored in the client machine by the same web site.
4. Data inputted by the user (for example, when you register in a site, you are entering your registration
details in the input fields. These details are sent to the server as part of the 'Request')

ASP.NET Request Object

The ASP.NET provides a class called HttpRequest which is defined in the namespace
System.Web. This class provides various methods and properties which help you use various
information related to a web request.
An instance of this class is created by default in all the pages, so that you can use this object without
creating again each time in all the pages. The name of this object is Request.
In old ASP days, the Request object was the only way to retrieve the input data entered by the user in the
input fields in the page. ASP.NET provides the event handling mechanism and web controls so that you
can access user inputs in a more easy way.

Commonly used Methods and Properies of

Request object
Request.FilePath
This property returns the currently executed file path.

Request.QueryString
This method is used to retrieve short key value pairs passed along with the URL. For example, if you can
look at the URL of this page, you can see a query string called TutorialId and a value of 35. We
pass this query string to indicate which chapter need to be displayed. You may simply change the Tutorial
Id in the URL and this page will display the appropriate chapter.
In our ASP.NET code, we will check for the current Tutorial Id using the following code:

'GetthecurrenttutorialIdfromthequerystring.
dimtutorialIdasInt32=Request.QueryString("TutorialId")
'NowgetthechapterfromdatabasebasedonthetutorialId.
If the tutorialId is invalid or a chapter not found for the corresponding tutorialid, this page will show an
error.

Request.Cookies
Cooikes are used to store small pieces of information in the client computer. Many web sites store
information like when did you visit their site last, your user name etc.
When you login to a site and choose the option 'Remember my password', do you know how they
remember your password? Your user name is stored in a cookie in your computer.
For example, when you login to this site, if you choose the option 'Remember my password', we will save
your user name into a cookie in your computer. If you come back to our site again later, we will read the

value from the Cookie as shown below:

DimcookieAsSystem.Web.HttpCookie=
Request.Cookies("AspSpiderUserId")
ifcookieisnothingthen
Response.write("Cookie'AspSpiderUserId'notfound.")
else
Response.write("ValueofCookie'AspSpiderUserId':"&
cookie.Value)
endif
If the user name already exists in Cookie, we understand that you selected the option 'Remember my
password' last time. So, we will not ask for your password again. We will automatically login you to the
application.
Many sites use Cookies to store more information like when did you visit their site last, what are the
pages you visited etc. For example, if you go to an online shopping site and add few items to the
shopping cart, they will store this information to the Cookies. When you come back to the same site
again, those items will be automatically there in your Shopping cart because they had saved it in your
computer cookie and put into your shopping cart when you came back to the site.

Request.ServerVariables
This property can be used to extract specific information about the client who is making the request. For
example, if you want to find the server IP address of the computer who is visiting your web page, use the
following code:

dimipAddressasstring=Request.ServerVariables("REMOTE_HOST'")
Response.Write("YourIPAddressis:"&ipAddress)
You can find which version of browser they are using to access your web site.

dimbrowserasstring=
Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_USER_AGENT'")
Response.Write("Youareusingthisbrowsertoaccessourweb
site:"&browser)
There are several server variables available to find more information from the Request. Try the following
server side code in your web page:

dimstrasstring
ForEachstrinRequest.ServerVariables.AllKeys
Response.write("Key:'"&str&"'Value'"&
Request.ServerVariables(str)&"'")
Next

ASP.NET Response object

This article explains the ASP.NET Response object and various methods of it.

What is a Response ?
In the web server world, a Response is exactly opposite to the Request. A 'Response' is the message
sent from the web server to the client, when client makes a 'Request'. For each request from a client, the
server gives a response, unless there is an error.
When you type a URL in a web browser or when you click on a hyper link in any web page, your browser
makes a 'Request' to the server for the specific URL. Then server process the request and send a
response back.

How does a browser process the Response ?

The response includes several information about the page requested including the cookies to be saved
on the client machine, the actual content to be displayed to the user etc. The browser accepts the
response and processes it. Browser does several things including saving the cookies, checking the
security etc and then displays the page content to the user. Note that displaying the page content to the
user in the browser is only a small portion of the actual work.

ASP.NET Response Object

The ASP.NET provides a class called HttpResponse which is defined in the namespace
System.Web. This class provides various methods and properties which help you use various
information related to a web response.
An instance of this class is created by default in all the pages, so that you can use this object without
creating again each time in all the pages. The name of this object is Response.
In old ASP days, the Response object was the only way to write data to the page. ASP.NET provides the
event handling mechanism and web controls so that you can write content to the page in an easier way.

Frequently used Methods and Properties of

Request object

This article explains the frequently used Methods and Properties of Request object

Frequently used Methods and Properies of

Request object
Response.Write
This method is used to write dynamic text to the web page. In old ASP days, this was the only way to
generate dynamic text and display to the user.

Response.Write(DateTime.Now.ToString())
The above code will generate the current time as text and display to the user. But note that the text will be
displayed on the top of the page. There is no way you can specify the location and format the text.
If you want to move the location of the text, you may have to do something like below:

Response.Write("<tablewidth=500>")
Response.Write("<tr>")
Response.Write("<tdalign=right>")
Response.Write("<BR>")
Response.Write("<BR>")
Response.Write("<BR>")
Response.Write(DateTime.Now.ToString())
Response.Write("</td>")
Response.Write("</tr>")
Response.Write("</table>")
ASP.NET provides several web controls including the Label control which allow you to specify the exact
location where you want the control to be displayed. Due to this, the Response.Write() method is
not widely used now.

Response.Cookies
Cookies are used to store small pieces of information in the client computer. In ASP.NET, the Response
object is used to send cookies to the client browser. If you select the 'Remember Me' option at the time of
login, we use the following code to store your user id in a cookie in your computer. When you come back
to this site later, we retrieve the user id from the Request and load your information automatically, without
asking you to login again.

Response.Cookies("AspSpiderUserId").Value="youruserid"
Response.Cookies("AspSpiderUserId").Expires=
DateTime.Now.AddDays(7)

We use the above code to store your user id in a cookie. The name of the cookie used is
"AspSpiderUserId". The cookie will expire after 7 days. This means, if you come back to our site after 7
days, we will not remember you! So, come back often!
As you saw in the previous chapter, the Request object is used to retrieve the values from the cookie.

DimcookieAsSystem.Web.HttpCookie=
Request.Cookies("AspSpiderUserId")
ifcookieisnothingthen
Response.write("Cookie'AspSpiderUserId'notfound.")
else
Response.write("ValueofCookie'AspSpiderUserId':"&
cookie.Value)
endif
Response.Redirect()
This may be the most frequently used method of the Response object. Response.Redirect() is used to
redirect user from one page to another page or website.

Response.Redirect("Login.aspx")
When the above line of code is executed, the page will be redirected to the login page. Let us see another
example.

if(bStatus=True)then
Response.Redirect("Success.aspx")
else
Response.Redirect("Error.aspx")
endif
The above code redirects to error or success page according to the status of some operation performed.
For example, when user try to login to the website, if the user name and password are correct, the page
can be re directed to a welcome page. Otherwise, an error page can be displayed.

Introduction to Session handling

This article explains what is a session and how to handle sessions in ASP.NET

What is a session ?
A session represents the relationship between a client(browser) and the webserver, during the period the
user is actively accessing the website.
The relation between a client(browser) and web server is 'Stateless'. This means, once a browser
requests a page and server returns it, there is no direct connection between browser and server (until the
next page is requested). Once a page is returned by the server and displayed in the browser, the user can
view the page as long as he wants.
However, even though there is no connection is retained between the browser and web server after a
request is served, the webserver will still remember the browser's Identity for 'some more' time. If the
browser requests another page within this short timeframe, the server knows that this is a repeated
request from a browser it knows. This mechanism is called "Session".

Establishing and expiring sessions

This article explains when a session is established and expired.

When is a session established ?

