If you have a database column that contains a URL and you want to make it appear in your GridView as a clickable hyperlink, change the GridView column to a Template Field, delete the textbox in there and add a Hyperlink control instead. Change the source to look like this:
Several times we encounter a great and sophisticated web or desktop application that does not poses it's appropriate market share just for the reason of poorly written SETUP package and poorly designed deployment strategy. The fact is simple: If your users are not able to easily deploy your application then whatever sophistication or features you provide, they will be unable to even experience your application from the very first place!
In this tutorial we are going to show you a set of techniques by which you can package and deploy your web applications .....
Alternatives
When it comes to web applications specifically, then you will encounter many techniques that can be utilized as a deployment strategy for your web application:
The most trivial technique is to simply copy your web application files to the production server hard drive and set a virtual directory there. The setting of a virtual directory is needed by several deployment schemes and can be achieved from Internet Information Manager Microsoft Management Consol (MMC snap-in). Because developers typically use the command line order 'XCOPY' to implement this technique, this technique is typically referred to as XCOPY Deployment.
Copy Web Site is a new technique provided in ASP.NET 2.0 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 (Available from the Website / Copy Web Site... Menu option). Although this technique is performed from inside Visual Studio (in contrast with the XCOPY deployment technique which is performed from outside Visual Studio), there is no compilation performed at all. All your pages are still in their source code form on the production server. Some developers see this fact as a high risk on their intellectual property. Two extra disadvantages of this technique (and in fact any other technique that does not involve any compilation before deployment) are reduced error checking and the slow initial page load.
The reduced error checking is a direct result to that no compilation is performed and hence some errors may be discovered by your users later. The initial page load slowness is also because nothing is compiled yet and the entire web application has to be compiled at the time the first page is being requested. An advantage of this technique over the XCOPY deployment is that you have the options to deploy to the File System, the Local IIS, the FTP Sites, and the Remote Sites. Please see figure 1.
Figure 1
All of the deployment methods we mentioned so far suffer from the fact of that no compilation is performed along with the disadvantages that comes as a direct result from this fact. To ensure fast page load and some protection of your source code, you should pre-compile your web site before deployment.
Pre-compilation can be performed in-place by just adding '/Deployment/Precompile.axd' to the root URL of your web application and opening the resulting URL in Internet Explore.
Pre-compilation can also be achieved using the command line compiler 'aspnet_compiler'.
Using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 you can still perform pre-compilation from the 'Build / Publish Web Site' menu command. Please see figure 2.
Figure 2 |
First of all you need to know that our target is to create a package (and MSI file) that contain our web application in a form that can be later easily deployed on the final production server.
Let's start by selecting 'File / New / Project' in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. This will present you the famous set of possible project types from which you will select 'Other Project Types / Setup and Deployment' then you will select the 'Web Setup Project' icon from the side to the right. See figure 3.
Figure 3 |
In figure 3, set the appropriate project name and folder options then click OK.
You can always have the same behavior by adding the SETUP project above to your web application solution instead of creating a new separate solution. You can achieve this by selecting 'File / Add / New Project' instead of 'File / New / Project'. This way you will have a self contained web solution. The 'File / Add / New Project' method is much more recommended.
Your setup project will then open as in figure 4 below:
Figure 4 |
You will then need to add your web application files to the SETUP project we are developing now. This can be achieved by right clicking your SETUP project name in solution explorer and selecting 'Add / Project Output'. Please see figure 5.
Figure 5 |
To tune the properties of our SETUP project, we will need to press F4 while it's name is selected in the solution explore. This will bring the SETUP project's properties window. Several useful properties can be set in this window:
| Property | Purpose |
| Author, Description, Manufacturer, ManufacturerUrl, ProductName, Subject, Title, and Version | Use all of these properties to identify / describe your application and yourself. |
| AddRemoveProgramsIcon | Here you can specify the icon to be displayed beside your application in Windows Control Panel's Add Remove Programs. |
| DetectNewerInstalledVersion | Specify here whether or not a check is to be performed to determine the existence of a new version already installed of your web application. |
| RemovePreviousVersions | Specify here whether you need an older version of your web application to be removed if a newer version is being installed. |
| RestartWWWService | Some web applications requires the Internet Information Service to be stopped and then restarted after the deployment of the application. Use this property to control such behavior. |
The last and most important step is to actually build our SETUP project. This cane be achieved by right clicking the name of our SETUP project in the solution explorer. It's this specific step that creates the MSI package / file mentioned above. This is the file you will need to distribute to your users and this is the file they will use to deploy the web application on their production server.
It's worth mentioning that the actual deployment process will be some what similar to the SETUP of any typical desktop application (with some exceptions of course). One of the many similarities is that the web application after deployment will automatically appear in the 'Add / Remove Programs' window of Windows Control Panel.
