Creating an ASP.NET Application

Creating an ASP.NET Application

In this tutorial you will learn how to Create an ASP.NET 2.0 Application, Examining the Interface, The Hello World Application, Designing Web Forms, The Embedded Web Server and Important folders in the ASP.NET 2.0 Applications.

Visual Studio.NET is a user friendly way to create web sites. It provides for multiple ways of opening websites. Frontpage Server extensions, FTP or direct file system path can be used to open the web pages. The inbuilt web server Cassini makes IIS server optional for testing and debugging of applications. ASP.NET 2.0 uses the dynamic compilation engine to compile its files and changes to .aspx, .cs or .vb files are caught immediately.

The copy website feature eases the process of copying websites from one location to a local or remote computer. Additionally double clicking on a .aspx file opens Visual Studio.NET 2005 and enables the editing of source code. The Intellisense is an intelligent tool that helps the developer view the pages in a browser or examine issues relating to data binding or page directives with ease.

Before actually creating a sample let us see what the interface has to offer to the web developer.

Examining the Interface

1. Open a new Web site by clicking File >New web site.

2. A new website project dialog box opens asking the user to pick out the type of website required. Select ASP.NET web site.

3. A minimum number of pages required for setting up a website are generated by Visual Studio.NET. A default .aspx file and an empty directory are created to help you start the project.

4. It must be pointed out that though ASP.NET 2.0 creates a project file it does not track the files that form a part of the application. The root directly implicitly defines the web project. A new file can be added to the project by copying a file onto the project or right clicking the solution explorer and adding a file to it.

5. Also note that the above dialog box allows the developer to specify the location of the project and the language of choice.

6. A web page can be edited by navigating to the Design, source or the sever code views. The Design view displays a HTML layout. It lets the user select controls or static elements and edit them. The user has a graphical preview of what his web page will look like. The source view displays the HTML markup with the inline code. IntelliSense tips, autocompletion and colored syntax help the developer in multitude of ways. The server code view displays only the inline code with the colored syntax.

7. The user can chose the kind of template he wants to add to his application. To select a template right click on the root of the project and click on Add New item…

8. A number of different types of templates are displayed for the selection of the developer.

9. Two check boxes at the bottom of the page allow the separation of the code and the selection of a master page. The restructured code-behind schema of Visual Studio 2005 supports separation of code but makes it optional. The file is automatically named as default1 or default2 .aspx and so on. The language selected for the project is displayed in the language box. However, the user is free to select different languages for different pages.

The Hello World Application

In the manner of the traditionalists let us create the Hello world application. Let us select a web form and place a textbox and a button.

Enter the following code in the source view of the Default.aspx page.

Click here to view sample code

  <%@ PageLanguage="C#"CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs"Inherits="Default_aspx"%> 

Now rename the page as greetings.aspx by right clicking on the page in solutions Explorer and changing its name. We shall now execute the code by clicking on control + F5 or right clicking on the file in the Solution Explorer and selecting View in Browser. The page appears as under.