A new session is established when a page is requested first time from a website. When you typed the
URL http://www.aspspider.com, a new session is established for you in our web server. The same session
is re used every time you hit another page.
If you open another browser and type the URL again, it is another session. In that case, two sessions will
exists for you at the same time independently.

When and how the session expires ?

A session expires in the web server, if the browser does not request a page from the server for a 'specific'
period of time. This period is configurable and each web server can have it's own session timeout.
The default session time out in ASP.NET is 20 minutes. This means, if you take more than 20 minutes to
read a page and click another link, then your session is already expired.
But you may never notice that your session is expired. If you hit a page after the session is expired, the
web server will treat this as a brand new request and establish a new session for you. There may not be
any visible change for you, in most cases.
But if you are logged in into a web site, most of the sites store your user information in session. If you sit
idle for long time, your session may expire and the server will lose all your information from the session.
When you hit the site again, it will establish a new session. This is why you are automatically logged out
from many sites, if you sit idle for some time.

Usually, I take more than 20 minutes to type one chapter in this tutorials. By the time I type this chapter
and press 'Submit', my session will expire and I will get an error saying 'You cannot submit a tutorial. You
have not logged In". So, now a days, I will type everything in notepad
and then copy paste many chapters to this site in one shot.
A session lives for this duration (20 minutes by default) even if you close the browser. The reason is, if
you close the browser or shutdown your browsing computer, the server will never know it. It will still
remember your session and wait for another request from you until it times out.
The only way a session can be lost before the timeout period is, restarting the IIS in the web server. If the
IIS is restarted, all the sessions will be lost and all requests coming up after that will be treated as new
requests.

How many session IIS can have?

There are some practical limits, but for each user accessing the site, there will be a separate session. If
5000 visitors are accessing this site at a time, we will have 5000 active sessions in our web server.

How to change session time out in ASP.NET ?

The session timeout can be changed in web.config. Open your web.config file and you may see an entry
like this:

<sessionState
mode="InProc"
stateConnectionString="tcpip=127.0.0.1:42424"
sqlConnectionString="data
source=127.0.0.1;Trusted_Connection=yes"
cookieless="false"
timeout="20"
/>

The line timeout="20" represents the timeout value in minutes. You can change this value to any
value you want.
If you reduce timeout to a small number, the sessions will timeout faster and your users may experience
automatic logout if they take few minutes to read a page.
If you increase this number to a very big number, your server will remember each session for this long
duration of time, even if the user close the browser and go home! This will be an overload for the server
consuming lot of memory. For heavy traffic web servers, there will be some limitaion on the total sessions
it can handle.

The ASP.NET Session Object

This article explains various methods and proeprties of the ASP.NET Session Object.

ASP.NET Session Object

ASP.NET provides a class called HttpSessionState, which is part of the namespace System
.Web.SessionState.
Just like Request and Response objects, an HttpSessionState object is also created automatically for you
in ASP.NET pages. This object is called "Session". You can access various methods and properties of this
object.

What is in a session ?
A session has several information including a session ID. Some information is created and used by the
server itself. But the most important use of session is, it allows to store custom information.
You can store any key-value pairs in session.

How to store and retrieve values in ASP.NET

session ?
Just like you can store values in variables, you can store values in session. Basically, you can assign
values to session variables. See the following example:
The following code sample shows how to store a string value in session:

Session("UserId")="john"
In the above sample, the value "john" is assigned to a session variable called "UserId". One important
different here is, you do not declare the session variable as any datatype. Just assign any value to any
session variable. The session variables will be automatically created when you simply assign values to
them.

How long a session variable is valid ?

A session variable retains it's value as long as the session is valid. Session variables are valid across all
pages, as long as you access all those pages from the same browser and within the timeout period.
If you assign a value into a session variable from Page1.aspx and try to retrieve it from Page2.aspx, it will

work. But if you try to access the Page2.aspx from another browser or close your original browser and
open again, the session variable would have lost it's value because a new session is created.

What can be stored in a session?

The above examples show storing and retrieving simple strings in session. But you can store complex
datatypes like Dataset also into session. Many websites retrieve lot of user data from database and store
into session so that it can be accessed faster from memory (session) rather than retrieving from
database.
However, it is not reccommded to store lot of data into session for large websites. Session data is stored
in memory and if there are thousands of online users at the same time, server may run out of memory.

Purpose of Session variables

This article explains the purpose of Session variables
In most of the web sites, when a user log In in the login page, they set few variables to session.

if(bLoginSuccess=true)then
Session("UserId")=txtLoginName.Text
Session("Name")=GetUserNameFromDatabase(txtLoginName.Text)
else
Response.Redirect("LoginError.aspx")
endif
The above code stores the user's userid into a session variable called "UserId". All other pages will check
if the user id is set in the session and if not, it will give an error message saying "you have not logged in".

dimuserIdasstring=Session("UserId")
if(userId="")then
Response.Redirect("Login.aspx")
else
Response.Write("Welcome"&Session("Name"))
endif
The above validation will be required only in the pages which needs user login. For example, in
AspSpider.com, you can access most of the pages without logging in. Only when you submit an article or
feedback, we will use the above code and validate your login. If you are not logged in, we will redirect you
to login page automatically.

If you look at the top left corner of this site, you can either see 'Login" or "Welcome <Name>". We have
used a logic similar to what is shown below, to display appropriate message.

dimuserIdasstring=Session("UserId")
if(userId="")then
Response.Write("<ahref='Login.aspx'>Login</a>")
else
Response.Write("Welcome<ahref='MyAccount.aspx'>"&
Session("Name")&"<a>)
endif
As you can see from the above examples, session variables are used to store small key-value pairs in the
memory. You can use session variables to store values from one page and access the values from other
pages for the same user. If you set a value in session variable from one page, you can retrieve the value
from any other page in the same session.
The most important point to remember is, whatever value you store in session will be valid only until the
session expires. Also, this value will not be accessible for another user/session.

How does server identify a session?

This article explains how a web server identify repeated requests from a web browser.

How does the server identify a browser ?

The first time when a browser request a page, server establishes a session and creates a session Id.
Server returns this ID to the browser as part of the 'Response'. This ID is not displayed to the user.
Browser will keep this internally.
There are cases where this Session ID can be visible to the users. Visit HomeDepot.com and hit any link
from the home page. Then check the URL in the browser. You can see a string like
BV_SessionID=@@@@0941891585.1123945660@@@@. This number represents the session id. This
particular site sends the session id as a query string in the URL. If you delete this session id from the url,
server will treat it as a new session and will create a new session.
But ideally, in a ASP.NET web site, there is no need to make the session id publicly visible. Server can
keep it internally and send to server without annoying you.
After the browser gets a session ID, it will send the session ID to the server along with each additional
page requests it makes. The webserver can identify the sessions using this Id. For some reason, if the

session times out, then this ID will be no longer valid. In such cases, server will create a new session and
will treat this request as a new request.

Application object in ASP.NET

This article explains the Application object and it's various methods in ASP.NET
In an ASP.NET page, the Application object represents the web application in which the page belongs.
.NET provides a class called HttpApplication, which is part of the System.Web namespace. This class
represents the Application object in ASP.NET. An instance of this class is already created for you and this
is called "Application". You can access various methods and properties of the class HttpApplication using
the object "Application".

