MVC3 is valid email - asp.net-mvc-3

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.

Related

How to organize my code?

I'm still in a learning phase with PHP and Laravel 5 and since I upgraded to L5, I struggle with where my code belongs to. There are so many files and folders which seem to have the same purpose or at least are very similar. There are Commands, Controllers, Events, Services, Requests, etc. I give an example with my workflow and where I would place the code and I hope you guys can comment on that and correct/help me.
Situation
I want to register a new user in my application and send a welcome e-mail when he registered successfully.
Workflow
Controller (UserController): Returns requested view (register).
Request (RegisterRequest): The "RegisterRequest" validates the entered data.
Controller (UserController): Passes the validated data to the "UserRegistrar" (service) in 'App/Services'.
Service (UserRegistrar): Creates a new user and saves it to the database.
Controller (UserController): Fires the "UserWasRegistered" Event.
Event (UserWasRegistered): This Event call the "SendWelcomeEmail" Command.
Command (SendWelcomeEmail): This Command will send/queue the welcome e-mail.
Controller (UserController): Redirects the user to a view with the information that he has been registerd successfully and a message has been send to him.
Logic
Okay, let's discuss some logic:
Controller:
Doesn't hold much code.
Mainly there to return views (with requested data).
Handles workflow and "connects" modules (Services, Requests, Events).
Request: Validates the data for a specified request
Service: A service "does" something. For example it's doing requests to the database.
Event: An Event is a central place to call one or more tasks if it is fired (SendConfirmationMail, SendWelcomeMail).
Command: Mainly there to handle the logic for ONE certain task. For example sending a confirmation mail. Another command will hold the logic for sending the welcome mail. Both commands are called in the Event described before.
Repositories: What is that?!
So this is what I understand. Please help me and feed me with information.
Thanks,
LuMa
Your question is a little vague and will likely attract downvotes as being "too broad". That said, here's my take on this...
The biggest issue I see is that your application structure is very different from the recommended L5 structure - or even the standard MVC structure - that it's no wonder you're getting confused.
Let's talk about your "Logic" section:
controller - you're on the right track here. The controller is the glue between your models and your views. It can do some processing, but most should be offloaded to classes that handle specific tasks.
request - what is this? L5 includes a Request class that includes methods for examining the HTTP request received from the client. Are you talking about subclassing that? Why? If your idea of a "request" class is primarily concerned with examining input, you can either do that in your model (ie. validating stuff before sticking it in the database) or in your controller (see the L5 docs on controller validation)
service - again, what is this? You talk about "doing requests to the database", but L5 provides a class for that (DB). At a higher level, database access should primarily be done through models, which abstract away most of the low level database access. As for other services, what I usually do is create libraries to perform specific processing. For example, my application has a particular third party project management application that it accesses via an API. I have a library for that, with methods such as getProject or createProject.
event - An event is a way of ensuring that some code is called when the event happens, without a whole lot of messing about. It sounds like you have the right idea about events.
command - again, it sounds like you have the basic idea about commands.
repositories - these are way of abstracting the connection between a resource (primarily the database, but it can apply to other resources too) and the code that uses the resource. This gives a way to switch the underlying resource more easily if you (for example) decide to change database servers in the future. They are optional.
You also haven't mentioned anything about models. L5 provides an excellent way to deal with your data in understandable chunks via Eloquent models - this will make your life much easier.
My suggestion is this: start small. Build a simple MVC application with L5 - A model (to save some data), a view (to display the data), and a controller (to put the model & view together by handling the client request). Once you have that, start extending it.
There are tutorials out there that will give you this basic structure for Laravel - most are for Laravel 4, but see if you can follow the basic ideas and build something similar for Laravel 5.

