I want to dynamically change the layout, based on whether the user is accessing the site from a mobile device or not. I have a few questions on the subject.
I would like to change the layout once it's determined, but before the view is rendered. That is, is there some hook I can use where I can change layout.cshtml to layout.mobile.cshtml "recursively" for any nested layouts that there might be.
Is overriding RazorViewEngine's CreateView method enough? It takes a masterPath parameter, so maybe I could implement a custom RazorViewEngine and override this method, right?
The second question would be regarding mobile browser detection. I don't really care that much about specific devices. I just want to differentiate desktop from mobile. Is something like WURFL a necessity in this case?
Is checking something like Request.Browser.ScreenPixelsWidth and ScreenPixelsHeigth ridiculous? (since most I'd be changing would be using or not jQuery.mobile and it's data-attributes.
This functionality is built-into ASP.NET MVC 4 so you get it out-of-the-box.
Scott Hansleman blogged about how you could achieve the same in ASP.NET MVC 3 and be ready for the upgrade because the NuGet he suggested is spec-compatible with ASP.NET MVC 4.
If you can, use ASP MVC 4 as Darin Dimitrov pointed out. It supports this out of the box.
If you are stuck on MVC 3, here's how we do it in our product:
1) Install WURFL
2) Implement an HttpCapabilitiesProvider which calls WURFL and resolves device capabilities; stuff resolved caps into the result. Be sure to add a property called isMobileBrowser (wurfl exposes this)
3) Tell .NET to use your capabilities provider instead of default HttpCapabilitiesBase.BrowserCapabilitiesProvider = new YourBrowserCapabilitiesProvider(_wurflManager);
4) Create a CustomViewEngine (inherit RazorViewEngine). Override FindPartialView & FindView. These should look at controllerContext.RequestContext.HttpContext.Request.Browser.Capabilities["isMobileBrowser"] and map to appropriate name, eg myView.cshtml.mobile. You need to resolve both viewName and masterName.
4.1) Still in CustomViewEngine's FindPartialView & FindView, search search ~/Views/{0}/{1} and ~/Views/Shared/{0}/{1} where {0} is the controller (controllerContext.RouteData.GetRequiredString("controller")) and {1} is your mapped view name
4.2) Return return new ViewEngineResult(CreateView(controllerContext, viewPath, masterPath), this);
Related
Advance warning: Im an absolute newbie to Dynamics CRM!
Intention
I want to have a feature like Lync/Skype integration but use my own URL. (Click on any telephone number inside CRM and call it).
For eg. assuming I have a web service which can initiate a call per URL: http://telephony.com/call?nr=012345678. Now, whenever a CRM user clicks onto a telephone number field (in forms and views) inside the CRM my web service should be called instead of Skype/Lync.
In fact I'm trying to reproduce sth. like the InGenius Connecter.
Attempts
I already tried to inject a JS web resource to a specific formular (in my case it was the default contact form) and override the Mscrm.ReadFormUtilities.openPhoneClient callback (which seems to handle the Lync/Skype integration).
function load() {
// override integrated CTC (Lync/Skype)
Mscrm.ReadFormUtilities.openPhoneClient = function (telephoneNr) {
// redirect user to my web service
window.location.replace("http://telephony.com/call?nr="+telephoneNr);
return;
}
}
Found this method at: Disable Lync completely
This does work well in forms of Dynamics 2015 (my custom link pops up instead of Skype/Lync). However, this does only work on entity forms since I can't inject web resources into an entity view.
My other ideas how to implement such a feature are:
Inject global JS resource which disables Lync/Skype and encapsulate every telephone number with link to my custom URL.
Extend/Manipulate Lync/Skype integration to use my custom URL instead of Lync/Skype.
Write plugin which encapsulate telephone numbers server side.
Question
Since I have a grasp understanding of Dynamics and no experience in plugin/resource development, I'm left a bit confused with these questions.