Application Variables
Just like you can store values in session variables, you can store key/value pairs in Application variables
too. The scope of an Application variable is the entire web application, while the scope of a session
variable is only a particular session.
For example, if you assign a value into an Application variable as shown below, all users of the web site
can access this value.
Example:

Application("CurrentStockPrice")=145.25
You can store values that do not change often and store them in the application variable. For example,
your web site displays the current stock price of your company in the top of all pages of your web site.
This stock price is not specific for any users. You may need to access other government agencies
database to retrieve this value.
There is no need to contact an external agency and get this value for all pages displayed in the site. You
can retrieve it once and save into an Application variable.
Once the value is retrieved and stored in Application variable, you can get it from this variable and display
in all the pages. It will be several times faster to retrieve value from application variable (which is in the
memory) than accessing an external agency.
Example - storing to application variable:

Application("CurrentStockPrice")=GetFromExternalAgency()
Example - retrieving from application variable:

lblStockPrice.Text="StockPrice:"&Application("CurrentStock

Price")

Scope of an Application Variable

An application variable is valid till the application shuts down or the aspnet process is terminated. In a
web server, this process may run for several days without shutting down.
In the above example, if stock price is retrieved and stored in the application variable, it will remain there
until the process is restarted. The stock prices may change during this time, but you will not get the
updated price.
In such cases, you must have some mechanism to retrieve the stock price from external agency at some
regular intervals and store into the application variable so that you will see the updated price. One way to
do this is, store the retrieval time also into another application variable and check often how long it has
been after it was last retrieved. If the elapsed time is more than 1 hour or so, retrieve again.
ASP.NET provides another class called "Cache" which can be used to store key/value pairs like
Application variables. This class is more efficient than using Application variables. Also, it provides several
additional methods which will allow you to automatically expire the value in cache after some interval of
time or when some "specific" event happens.
You will learn more about the Cache class in upcoming chapters.
Application

object in ASP.NET
This article explains the Application object and it's various methods in ASP.NET
In an ASP.NET page, the Application object represents the web application in which the page belongs.
.NET provides a class called HttpApplication, which is part of the System.Web namespace. This class
represents the Application object in ASP.NET. An instance of this class is already created for you and this
is called "Application". You can access various methods and properties of the class HttpApplication using
the object "Application".

Application Variables
Just like you can store values in session variables, you can store key/value pairs in Application variables
too. The scope of an Application variable is the entire web application, while the scope of a session
variable is only a particular session.
For example, if you assign a value into an Application variable as shown below, all users of the web site

can access this value.

Example:

Application("CurrentStockPrice")=145.25
You can store values that do not change often and store them in the application variable. For example,
your web site displays the current stock price of your company in the top of all pages of your web site.
This stock price is not specific for any users. You may need to access other government agencies
database to retrieve this value.
There is no need to contact an external agency and get this value for all pages displayed in the site. You
can retrieve it once and save into an Application variable.
Once the value is retrieved and stored in Application variable, you can get it from this variable and display
in all the pages. It will be several times faster to retrieve value from application variable (which is in the
memory) than accessing an external agency.
Example - storing to application variable:

Application("CurrentStockPrice")=GetFromExternalAgency()
Example - retrieving from application variable:

lblStockPrice.Text="StockPrice:"&Application("CurrentStock
Price")

Scope of an Application Variable

An application variable is valid till the application shuts down or the aspnet process is terminated. In a
web server, this process may run for several days without shutting down.
In the above example, if stock price is retrieved and stored in the application variable, it will remain there
until the process is restarted. The stock prices may change during this time, but you will not get the
updated price.
In such cases, you must have some mechanism to retrieve the stock price from external agency at some
regular intervals and store into the application variable so that you will see the updated price. One way to
do this is, store the retrieval time also into another application variable and check often how long it has
been after it was last retrieved. If the elapsed time is more than 1 hour or so, retrieve again.
ASP.NET provides another class called "Cache" which can be used to store key/value pairs like
Application variables. This class is more efficient than using Application variables. Also, it provides several
additional methods which will allow you to automatically expire the value in cache after some interval of
time or when some "specific" event happens.

You will learn more about the Cache class in upcoming chapters.

What is Cookies in the web world

This chapter gives an introduction to Cookies used in internet world.

What is a cookie ?
Cookies are small files stored on the client computer.

What can be stored in a cookie ?

Web sites can store small pieces of information as key-value pairs in the cookie files. Any information can
be stored in cookie as key-value pairs. However, there is alimitation on the total size of data that can be
sent as cookie.
Also, it is not safe to store sensitive information in cookie. Since cookies are stored as text files
in client computers, a smart user can edit and change the values in the cookie files.
Most of the web sites store information like your login name, last visit date etc so that when you visit the
website next time, they can surprise you with messages like "Welcome back, Mr. John !"
Also, you may have noticed that when you login to many websites, there is an option called "Remember
my User Id". Those sites will store your user id into the cookies. When you visit the web site next time,
they will retrieve the login id from the cookie. Based on the login id, they can retrieve all information about
you from the database and automatically login you to the website. Note that they will not store all details
about you. Only login id is stored in the cookie. And most often the login id will be stored as encrypted so
that nobody can alter it to some other user's login id.

Who creates cookies ?

Cookies are created in your computer, by your browser, if the website send any cookie information as part
of the page you visit.
Browser seetings allow you to disable cookies. If you disable cookies, it will not store any cookies in your
computer, even if the web site send any cookie to your computer.
But note that, several websites assume you have cookies enabled and such websites may not work as
expected any more, if you disable cookies.

Where is it saved in your computer ?

In windows machines, cookies are stored in the Cookies directory in your user directory within within the
Documents And Settings directory. This directory contains text files with this filename format:

yourloginname@websitename.txt
A cookie from AspSpider.com can be like this:

john@aspspider.txt
These are the cookie files stored in your computer by various web sites. In addition to the cookie files,
there will be one file called "index.dat". This is a file used by Internet Explorer to track all the cookie files.
You may delete all the cookie files from the "Cookies" folder. But you may need to re login to all the
websites where you have specified 'Remember my login', because those web sites can't find your user
information any more from the Cookies.
There is another way to delete all the Cookies. Open Internet Explorer and select the menu "Tools >
Internet Options". Press the button "Delete Cookies". This will delete all cookie files from your computer.

Working with Cookies in ASP.NET

This chapter talks about storing and retrieving cookies in ASP.NET
ASP.NET has 3 classes which allow you to work with Cookies.

HttpCookie: provides a way to create and manipulate individual HTTP cookies.

HttpResponse: The Cookies property allows to create and save cookies on client machines.
HttpRequest: The Cookies property allows access to cookies from the client maintains.

How to create a Cookie ?

It is really easy to create a cookie in ASP.NET. You can use the Response object in ASP.NET to create
cookies as key-value pairs.

Response.Cookies("UserName").Value="Mr.John"
Response.Cookies("UserName").Expires=DateTime.Now.AddDays(1)

In the above sample code, the first line will save a cookie with the name "UserName" and value "Mr.
John" to the client computer.
The second line says that this cookie is valid for 1 more day from current time.
As shown above, you can store any key-value pairs to client computer as cookies.

How to retrieve values from Cookies ?

You can use the Request object to retrieve values from the cookies which are already stored.

DimnameAsString=Me.context.Request.Cookies("UserName").Value
If there is no cookie with the name "UserName", the above code sample will return an empty string.

The HttpCookie class

HttpCookie is another usefull class in ASP.NET which allows you to work with Cookies. Here is a code
snippet which shows how to use this class:

DimmyCookieAsNewHttpCookie("UserName")
myCookie.Value="Mr.John"
myCookie.Expires=DateTime.Now.AddDays(1)
myCookie.Domain="aspspider.com"
Response.Cookies.Add(myCookie)

How cookies are stored and retrieved ?

You saw the sample code which uses Request and Response objects to store and retrieves values in
Cookies. Do you know how they really work?
When you execute the line Response.Cookies("UserName").Value="Mr.John",
it runs on the server. It has no connection with the client computer. Then how is it saving on the client
computer?
When your browser request a URL from the web server, what it gets back is a 'big packet'. This packet
has lot of information which includes the meta data, cookies, content of the page to be displayed to you
etc. So, the cookies is part of the response the browser gets back from the web server. Browser knows

what to do with each piece of data in the response. It saves the cookies to your local computer, and
displays the page content in your browser.
Now, you might have understood why you use

Response.Cookies("UserName").Value=

"Mr.John" to save cookies to client computer. You are actually adding a cookie to the response
which will be sent to the browser.
The same thing happens when you retrieve cookies from the Request object. Everytime when browser
makes a request, it sends a "big packet" to the web server. This big packet contains lot of information
including the URL requested, details about the brower itself and all the cookies stored in the client
computer from that website. This is why you are able to retrieve the cookie information from the "Request"
object.