Sample Code for Creating Custom Membership Provider

I am writing an MVC 3 application and I am trying to implement my own custom membership provider (following the sample in Apress' Pro ASP.NET MVC 3 Framework).
I created my custom class, inherited from MembershipProvider and (using ReSharper) implemented all 27 of the methods with NotImplementedExceptions.
Now, I have overridden the ValidateUser method as the book states and it works fine, but I would like to make my provider more robust and implement the other methods (e.g. set MinRequiredPasswordLength and GetNumberOfUsersOnline).
Is there some sample code that I can use to start populating these methods that I can tweak to fit my own DB/Model schema?
I can certainly use trial and error to figure it out, but a base code sample would greatly help.
EDIT:
This question was just downvoted twice. If you are going to downvote, please post a comment as to why so that I can work on improving my questions.
EDIT 2:
For example, for the following method:
public override int GetNumberOfUsersOnline()
{
throw new System.NotImplementedException();
}
I can try to write code from scratch to look at some web log, determine the users login time and approximate if they are still on, but that will take a large amount of time for me to figure out. Since all this code is from the same interface that Microsoft wrote for the standard SqlMembershipProvider, isn't there code out there (even from MS) that contains this method? If so, I want take it, modify it so it uses my DB schema instead of the aspnetdb default schema. I would prefer to have some sort of base code to work from. I thought this would be a simple and fairly standard request, but perhaps not.
You can't use the default provider's code for your custom provider, that is why you are implementing a custom one, to tweak it according to your requirements, use your own db tables etc.
Take a look at my blog posts about custom membership, custom role providers and custom membership user. There is an example there of how you can use your own database to get/set membership information.
Here's a of sample implementation of custom MembershipProvider on MSDN.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6tc47t75.aspx

DRY Remote Validation in ASP.NET MVC 3

I've read David Hayden's great post on MVC 3 Remote validation.
However there is presented what you should do to enable remote (javascript) validation. If the user has javascript disabled the post would still be made even if data is not valid. Therefore a server-side validation should occur.
How could we make this check as DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) as possible? Of course, including the same check code in the post action as in the remote validation action (or just the same call) can work but I am wondering if a one-liner or something more elegant is available.
Perfectly acceptable answers include "no, it can't be done". :)
See my MSDN article How to: Implement Remote Validation in ASP.NET MVC
I use the remote client validation code in the HttpPost Create method to test server side when JavaScript is disabled.
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Create(CreateUserModel model) {
// Verify user name for clients who have JavaScript disabled
if (_repository.UserExists(model.UserName)) {
ModelState.AddModelError("UserName", ValidationController.GetAltName(model.UserName, _repository));
return View("Create", model);
}
It 'can' be done.. but you would need to write your own custom attribute that basically emits for client side and is validated server side. For me I just extract the validation code into a method and check on the server.
Something similar came up recently as well:
Prevent form from submitting when using unobtrusive validation in ASP.NET MVC 3
I wonder if one couldnt inherit from the remote attribute and add their own server side code them. hmm.. maybe I'll have to try this.
I would be happy though if someone here said they already did this : )
I have done this, it's a bit of a long solution, so it's all available on my blog here:
http://www.metaltheater.com/tech/technical/fixing-the-remote-validation-attribute/
I had to create a new subclass of the RemoteAttribute class, create my own custom model binder by inheriting from DefaultModelBinder, and then use reflection to call the validator on the controller.

Generating urls from MVC Routes in a Management layer...

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);

Update Custom Entities in MS CRM 4.0 via Custom Workflow

I have created a custom entity in MS CRM 4.0 and am trying to update a couple of the attributes via a custom worflow in .Net. I have read through several of the forums and blog posts and am still confused on how to access the custom entity and update some of their attributes.
I created a custom entity to replace how CRM was doing allotments as our company has some specific business rules that CRM wasn't doing. When a task is completed on an incident I want to update an attribute in the custom entity with the task duration. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
When using the CRM web service in a custom workflow, you'll need to use DynamicEntity objects. The workflow context webservice is just an ICrmService so it doesn't know about your specific customizations. There's a pretty sample here: http://www.stunnware.com/crm2/topic.aspx?id=CustomWorkflowActivity
I imagine you could also add the CRM web services as a web reference to your workflow project. Then you'd have strongly types objects for your custom entities. I've never done this for my custom workflows, but it works for other custom apps accessing CRM.
Choosing Dynamic Entities over WSDL in favour is always the better choice.
When you develop a piece of code, you are more flexible with your classes. You could use your piece of software in different contexts for different systems. That's the reason Dynamic Entities were invented.
It's very easy and you dont'have to use DynamicEntity. You have to go to Settings -> Customization -> Download WSDL. Take the wsdl and use it in your project. Now you have all your custom entities strongly typed. All you have to do is to write something like this:
Guid entityId = getEntityId();
new_yourCustomEntity entity = new new_yourCustomEntity();
entity.new_yourCustomEntityid = entityId;
entity.new_customProperty = "value";
CrmService crmService = new CrmService();
crmService.Update(entity);
Maybe what you really mean is Custom Workflow Activity? This involves writing your own .NET class to add functionality to the standard CRM WF in form of new step types. If what you want to do is just to update an attribute you don't really need this, even if it is on a custom entity. The Update record step does just this and allows dynamic values (coming from other entities) to be specified.
Hope it helps
Daniel

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