Is it possible to achieve any of the three ideas above ?
If not, any idea how InGenius solved this problem ?
Do you have any other idea/resources about this topic ?
Currently I found two options available to achieve a custom CTC feature. (Both has the downside of not being officialy supported by the dynamics crm.)
Global Ribbon
Pretty simple: Add a Click-To-Call button to global ribbon which is only enabled on specific grids when one row is selected.
This button refers to an JS-Action which retrieves the telephone number via ODATA and then launches the dial process.
Global Ribbon CustomRule injection
Add a global button to ribbon which refers to a JS resource per <CustomRule>. The JScript then unbinds all actions from links with .ms-crm-Phone classes and replaces its href-attribute.
This would be useful if one want to override the integrated "Skype / Lync - Click to Dial" feature with his own logic.
I didn't test this method until now, so I can't guarentee it's working !
Note: I will include example scripts as soon I got the time.
I've seen Missing inverse property in asp.net webapi odata $metadata and the WebAPI $metadata I'm dealing with behaves as described in this article: it doesn't reuse associations for bi-directional navigation properties.
When using jaysvcutil 1.3.5 all navigational properties come up as $$unbound.
$data.Entity.extend('API.Models.Document', {
...
'Document_Versions': {
'type':'Array',
'elementType':'API.Models.Document_Versions',
'inverseProperty':'$$unbound' }
});
Other than manually updating the inverseProperty information is there anything to get the desired result automatically?
Update based on #Robesz answer
Manually adding inverseProperty information to the static .js converted by JaySvcUtil is doable, but I'm asking if there's an option to accomplish that with the dynamic conversion as well.
There seems to be to options
make modifications to the .NET WebAPI. Might be challenging, because their seem to be good reason for their implementation, but maybe somebody already successfully did that.
modifying the conversion XSLT that JayData using to take that behavior into account.
We've just arrived to the same results with WebAPI OData, but after editing the generated context file manually and adding the inverseProperty everything is working fine
This should be most probably handled by extending JayData's XSLT conversion. I've created an issues for that on https://github.com/jaydata/jaydata/issues/155.
I'm using the latest ASP.Net WebAPI Nightly builds (dated 2013-01-16).
I have a simple EF database first model at the moment that has two entities - Patients and Visits. Each patient can have many visits.
I'd like to be able to query for my list of patients and have the visits entities for each patient returned inline. I know that WebAPI's OData implementation doesn't yet support $expand. I'm hoping that just means that optional client-controlled expansion is not supported and that I can force expansion server-side.
At the moment I'm not getting any of the visits inline.
For example, my PatientController's() Get() method looks like
[Queryable(AllowedQueryOptions=AllowedQueryOptions.Supported)]
public override IQueryable<Patient> Get()
{
var query = this.entities.Patients.Include("Visits");
return query;
}
I've verified that the query executing against my database does indeed include the visit information.
To use a publicly available OData service as an example, if you use the service at http://services.odata.org/OData/OData.svc/, you can get a list of Suppliers. This is http://http://services.odata.org/OData/OData.svc/Suppliers.
You can also ask for a list of suppliers that includes the list of products using http://http://services.odata.org/OData/OData.svc/Suppliers?$expand=Products
Stepping through the ASP.NET code (via the symbols server) I've got to the System.Web.Http.OData.Formatter.Serialization.ODataEntityTypeSerializer and can see that it's CreatePropertyBag method, which builds up the list of properties to be serialized, just doesn't include the navigation properties, and they don't seem to be enumerated anywhere else apart from being written out as NavigationLinks.
I'm quite new to the ASP.NET world in general and have spent a week or so getting my head around the way things work (particularly with the changes made to OData at the end of 2012 and further changes made so far in 2013).
I suspect that if the ODataEntityTypeSerializer was to be modified (I'm happy to try) to embed this extra information in the appropriate spot (within each navigation link as an nested inline feed as best I can tell) then I'd be set.