Configuration File for .NET applications

This article gives an introduction to the configuration files used in .NET applications.

Configuration File

for .NET applications

.NET gives an easy way to store configuration information in an Application Configuration File. In the
simple implementation, you can store information as Key-Value pairs. For example, consider a case
where you use a database in your application. If you hardcode the data base information in your code,
you will have a tough time when you have to change this data source. You have to change your source
code and re-compile it. This won't work every time you give your product to different customers or when
you run your application in different machines!
In earlier days, programmers used to store this information in special files called .ini files or in windows
registry. The database information will be stored in the .ini file or registry and application can read the
information from these locations. No need to re-compile the code when the values are changed in .ini file
or registry. But this is a pain most of the time. It is not fun opening the registry, locate your entries and
make appropriate changes. It is quite possible that you may mess up with some important entries in the
registry and make your system not run any more. In fact, in secured systems, administrator may deny
access to the registry and users will not have the choice to edit the registry at all. Ini files also have some
draw backs. We can store only simple string values as key/value pairs.
.NET gives you a simple and easy solution for this problem - the Application Configuration File. This file is
usually called as config file.
Each application can have a configuration file, which is actually an XML file. You can use any text editor
(including Notepad) to open the configuration file and change the values. The application will load the
values from this configuration file and you do not have to change your source code every time you
change your data source or any other information stored in the configuration file.

In the simple implementaion, config files allow you to store key-value pairs. But you can extend it to use
complex data types in the form of xml.

App.config for Windows applications

This chapter explains the App.config file used for Windows applications

app.config for Windows applications

Windows applications in VS.NET use the name app.config by default for the configuration file. This will
not be automatically created when you create a Windows application. If you need a configuration file for
your application, open your project in VS.NET, go to the 'Solution Explorer' and right click on the project
name. Choose Add > Add new item from the menu and select 'Application Configuration file' from the list
of choices. This will create an app.config file for you in the application root.
By default, the app.config file will have the following content:

<?xmlversion="1.0"encoding="utf8"?>
<configuration>
</configuration>
To store values in the configuration file, you can create XML elements in the format:

<addkey="MyKey"value="MyValue"/>
See the sample config entries below:

<?xmlversion="1.0"encoding="utf8"?>
<configuration>
<appSettings>
<addkey="DatabasePath"
value="c:\\projects\data\tutorials.mdb"/>
</appSettings>

</configuration>
And to read from this config file, just use the following code in your application:

dimdbPathasstring=
System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings("DatabaseP
ath");
ConfigurationSettings is the class used to access the contents of the configuration file. Since this class is
part of the namespace System.Configuration, we have to use the fully qualified name
System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings. As a shortcut, you can use the using directive on top of the
file like below:

usingSystem.Configuration;
If you have the above directive on top of the file, then you can directly use the class
ConfigurationSettings.

stringdbPath=
ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings("DatabasePath");
In C#, you have to use "[ ]" instead of the "( )", as shown below:

stringdbPath=ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["DatabasePath"]
Note: When you compile your application, VS.NET will automatically create a file called <your application
name>.exe.config in your bin\debug folder. The contents of the app.config will be automatically copied to
this new config file when you compile the application. When you deliver the application to the end user,
you have to deliver the exe and this new config file called <your application name>.exe.config and NOT
the app.config. Users can modify the data in <your application name>.exe.config file and application will
read the data from the config file, when restarted.
By default, you can have only one configuration file for a windows application. If you need to read from
more than one config file, you have to do some additional coding.

Web.config for Web applications

This chapter explains the web.config and various entries in the config file.

Web.config for Web applications

The web applications use the same concept, but they use a config file with the name web.config. There
are couple of things to note in this case.
* web.config is created automatically by VS.NET when you create any web project.
* When you compile the web application, web.config is NOT renamed or copied to the BIN folder.
* web.config has several default entries in it to support web/IIS configuration & security.
* You can add the <appSettings> section in the web.config and add your key/value pairs in that section.
* You can have separate web.config files for each directory in your web application, in addition to the one
in the root. For each web page, by default, system will look for a web.config in the same folder as the
page and if not found, then looks in the parent folder.
You can store and retrieve key/value pairs in the web.config file just like the app.config files:

<?xmlversion="1.0"encoding="utf8"?>
<configuration>
<appSettings>
<addkey="DatabasePath"
value="c:\\projects\data\tutorials.mdb"/>
</appSettings>
</configuration>
To read key/value pairs from <appSettings> section, use the following code:

dimdbPathasstring=
System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings("DatabasePa
th");
In addition to the <appSettings> section, another interesting entry in the web.config file is,
<sessionState />. A typical sessionState section looks like this:

<sessionState

mode="InProc"
stateConnectionString="tcpip=127.0.0.1:42424"
sqlConnectionString="datasource=127.0.0.1;userid=sa;password="
cookieless="false"
timeout="20"/>
The above section allows you to set the session handling details for your web application. The
mode="InProc" says the session will be stored in memory of the web server. The attributes
stateConnectionString and sqlConnectionString are not used if the session is stored in memory. You will
learn more about various session handling methods later.
The last attribute timeout="20" sets the session time out in minutes. If you want to change the default
session timeout, change this value in the web.config file. You can learn more about session time out in
this chapter.

What is Global.asax file?

This chapter explains the purpose of global.asax file
Every web application created in VS.NET creates a file called 'global.asax' and 2 related files called
'global.asax' and
'global.asax.resx'. The files global.asax is a replacement for the global.asa file used in classic ASP.
Global.asax.vb is the code behind file for he global.asax. This file is used to handle global events in the
web application.
You must be already familiar with event handling in ASP.NET. If a page level event happens, it can be
handled in code
behind file of the corresponding page. But there are couple of events which are not specific to any page.
These events are applicable to the entire application. Global.asax and the code behind file global.asax.vb
are used to handle such global events.
When VS.NET creates the global.asax file, it creates these event handlers without any code in it. If you
want to handle any of these events, you just need to insert your code to appropriate event handler.

Global events in ASP.NET

This article explains the Global.asax file and various events handled in Globa.asax file.
The following are the global events handled in the global.asax.vb file.

SubApplication_Start(ByValsenderAsObject,ByValeAs
EventArgs)
EndSub
This event is fired when the application is started. The application starts when the first request
comes to the web server after the IIS is started.
The Application start event can occur if the IIS is restarted, server rebooted, web.config file is
changed or if the ASP.NET process recycles.
ASP.NET process recycles for various reasons like insufficient memory, server overload, other un
expected errors etc.
This is the first event fired in ASP.NET after the application starts.

SubSession_Start(ByValsenderAsObject,ByValeAsEventArgs)
EndSub
Session_Start event is fired each time a new session is started.

SubApplication_BeginRequest(ByValsenderAsObject,ByValeAs
EventArgs)
EndSub
Application_BeginRequestis fired each time a new page is requested in the website. This event is
fired after the Session_Start event.

SubApplication_AuthenticateRequest(ByValsenderAsObject,
ByValeAsEventArgs)
EndSub
Application_AuthenticateRequest is fired upon attempting to authenticate the user and after the
Application_BeginRequest event.

SubApplication_Error(ByValsenderAsObject,ByValeAs
EventArgs)
EndSub

If there is any unexpected error or un handled exception in the application, this event is fired. You
can use this event to keep track of un expected errors in your web site and also to report such
errors to the web master.
You will learn more about this event in the next chapter.

SubSession_End(ByValsenderAsObject,ByValeAsEventArgs)
EndSub
This event is fired when the session expires. Note that even if the user close the browser and
leave, this event will not be fired immediately. Only after the session times out, the server will
know that the user is no longer accessing the site and this event will be fired.
Session_End event will be fired if the application restarts.

SubApplication_End(ByValsenderAsObject,ByValeAs
EventArgs)
EndSub
Application_End event is fired when the application ends like shutting down server, re starting
IIS, recycling ASP.NET process etc.
Note that, if somebody power off the server, server will not get a chance to fire the events and

Handling global errors in ASP.NET

using Application_Error event
this event will never be fired.

