developers’ magazine .NET pages
ASP.NET 1.0 with C# Namespace Reference
book review by Bob Swart
Authors Amit Kalani, John Schenken, Bruce Lee, Matthew Apart from the System.Web namespace, the first chapter
Gibbs, Matt Milner, Jason Bell, Mike Clark, Andy Elmhorst, also very briefly describes what it takes to build an ASP.NET
Alex Homer, Dave Gerding; pub WROX; 930 pages; application. This should serve as a reminder only, and you
Amazon price £22.34 + p&p. should really make sure you have some prior ASP.NET
experience before you pick up this book. The introduction
This book was written in 2002 and tested against the final
of chapter 1 is not enough to learn ASP.NET, although the
release of .NET 1.0. It is written by ten different authors,
rest of the book is a wonderful reference that will quickly
and contains a complete reference to the different ASP.NET
become indispensable if you’re building ASP.NET applications
namespaces. Beware, however, that the book is not about
without the benefit of a design-time environment that offers
writing ASP.NET applications, but rather a helpful reference
integrated code insight or detailed on-line help. (I must confess
for ASP.NET developers. The language and syntax used in
that I haven’t seen an ASP.NET on-line helpfile with the
the book is C#, but it shouldn’t be too hard to translate that
amount of detail that I can find in this book.)
to Delphi for .NET by the average reader.
Once you’ve found what you’re looking for, you get a
The book consists of 11 chapters and 2 appendices. Since
description of what this method (public or protected) or
these provide a good idea of what the book is all about, here
property is all about, and what the C# syntax is. There are
are the titles of the chapters and appendices:
also a good number of detailed code examples showing the
• Chapter 1: System.Web usage of the class in a useful way, not just how to assign a
• Chapter 2: System.Web.UI value to a property, but more real-world examples like
• Chapter 3: System.Web.UI.HtmlControls setting different fonts on a mobile device using the
MobileControl class, showing the X and Y co-ordinates of
• Chapter 4: System.Web.UI.WebControls an image click using the HtmlInputImage class, and doing
• Chapter 5: System.Web.UI.MobileControls form-based authentication and authorisation in the
• Chapter 6: System.Web.Caching System.Web.Security namespace chapter.
• Chapter 7: System.Web.Configuration Appendix A, about Data in ASP.NET is actually about
• Chapter 8: System.Web.Security ADO.NET (what else? see my Hitch Hiker’s Guide To...
• Chapter 9: System.Web.Services column in this issue of the UK-BUG Developers’
Magazine), and contains a System.Data overview. For this
• Chapter 10: System.Web.Services.Description appendix, you need SQL Server or the Microsoft Data Engine
• Chapter 11: System.Web.Services.Protocols (MSDE). The second appendix, about XML in ASP.NET is
• Appendix A: Data in ASP.NET all about the System.XML namespace. This is a topic that I
• Appendix B: XML in ASP.NET will cover in more detail at DCon 2003 - stay tuned for
more details. [Note to editor: was I the first one to plug
As you can see, each chapter covers a different namespace, DCon again this year? Yes, Bob! Ed]
and this is done in sufficient detail. I have a feeling that most
authors focused on just one chapter, and hence could go really So, what do I think of the book? Personally, I’m not an
in-depth in their treatments and examples for the individual ASP.NET expert, so I welcome the information that I can
namespaces. Each chapter starts with a description of what find in this book. Also, I’m using not only C# but also Delphi
this namespace is all about, and then lists the core classes that for .NET as my development environment (although in both
will be covered. Sometimes, when certain classes overlap, cases I actually use the command-line compiler only), but
the reader is referred to a previous chapter. For example, this appeared to be no problem - the references in the book
in the System.Web.UI.MobileControl chapter, only the are in C#, but can easily be converted to Delphi for .NET
MobileControl specific classes Command, DeviceSpecific, when needed. The examples were useful, and I learned a lot
DeviceSpecificChoice, MobileCapabilities, MobileControl, browsing through the book. The only disadvantage is that I
ObjectList, and PagedControl are covered, while the detailed sometimes had to look a while before I found what I was
coverage of all the other few dozen classes can be found in looking for, and sometimes I couldn’t find what I was
the general System.Web.UI.WebControls chapter. looking for. The index is long (more than 50 pages), but
didn’t help me much: browsing through the chapter for the
Speaking of the Web.UI.WebControls chapter - that namespace I was using proved to be more efficient, at least
particular chapter would have been a very big one, if the for me. An on-line help or even HTML version (with
authors hadn’t decided to list only the new members of each references hyperlinked to each other) would certainly help,
class (and not the inherited members, which are described in and I’ve sent this as a suggestion to the publisher. The book
the ancestor class). The downside is that you sometimes have doesn’t contain source code on a disk, but you can download
to browse a bit until you find the description you’re looking the source code from the WROX website.
for. Since most are derived from the WebControl class, this
is a good starting point (on page 427), but even then some All in all, this is a useful book that I will no doubt use often
method references are made back to the Control class from when building ASP.NET applications in C# of Delphi for
the System.Web.UI namespace, or Object from the .NET. There is also a VB.NET edition too.
System.Web namespace.