Practical .NET


Take Control of Exceptions with a Custom Exception Object

If you really want to take full control of the exceptions you pass to your clients, you can write your own Exception class. Here's how to do that, complete with support for additional properties.

Managing Complex Web Requests

A complex ASP.NET MVC form can drive you to a big, ugly action method that handles all the functionality the page offers. The ActionMethodSelector provides a clean way to separate that logic over multiple methods, provided you understand a key distinction of which many ASP.NET MVC developers aren't aware.

Creating Complex XML Documents with XML Literals

If you're creating an XML document and want to write code that you'll actually be able to maintain … well, it may be time to learn a little Visual Basic, just so you can use XML Literals. It's a good solution even for C# shops.

Leveraging a Visual Studio Database Project

Peter shows how a Visual Studio database project can make you more productive when making changes to your database. But a database project also gives you a variety of tools to let you keep track of what those changes are -- which will make moving those changes to your production environment considerably safer.

In Praise of the Maintenance Programmer

The developers building new applications are very nice people, of course. But the real heroes of the programming world are the developers maintaining and extending existing applications.

Simplifying Development with Visual Studio Database Projects

Peter learns something by listening to readers: Visual Studio database projects provide a great environment for making changes to your databases. Here's a brief introduction about how they'll make life easier for you and all the steps for setting one up.

Performing Multiple Actions from a Single ASP.NET MVC Form

Peter responds to a question: How, in an ASP.NET MVC form, can the user be given two submit Buttons that do two different things?

Leveraging Reactive Extensions for Asynchronous Processing

Reactive Extensions will let you catch interim results from a long running process. Coupled with the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 support for asynchronous processing, you don't even have to lock up your client while you process those results.

The Myth of Responsive Design

Peter explains why he doesn't believe in "responsive designs" that allow a single application to work in both the desktop and mobile environments.

Writing Cleaner Code with Reactive Extensions

When you have a process that can return multiple results over time, then .NET Framework Reactive Extensions will let you simplify your code and manage it better.

Building a Useful HTML Helper for ASP.NET MVC Views

Creating a full-featured extension for the ASP.NET MVC HtmlHelper class sounds like a lot of work. But, because of the way the Microsoft .NET Framework works, it's almost trivially easy. To show that, here's an EditBlockFor method that adds a label, a textbox and a validation message to your ASP.NET View.

vNext: What's in It for You?

Here's a grab bag of what you might find useful in the next version of the .NET Framework. It's good news for everyone but ASP.NET Web Form developers.

Splitting Tables To Improve Performance: A Designer-Based Solution

Peter returns to improve performance by splitting a single table into multiple entities, but this time, he implements his solution using the Entity Framework 6 designer.

Splitting Tables in Entity Framework 6 to Improve Performance

There are some occasions when using Entity Framework can really hurt you: When you have tables with hundreds of columns or tables with large payloads. Here's how to get EF6 to do the right thing.

The Sociology of Application Security: Less Can Be More

The critical part of security isn't your code; it's the people using your applications. Because of that, increasing your security often makes your applications less secure.

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