This article explains how to use the Application_Error event in Global.asax file to handle all un
handled exceptions in a web site.
You may have noticed that certain sites will redirect you to a global error page if any un handled error in
the web site. For example, if you type a non existing URL in a site, you will be redirected to an error page
which tells you that "The URL you typed does not exists any more."
This chapter explains how to handle

SubApplication_Error(ByValsenderAsObject,ByValeAs
EventArgs)
EndSub
If there is any unexpected error or un handled exception in the application, this event is fired. You can use

this event to keep track of un expected errors in your web site and also to report such errors to the web
master.
You can see this type of approach in action in AspSpider.com. See the URL of this web page. It is
http://www.aspspider.com/tutorials/Tutorial28.aspx. Change the Tutorial28.aspx to Tutorial9999.aspx
which is a non existing URL. This will throw an error and we have a piece of code in our Application_Error
event handler, which will redirect the user to the Error.aspx page, after sending an email to our web
master about the nature of the error.
The code in Application_Error event handler looks similar to what is shown below:

SubApplication_Error(ByValsenderAsObject,ByValeAs
EventArgs)
'Retrievethelasterrorinthewebsite
DimErrorInfoAsException=
Server.GetLastError().GetBaseException()
'Emailtheerrormessagetothewebmaster
System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail.Send("error@aspspider.com",
"error@aspspider.com",
"Unexpectederror",ErrorInfo.Message)
'Redirecttheusertoafriendlyerrorpage.
Response.Redirect("Error.aspx?Message="&ErrorInfo.Message,
True)
EndSub
The above code will find the last error occurred, send an email to webmaster and then redirect the user to
an Error page.

Organize the learning projects and samples

This article explains how to organize the learning projects from this tutorial.
We will be doing several small and large sample ASP.NET projects part of this tutorials. Let us organize
all the sample projects into one folder.
Create a folder called "AspSpider" in your C:. This will be the place where you will do all your learning
projects from this site. When you create a new project, make sure it is stored under the folder
C:\AspSpider.

Optional steps when use Visual Studio.NET

The below steps are applicable only if you are using Visual Studio. You can skip the below steps if you
are using Visual Web Developer Express (VWD)
When you create a new ASP.NET project, first create a folder under C:\AspSpider with the folder name
same as the project name. Then make the new folder a virtual folder. This will ensure that VS.NET
will create the project within this new folder and put all the files under this.
When you create a new ASP.NET project, VS.NET will look for a virtual directory with the name of the
project. If it finds one, it will copy all the files under this. If it cannot find a virtual directory, it will create a
new folder with the project name under C:\Inetpub\wwwroot and make it a virtual directory.
For example, assume you are creating a project called "AddressBook" using VS.NET. First, Visual Studio
will search your system to find if there is already a virtual directory called "AddressBook". If it finds one, it
will create the project within this folder. If it cannot find one, it will create a new folder called
"AddressBook" under C:\Inetpub\wwwroot.

User Tracker project

This chapter leads you to create a small project where we can try various concepts you learned so
far. This sample project is developed using Visual Studio.NET 2003. Is you are using VS.NET 2005,
you can just follow almost all the steps wihtout much changes and re compile the downloadable
samples. But if you are using Visual Web Developer Express (VWD), the samples and screenshots
may not work for you. If you are using VWD, you may skip this project. All our upcoming projects
will be using VWD.
Even if you are using VWD, you may go through the pages to understand the concepts.
Tired of reading too much theory? Ok, it is time to try out whatever you learned so far.
In this chapter, we will create a small project and try various concepts we learned so far. This is a small
project with no real world usage, but you can learn lot of things from this.

UserTracker
Let us name the project "User Tracker". This application will display the list of users currently logged in.
Also, we will use this small project to learn some more concepts in the upcoming chapters.
In the first page of this web application, it will prompt you to enter your name in a textbox. Once you enter

the name, it will be stored in the session variable and hide the textbox. It wont allow you to enter the
name again, if the name is already stored in the session variable. Instead, it will display a welcome
message with your name in a Label control.
There will be another page which will display the name of all the users who entered their name in the first
page. How do we do this? Each time a user enter the name, we will store the name into an ArrayList
object and this ArrayList object will be stored in an Application variable. Application variables are visible to
all users of the application. So, you can view the list of all users.

Create new project

Under C:\AspSpider, create a new folder called "UserTracker". Make this folder a virtual directory by right
clicking on the folder name and selecting "Properties > Web Sharing > Share this folder". We did this to
ensure that VS.NET will create the web project within this folder.
Now go to Visual Studio and create a new ASP.NET application. Select VB.NET or C# whichever you are
comfortable with, but this tutorial will use VB.NET language for code samples.
Create the project with the name "UserTracker" by selecting options as shown below:

After you press OK, visual studio will create the project files and default pages into the folder

C:\AspSpider\UserTracker. If you have not configured the virtual directory correctly, then visual studio will
create a folder called "UserTracker" under C:\Inetpub\wwwroot.

User Tracker: Login Page

You will expand your UserTracker project here and add a Login page.
In the previous chapter, you created a new project called "UserTracker". We are going to expand it to
have some real features!

Create a Login page

When VS.NET created the project, it created a default page called "WebForm1.aspx". Right click on this
file in solution explorer and rename it to "Login.aspx". Note that when you rename the aspx file, the code
behind file also will get renamed.

Add controls to Login page

We are going to add some controls to the login page. You can drag and drop controls from Toolbox to the
page when the page is in design mode. For time being, copy paste the following code to the aspx page
when it is in HTML mode.

<asp:Labelid="lblMessage"style="ZINDEX:101;LEFT:95px;
POSITION:absolute;TOP:58px"runat="server"Width="194px"Font
Bold="True"ForeColor="#C00000"></asp:Label>
<asp:Panelid="pnlName"style="ZINDEX:102;LEFT:13px;
POSITION:absolute;TOP:130px"runat="server"Width="398px"
Height="46px">
<asp:Labelid="Label1"runat="server">Enteryour
name:</asp:Label>
<asp:TextBoxid="txtName"runat="server"></asp:TextBox>
<asp:Buttonid="btnProceed"runat="server"
Text="Proceed"></asp:Button>
</asp:Panel>
<asp:HyperLinkid="HyperLink1"style="ZINDEX:103;LEFT:17px;
POSITION:absolute;TOP:211px"runat="server"

NavigateUrl="ShowNames.aspx">ShowNames</asp:HyperLink>
NOTE: Make sure you copy the above code within the <Form></Form> tags in the aspx file.
If you switch to Design mode after copying the above code, the designer will look like this:

Controls in Login Page

The above code sample adds the following controls to the page:
1. lblMessage - This is a Label control, used to display some messages. We have changes xomep
properties like Forecolor, Font-Bold etc.
2. pnlName - This is a Panel control. A panel is an invisible control, used to just group some other
controls. In this page, our panel includes another label, textbox and a button. If we set some properties
like Visible = False for the panel, it will hide all controls within the panel. So, if we want to hide several
controls at the same time, we can put all of them in the panel and just set panel.Visible = False
3. Label1 - This Label control has the static text "Enter your name:".
4. txtName - This Textbox control will be used to accept inputs from user.
5. btnProceed - This Button control will be used to submit the form, after user enters the name.
6. HyperLink1 - This is a HyperLink control used to give hyperlinks to other pages. In our case, we use
this link to navigate to our next page.

Compile and Run the project

We have added all the required controls to the login page. Now, let us see it in action. Compile and run
the web application by pressing Ctrl + F5. You can see that the Login page is launched with all the
controls in it.
You can enter some text in the textbox and press the button. Since we have not added any code to the
event handlers, nothing much will happen.
You will add code to the event handlers in the next chapters and see more functionality of this page.

Add life to Login page

In this chapter, you will add code to the event handlers in the Login Page and add the real
functionality to it.

Let us add some code in the Login page and give it some real action.

What is this page supposed to do ?