For your users to deploy your web application they will just need to double click the MSI file. This will produce something similar to figure 6:
Figure 6 |
You must know that every of your .NET products, web application or ASP.NET custom control, can be easily decompiled. Practically every user can get your source code by using some free .Net decompiler. If your license doesn't include source code it is not enough to just exclude source code files from installation. You need additional protection.
After long analyze, we decided to use Spices.Net for protection of all products of Bean Software. Even if you can't afford complete suite, consider at least their Obfuscator. Later, I discovered .NET Reactor which also looks good and it is about ten times cheaper :). You can check Product Comparison link on NetReactor site where it is compared to some other products, it looks really impressive, and not only in price issue.
Refer to the online copy of Microsoft Developers Network at http://msdn.microsoft.com or use your own local copy of MSDN..
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article from : http://codebetter.com/blogs/david.hayden/archive/2005/08/05/130372.aspx
Resources
Many of you have seen this mysterious if/then statement in a lot of the online and book code samples, and you probably have, at one time or another, wondered just what exactly this was all about. This tutorial plans to answer all your questions. There is one basic question that gets asked on ASP.Net Forums and ASPFriends.com ListServes, over and over, in a several different ways. It all boils down to one answer concerning the IsPostBack Property of the page.
"Why doesn't my DropDownList keep it's Selection?""Why is the selectedindex for my (ASP.Net control) always turning up a -1?"
Fortunately, today, you've come to the right place. You questions will be answered.
Scenario:You put a DropDownList or a ListBox (or just about any ASP.Net control which has multiple items assigned to it) on your web page (inside a form, naturally). Then, at some point, you either populate the list items manually, or bind it to a database table. However, you do it, you get a list of items from which, at some point, the end user can make a choice. Based on that choice, the end user gets more data in return. Most of the basic item population of these controls is done during the initial loading of the page (Page_Load event). That way, the list items are available for choosing once the page is finished loading.
Let's say, then, you also put a button on the page. That way, the end user can choose an item in the list, click the button and get the extended data, based on the selection made. The button's click event would then take the item which was selected and use it in a click event that could then, possibly connect to a database and use the selected item's data to filter a query against a database.
"Of course", you say - "Simple", you say - "No Problem!", you say - even "Why are you bothering me with this drivel?" This is where it all boils down to the mystery for which this tutorial was created. Here it is - your DropDownList was populated with the last names of people at your company. You create a sub procedure for the onclick event of the button to connect to the database and give the end user back all the available data in the table, based on that last name. The SQL statement goes something like this:
SQL = "Select * from Employees where lastname = '" & DropDownList.SelectedItem.Text & "'"
However, when you do this, you either get an error, or you get absolutely no results back from the query. You're sure the query is correct - but you can't figure out why this isn't returning any records.
That's because you didn't surround the data population of your control with the basic statement this tutorial is all about:
If not Page.IsPostback then
End If
What's happening is that your page is re-loading the data into your server control - it's not responding in any way, to the click event from the button click. First of all, you would never need the server control to re-populate EVERY time the page loaded. That would be terribly inefficient and as you have seen here - it makes making a choice from the control pretty much unuseable.
As I said at the beginning, there are a couple of ways to populate the data items of a server control (DropDownList, ListBox, RadioButtonList, CheckBoxList, etc) - manually and binding the results from a database query to it. It doesn't matter how you populate the data. What DOES matter is that you include the population of the control within the boundaries of this If/Then Statement.
Two things will happen then. The first thing that will happen, is that, on each subsequent loading of the page, the control doesn't go through the redundant action of re-loading the control. It loads it only once, at the initial page load. Once the page is loaded, the click event from the button (or however you post back) is considered to be a postback. Yes, the page gets reloaded, but, by surrounding your data population with this statement, the page knows that the initial data loading was already done, so it doesn't happen any more, and it gets maintained throughout any subsequent post back. The second, and most rewarding thing that happens is that the selection which was made by the end user is maintained throughout the post back. This is the pay-off - by doing it with the If/Then Page.IsPostBack statement, your selection carries through to your query and the query returns the results you wanted in the first place.
Examples:
If Not Page.IsPostBack then
Dim strConn as string = "server=(local);uid=UID;pwd=PWD;database=Northwind"
Dim MySQL as string = "Select LastName from Employees"
Dim MyConn as New SQLConnection(strConn)
Dim objDR as SQLDataReader
Dim Cmd as New SQLCommand(MySQL, MyConn)
MyConn.Open()
objDR=Cmd.ExecuteReader(system.data.CommandBehavior.CloseConnection)
DropDownList.DataSource = objDR
DropDownList.DataBind()
End If
By doing it this way, you will always be able to maintain the selection from your DropDownList (or other ASP.Net Control) through the postback events of your pages.
refernce : http://72.14.235.132/search?q=cache:oBKOjS9PQs4J:aspnet101.com/aspnet101/tutorials.aspx%3Fid%3D3+asp.net+is+not+postback&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk
Original article location :
http://www.dotnetcurry.com/ShowArticle.aspx?ID=94