Questions:
Have I overlooked something obvious and there's a flag I can set to turn on this behaviour? I can see why, if such a flag exists, it would be off by default (EF lazy loading and this flag wouldn't get on well)
If #1 is no, is there some other ODataEntityTypeSerializer that I could use? If so, how do I switch to it?
If #2 is no, any pointers for where I should start writing my own? Is there a place I can substitute in my own serializer or do I have to maintain my own fork of ASP.NET's Extensions project (as opposed to the Runtime project)
Thanks very much!
$expand is very high on our list of things to support for OData. But as far as I know, we don't have any flag to turn it on server-side. The formatter doesn't currently allow you to substitute your own serializers either. So I'm afraid your only option in the meantime is to create a fork and add support for $expand. If you manage to get it working, please consider sending a pull request our way:
http://aspnetwebstack.codeplex.com/SourceControl/network
You can try it already in webapi nightly builds.
Here is how to install it with nuget:
http://aspnetwebstack.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Use%20Nightly%20Builds
Is there a built in function which will test if an email address is valid?
I want to test the email address structure is valid before sending a confirmation email to the end user.
I understand i could create my own function easy enough with the use of a regular expression but if there is a built in function i would much rather use this.
You can do this with Data Annotations extensions I believe. Check out Scott Guthrie's blog post on it here: http://weblogs.asp.net/srkirkland/archive/2011/02/23/introducing-data-annotations-extensions.aspx.
There is a good point in Scott's post as to why you would use this rather than the MVC 3 Futures validators which might be relevant to your choice:
ASP.NET MVC 3 futures defines four new data annotations attributes which this project has as well: CreditCard, Email, Url and EqualTo. Unfortunately referencing MVC 3 futures necessitates taking an dependency on MVC 3 in your model layer, which may be unadvisable in a multi-tiered project. Data Annotations Extensions keeps the server and client side libraries separate so using the project’s validation attributes don’t require you to take any additional dependencies in your model layer which still allowing for the rich client validation experience if you are using MVC 3.
Yes, you can use
public class CustomerMetaData
{
// Add type information.
[DataType(DataType.EmailAddress)]
public object EmailAddress;
}
on your model. See more about it here.
however, last time I checked it does not work client sided.
I googled it, and from imran baloch's blog post it seems it does work now.
So... I have a business object/manager which is going to generate emails.
These emails will contain links to various content on the website... and therefore needs to understand about MVC routing.. or at least how to generate URLs for the website...
However my business object will not have access to a RequestContext etc and the email generation is not necessarily the result of a web request to a website (I have a dispatcher which runs on a background thread which will be generating the emails)
Any ideas how I can generate my urls without having access to a request - and therefore being unable to use URLHelper...
Thoughts?
In order to get at the UrlHelper outside of the controller, you need to feed it and the routing data the HttpContext. Here's an example:
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Mvc;
using System.Web.Routing;
HttpContextBase context = new HttpContextWrapper(HttpContext.Current);
UrlHelper helper = = new UrlHelper(new RequestContext(context, RouteTable.Routes.GetRouteData(context)));
I prefer to define schema and make both routing and business logic aware of it. Means different implementations of the same URL schema.
Some reasons why:
Your routing mechanism could change. For example in feature you can switch to url_rewrite module.
Possible issues with load-balanced installation.
You do not need even to try to use URLHelper in undocumented way.
BTW, you can replace HttpRequest from URLHelper easily. We used to use this for unit-testing. For more information just search for unit testing of the HttpContextBase or look at examples in source code of the MvcContrib. This can help to instantiate URL helper and all related stuff in non hosted environment. But I still do not think that this is a good idea.
In ASP.NET MVC5 (and possibly MVC4 - I'm not sure when it was introduced), you can do this more directly using HttpRequest.RequestContext. Eg:
var urlHelper = new UrlHelper(HttpContext.Current.Request.RequestContext);