User can enter their name into the textbox and submit. Whatever name user enters, it will be saved to
session variable and application variable. Once the name is added to the session variable, the textbox
and button will be hidden and a welcome message will be displayed.

Add code to event handlers

Switch to design mode and double click on the button. This will add a button_click event handler in the
code behind file, as shown below:

PrivateSubbtnProceed_Click(ByValsenderAsSystem.Object,_
ByValeAsSystem.EventArgs)HandlesbtnProceed.Click
EndSub
Let us add the following code to the above event handler.

DimnameAsString=txtName.Text
'storethenameintothesessionvariable.
Session("Name")=name

AddNameToApplicationVariable(name)
'Wehaveselectedaname.Displaythenameanddisablethe
textboxes.
DisplayCurrentUser()
The first statement gets the name from text box and assigns to a variable. The second statement adds it
into the session variable.
The statement AddNameToApplicationVariable(name) is calling a function called
AddNameToApplicationVariable. This function will add the name into an ArrayList object and
add the ArrayList object to an application variable so that this can be accessed by other users also.
The last statement DisplayCurrentUser() displays a welcome message and hides the panel.
Here is the code for the function

AddNameToApplicationVariable()

PrivateSubAddNameToApplicationVariable(ByValnameAsString)
DimnameListAsArrayList
nameList=Application("Names")
IfnameListIsNothingThen
'Thereisnonamesaddedtoapplicationvariableyet.
'LetuscreateanewArrayList
nameList=NewArrayList()
EndIf
'Addthenametothearrylist
nameList.Add(name)
'AddArrayListobjectitselftotheapplicationvariable.
Application("Names")=nameList
EndSub
The first statement declares an object called "nameList" as the type "ArrayList". ArrayList is a class
provided by .NET Framework. This class is similar to "Array" and provides several methods to
add/remove items to the list. You can add/remove any type of objects to an ArrayList.
The second statement is retrieving the value of application variable "Names". This may be null initially. If
this is null, we will create a new ArrayList object and assign to it to the variable "nameList". This is done in
the statement nameList=NewArrayList()
So, now we have a valid ArrayList (either retrieved from Application variable or created new). Now we are
going to add our user name into this array list. This is done in the statement
nameList.Add(name). This statement will add the current name to the array list. This arraylist may

already have other user names, if any other has already logged in.
The last statement Application("Names")=nameList will save this array list to the
Application variable.
Note an important point here - what we save into the application variable is an ArrayList, not just a string.
This ArrayList will have the names of all users currently logged in to the application.
Whenever a user log in to the application, this array list will be retrieved from the application variable, add
the new user's name into the array list and save it back to the application variable.
See the code for the method DisplayCurrentUser():

PrivateSubDisplayCurrentUser()
DimnameAsString=Session("Name")
Ifname=String.EmptyThen
'Thereisnonameinthesessionvariable.Thismeans
'thereisnonameselectedyet.
Return
EndIf
'Thenameisalreadyinthesession.
'Thisuserhasalreadyenteredthename.
'So,letusdisabletothepanelsothatallcontrolswithin
'thepanelwillbeinvisible.
pnlName.Visible=False
'Displaythenameinthemessagelabel.
lblMessage.Text="Welcome"&name
EndSub
The above method will check if the name is already in the session variable. If it is there, it will understand
that the user has already logged in. Then it will display a welcome message and hide the panel
"pnlName". When a panel is hidden, all controls inside the panel also will be hidden. So, after a user is
logged in, the textbox and button will not be visible any more.
Let us do a last step. Switch to design mode and double click on the form. This will create a Form_Load
event handler. Call the method DisplayCurrentUser() from the Form_Load event, to make sure
whenever we load this page, it will check if the user is already logged in or not and display controls
accordingly.

PrivateSubPage_Load(ByValsenderAsSystem.Object,ByValeAs
System.EventArgs)Handles_
MyBase.Load
'Whenweloadthepage,firstcheckiftheusernameisalready
insession.

DisplayCurrentUser()
EndSub

Launch the page

After you finish the above code, compile and launch the page. You will see the page in action. After you
enter a name and submit, you will see the welcome message.
Read the code several times and clearly understand how it works.

Display currently online users

This chapter explains how you can extend your UserTracker project to display the list of currently
online users. In the previous chapter, you created a login page and added some functionality to it. When a
user enter his name and submit the page, the name is stored in session variable and also an ArrayList.
The arraylist is stored into an Application variable.
In this chapter, we will create another page, which will retrieve all names from the arraylist in the
Application variable and display it.

Create a new page

Let us create a new page called "ShowNames.aspx". Right click on the project name in the solution
explorer and create this new page.
Copy and paste the following code in to the aspx page, in the HTML mode:

<B>AllUsers</B>
<hr>
<asp:Labelid="lblNames"runat="server"></asp:Label>
Now switch to the design mode and make sure the controls appear properly.
What we have done is, display a static title ("All Users") and put a horizontal line below the title. Below
that, we have added a label control named "lblNames".
Now, in the code behind file, we will retrieve all names from the arraylist in application variable and
display it in the label.

Double click on the form in design mode. It will create a Page_Load event handler. Replace the
Page_Load event handler with the following code:

PrivateSubPage_Load(ByValsenderAsSystem.Object,ByValeAs
System.EventArgs)HandlesMyBase.Load
DimnamesAsArrayList=Application("Names")
IfnamesIsNothingOrElsenames.Count=0Then
lblNames.Text="Nonamesareaddedtoapplicationvariable."
Else
DimnameAsString
Appendeachofthenamesfromthearraylisttothelabel.
ForEachnameInnames
lblNames.Text=lblNames.Text&name&"
"
Next
EndIf
EndSub
Let us analyze the above code. The statement DimnamesAsArrayList=

Application("Names")
declares an arraylist object with the name "names" and assigns the ArrayList from application variable
"Names". Next we are checking if we got a valid arraylist object from application variable. It is possible
that user come to this page directly and no value is set to the application variable yet. In this case, you will
get null value from application variable. If there is no valid object in application variable, we will display an
appropriate error message ( "No names are added to application variable.").
If we get a valid arraylist object from Application variable, then we will loop through the arraylist items and
add to the label controls Text property.
Once we have created the ShowNames.aspx page, let us go back to our Login.aspx page and provide a
link from that page to our new page.
We have already added a HyperLink control to the Login page. Go to the properties window for this
control and set the NavigateUrl property to "ShowNames.aspx". If anyone click on the hyperlink, he
will be redirected to the ShowNames.aspx page.

Run the application

Compile and run the application. You can notice couple of things:
1. After you enter your name in the login page, the text box will be hidden and a welcome message will be
displayed.
2. The name you entered is added to the application variable.

3. Now you can click on the hyper link and it will redirect to the ShowNames.aspx page, which will display
the name you just entered.
4. Open another window. This will create another session. You can enter another name in the login page
and go to the ShowNames.aspx page. Now this page will display both the names you entered from both
browsers. This is because the application variables retain the values across sessions.
5. You can keep opening any number of new browsers(sessions) and all the login names will be added to
the arraylist in application variable.
6. If you reset IIS, the application variables will be cleared.
7. If you go back to the login page after you enter the name once, it will not allow you to enter the name
again. This is because browser retains the session until you close browser or it times out (or you restart
web server).

Download sample application

If you get confused or cant get the above mentioned sample project properly on your own, you may
download the sample project from this site.
Extract the zip file contents into your UserTracker folder, which is already converted into a virtual directory.
When you extract files, make sure you do not create another folder within your UserTracker folder.
Open the project file from the extracted files using VS.NET. Simply compile and run the project.
If VS.NET prompt you to set a default page, set the Login.aspx as the default page.
We like to know if you are able to fully understand what we explained in this chapter and previous
chapters regarding this small sample ASP.NET project. Please post your feedbacks, questions and
comments using the Feedback link below. We will do our best to make things more clear and clarify your
doubts.
Download sample project

Using Cookies to remember user settings

In this chapter, we will extend the UserTracker project and learn how to use Cookies to remember
settings.

What we learned so far ?

In the previous chapters, we learnt how to use session variables and application variables in a web
application. Both session variables and application variables are stored in the server memory and will lose
the data when web server is reset.

Cookies are stored in client browser. So, it can be stored until user clear the cookies or until it is expired
based on the expiry date we specify.
In this chapter, we will display a Label in the Login page which will show the date and time user last
logged in to the web site.
Each time the user login again, a new date/time will be stored into the cookie in the client so that next
time when user come back, we can surprise him saying when was his last login!
Open the Login page in UserTracker project you already created. You already have several controls in the
login page. Just add one more to the Login.aspx page. Note that you must add teh below code within the
<Form></Form> tags.

<asp:Labelid="lblLastVisit"style="ZINDEX:104;LEFT:458px;
POSITION:absolute;TOP:16px"runat="server"
Width="465px"></asp:Label>
This is a label control, which we can use to display the last login date to the user. This control will appear
in the top right corner of the page.
Switch to the design mode and ensure that the control is located in the visible portion of the page.
Now the Login page must look as shown below in the design mode.

Add code to save and retrieve cookie information

We have to do 2 things here:
1. Store the date/time and login name into cookie, when user press the "proceed" button.
2. Retrieve values in cookie and display in label control every time the page is loaded.
Go to the event handler
handler.

btnProceed_Click. Add the following code to the end of the event

'Savecurrentnameandtimetocookie
Response.Cookies("Name").Value=name
Response.Cookies("Name").Expires=DateTime.Now.AddDays(7)
Response.Cookies("SaveTime").Value=DateTime.Now.ToString()
Response.Cookies("SaveTime").Expires=DateTime.Now.AddDays(7)
The above statements will store 2 variables in the Cookie and set the expiry time as 7 days. This means
whatever value is stored in the cookie is valid for 7 days. Since the cookie is stored as physical files in the
client machines, it does not matter even if you restart web server or client computer. The cookie can
retain it's values.
Now let us add another piece of code in the Page_Load event handler.

DimnameCookieAsHttpCookie=Request.Cookies("Name")
DimtimeCookieAsHttpCookie=Request.Cookies("SaveTime")
IfnameCookieIsNothingThen
lblLastVisit.Text="Thisisfirsttimeyouarevisitingthis
stiefromthiscomputer."
Else
lblLastVisit.Text="Youlastvisitedthissiteas'<B><U>"&
nameCookie.Value&"</U></B>'on'<B><U>"&timeCookie.Value&
"</U></B>'."
EndIf
The above code will retrieve the name and last login time from the cookies. If it finds some values, it will
display the values in the label control.
Compile and run the project now. You must be able to view the last login time every time you launch this
application, except for the first time. It can remember the settings for 7 days (the expiry value we set),
even if we reboot the machine.

Download sample project

You can download the sample project from here.

If you have any questions about the sample project, please use the feedback link below.

Validate name in Login page using

RequiredFieldValidator control
In this chapter, you will learn what are validator controls and how to use them in the UserTracker
project.

Validate name in Login page

Validator controls are used to validate user inputs from a webpage.
For example, when you have a webpage which requires that user must enter some data, you can use a
"Require Field Validator" control to ensure that the form will not be sumitted until some valid data is
entered.
In our UserTracker project, user is required to enter a name in the login page. But you have noticed that
even if you do not enter a name and press the "proceed" button, it will not complain. It will still process the
login and save the values in to Cooikes etc.
This is not good. We want to make sure that the Login page will not be processed until they enter a name.
Open the Login.aspx page in design mode. Drag and drop a control called "RequiredFieldValidator" from
the toolbox to the form. Place this validator control near the textbox.
You must set the following properties for the validator control.
1. ErrorMessage - This is the error message you want to be displayed to the user, if no value is
entered in the textbox. Set it to "Please enter your name."
2. ControlToValidate - This property says which control will be validated using this validator. In
our case, we want to validate our textbox. So, select the textbox name for this property.
Thats all you have to do use the validator control. Compile and run the project. You can see that you will
get an error message if you submit the form without entering a name.

Client side validation

Note that when you use Validator controls, the validation happens in the client side. Since this is
happening in the client browser, a smart user can by pass this validation and still submit empty names to

the server by various tricks.

So, in case of secure applications, it is a good idea to do server side validations, in addition to the
validator controls. In case of our sample, all you have to do is, check if the name string is empty or not
just before it is processed. If it is empty, then do not process the login. Just give an error message to the
user (This is not illustrated in the sample project).

Download sample project

You can download the sample from here. Please submit your feedback about this project.

Validator Controls in ASP.NET

This chapter talks about various validator controls provided with ASP.NET
ASP.NET comes with several handy validator controls. You used the RequiredFieldValidator in the
previous chapter. You will learn more about various validator controls in this chapter

Database concepts
This tutorial will teach you Database concepts and ADO.NET in a very simple and easy-tounderstand manner with many code snippDatabase is the media to store data. If you have an
application that has to store and retrieve data, your application must be using a database.
A 'File' is the simplest form of saving the data in the disk, but is not the most 'efficient way' of managing
application data. A database is basically a collection of one or more files, but in a custom format, and data
is organised in a specific format such a way that it can be retrieved and stored very efficiently.
Some examples for databases are :

MS Access
SQL Server
Oracle

MS Access is a very light weight database provided by Microsoft for applications with less number of
users and relatively small quantity of data. MS Access saves data into database files with the

extension .mdb. Usually, MS Access comes along with MS Office package. If you already have the .mdb
database file, you can freely use it with your application and you do not need MS Access software. The
MS Access software is required only if you want to directly open the database and manipulate the data or
change the database schema.
SQL Server (Microsoft product) and Oracle (Oracle Corp.) are more complex, advanced, relational
databases and they are much more expensive. It can support large number of users and very high
quantity of data. If you are developing a software, which might be accessed simulatenously by 100s of
users or if you expect your data may grow 100s of MBs, you might consider one of these. (We are
learning Microsoft .NET.. so you might want to consider the SQL Server than Oracle, for which Microsoft
provides special data access components!!) ets and samples.

Introduction to ADO.NET
This chapter introduces you to Active Data Objects in .NET (ADO.NET)
ADO.NET is the data access model that comes with the .NET Framework. ADO.NET provides the classes
required to communicate with any database source (including Oracle, Sybase, Microsoft Access, Xml,
and even text files).

DataAccess Providers in .NET

ADO.NET comes with few providers providers, including:

OleDb
SqlClient

There are other providers available, but we are not including them here as this tutorial is meant for
beginners! When you want them, search for ADO.NET providers in Google or MSDN
Microsoft made the SQL Server. So they gave a separate provider, specifically made for SQL Server. We

can use the OleDb provider for all other database sources including MS Access, Oracle, Sybase etc.
There is a separate provider available for Oracle.
A DATA PROVIDER is a set of classes that can be used to access, retrieve and manipulate data from the
databases.
Both OleDb and SqlClient has it's own set of classes, but they have the same concepts. We would like to
classify the classes into two broad categories (this is not a microsoft classification, anyway!)
Classes for communicating with database
Classes for holding/manipulating data
The job of first category of classes is to communicate with database and send or retrieve data
from the database. The second category of the classes will be used hol

Core classes in ADO.NET

This chapter introduces various classes provided by ADO.NET to perform various database
operations.

Classes for communicating with database

The Connection, Command, DataReader, and DataAdapter objects are the core elements of the
ADO.NET provider model.

Object

Description

SqlClient
Objects

OleDb Objects

Connection

Establishes a connection to a specific data

source.

SqlConnection

OleDbConnection

Command

Executes a command against a data source.

SqlCommand

OleDbCommand

DataReader

Reads a forward-only, read-only stream of

data from a data source.

SqlDataReader

OleDbDataReader

SqlDataAdapter

OleDbDataAdapte
r

DataAdapter Populates a DataSet and resolves updates

with the data source.

Each provider may have classes equivalent to above objects. The name of the classes vary slightly to
represent the provider type appropriately.
Depending on the type of database you work on, you will have to choose either OleDb or SqlClient (or,
some other provider) objects. Since all our samples use MS Access database, we will be using OleDb
objects in all the samples. If you like to use SqlServer, you just need to replace the OleDb objects with the
equivalent SqlClient objects.

Classes for holding and manipulating data

The following are the main classes used to hold data in Ado.NET:

DataSet
DataTable
DataRow

A DataSet is an in-memory representation of the database.

DataSet contains one or more DataTables (and more like Views etc...)
A DataTable represents a database table
DataTable contains one or more DataRows (and more...)
A DataRow represents a record in a database table.
DataRow is a collection of all fields in a record.
We can use the DataAdapter or DataReader to populate data in DataSet. Once we populate data from
database, we can loop through all Tables in the DataSet and through each record in each Table.
On the first look, this may look bit confusing, but once you understand the concept and get familiar with
the Ado.NET classes, you will appreciate the power and flexibility of Ado.NET.

Basic Database operations using ADO.NET

This article talks about the basic database operations using the ADO.NET classes.
The basic database operations performed on a database table are:
1. Create (insert record)
2. Read (select data)
3. Update (update existing data)
4. Delete (delete records)

The above operations are sometimes called "CRUD" (Create, Read, Update, Delete)
Most of the simple applications you develop will have the screens to perform the above operations.
For example, assume you are developing an application to manage the list of employees in a company.
The first thing you may do is, create a database table called "Employees" in your database. Next thing is
to develop couple of screens.

1. Create Employee
This screen will have the fields to accept various details of an Employee. User has to enter all the details
and press a button to save all details to database.
This page will be using an SQL Query which will look something like this:

insertintoEMPLOYEES(id,name,age,salary,designation)values
(1,'john',30,25000,'VicePresident')
2. A screen (page) which displays the list of all employees.
This page will be using an SQL Query which will look something like this:

select*fromEMPLOYEES
The above query will return all the records from the database table. You will use some code in the page to
display the records in a user friendsly manner. ASP.NET provides a control called "DataGrid" which can
be used to display large number of records properly formatted.

3. Screen to update the details of an existing employee.

Typically, you can view the list of employees from the screen in step 2 and select a user to edit and
update the details. This Update page will allow you to enter all details of the employee.
This page will be using an SQL Query similar to this:

updateEMPLOYEESsetname='john',age=30,salary=25000,
designation='VicePresident'whereid=1
4. The Delete screen will allow you delete any existing employee.
The sql query will be something like this:

deleteEMPLOYEESwhereid=1
Even though most of the applications allow all the above 4 operations for most of the tables, it is not
necessary to have 4 pages each. Some people design the screens such a way that all 4 operations can
be performed in one page. My personal preferance is 2 pages - 1 page to display the data and delete

selected records and 1 page to create and update the record. Since the create and update page need to
have the same set of fields, I prefer to use the same page for both operations. I will pass a query string to
identify whether I have to insert a record or update.
All of the tables in your database does not require screens to perform CRUD operations. Only specific
tables will need such screens. Generally, the tables which gets data from users of the application will
need the screens to perform CRUD operations. Here is the general rule: "If you need to capture data from
user to a table, you must provide the screens to perform the basic operations - create, read, update and
delete".

Database operations - Learn more

This article explains 2 types of database operations - that return data from database and that does
not return any results.
In an earlier chapter, you learned the basic CRUD operations. Let us further classify them in to 2
categories:
1. Operation that returns data from database
2. Operations that do not return any data, but just changes data in the database.
A Select operation belong to the first category. It selects some data and returns results.
The Updated, Insrt, Delete operations do not return any results. Instead, they change the data in the
database.
Let us learn the various classes available in the ADO.NET class library to perform the above operations.
All the classes used in the samples below are part of the namespace System.Data.OleDb. So,
make sure you import the namespace in the top of the class as shown below:

#includeSystem.Data.OleDb
The following code snippet shows an example of category 2 (returns no data)

stringconnectionString="Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data
Source=C:\\Samples\\Employee.mdb";
OleDbConnectionmyConnection=new
OleDbConnection(connectionString);
myConnection.Open();
stringquery="insertintoEMPLOYEE_TABLE(EmployeeID,Name,
Address)VALUES(101,John,3960CliffValleyWay)";

OleDbCommandmyCommand=newOleDbCommand();
myCommand.CommandText=query;
myCommand.Connection=myConnection;
myCommand.ExecuteNonQuery();
myConnection.Close();
See the above sample code. It executes an insert statement to add a record to a table called
EMPLOYEE_TABLE in an MS Access database called Employee.mdb. Let us analyze the classes used
in the above sample:

1.OleDbConnection
2.OleDbCommand
There are only 2 classes used to execute an sql statement that do not return any result.

OleDbConnection class is used to open a connection to the database. This class is required to
perform category 1 and category 2 operations. You must specify a connection string to represent the
database. The connection string has various formats and it depends on the database type (MS Access,
SQL Server, Oracle etc)
Let us analyze the code. First we have declared a connection string. The connection string points to an
MS Access database. Before you execute this code, make sure you have the database in the path
specified. Or, change the path accordingly.
In the next step, we are creating a OleDbConnection object and passing the connection string to this
object. The line myConnection.Open(); will open a connection to the MS Access database specified in the
connection string. If the database doesnt exists or if it is not able to open a connection for some other
reason, the .Open call will fail.
Next step is, creating a OleDbCommand object. This command object is used to execute sql statements
and uses the connection opened by the OleDbConnection object.
Note that before executing a command, we have to establish a valid connection to the database.
And finally, after we have executed with the command, we will close the connection.
The above sample code executes a sql statement and returns no data from database. We are calling the
method ExecuteNonQuery() on the command object. If we have a select ... statement which returns data
from database, we cannot use the ExecuteNonQuery() method.

Retrieving data from database

This article demonstrates the usage of OleDbDataAdapter Object and DataSet to retrieve data
from databbase.
In the previous chater, you learned how to use OleDbConnection and OldDbCommand classes to
execute an sql statement that returns no data.
In this chapter, you will learn how to use the ADO.NET classes to execute sql statements and retrieve
data from database.
See the following sample code:

stringconnectionString="Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data
Source=C:\\Samples\\Employee.mdb";

OleDbConnectionmyConnection=new
OleDbConnection(connectionString);

stringquery="select*fromEMPLOYEE_TABLE";

OleDbDataAdaptermyAdapter=newOleDbDataAdapter(query,
myConnection);
DataSetemployeeData=newDataSet();
myAdapter.Fill(employeeData);

Here we are creating a OleDbConnection object and it to the OleDbDataAdapter object.

Also, we pass the select ... query to the OleDbDataAdapter. Next, we call the .Fill() method of the

OleDbDataAdapter and pass a dataset object to this method. This step will populate the
dataset (called employeeData ) with the data retrieved for the sql statement select * from EMPLOYEE.

As you already know, a DataSet can contain a collection of tables. But in our case, our sql statement
will retrieve data from only one table. So, our DataSet will have only one table.

In our sample code, the dataset contains one table and the table contains one or more records. We
can iterate through the table in the dataset and retrieve all the records. See the following code
demonstrating this:

stringconnectionString=
"Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data
Source=C:\\Samples\\Employee.mdb";
OleDbConnectionmyConnection=new
OleDbConnection(connectionString);

stringquery="select*fromEMPLOYEE_TABLE";

OleDbDataAdaptermyAdapter=newOleDbDataAdapter(query,
myConnection);
DataSetemployeeData=newDataSet();
myAdapter.Fill(employeeData);

//RepeatforeachtableintheDataSetcollection.
foreach(DataTabletableinemployeeData.Tables)
{
//Repeatforeachrowinthetable.
foreach(DataRowrowintable.Rows)
{
Response.Write("EmployeeNumber:"+
row["EmployeeNumber"].ToString());
Response.Write("Name:"+row["Name"].ToString());
Response.Write("Address:"+row["Address"].ToString());
}
}

The above code retrieves all the records from the employee table and displays the value of the
following fields:

EmployeeNumber
Name
Address