A while back, I thought up the idea of the SmartBag, which has a very friendly API for working with viewdata objects.  With the December CTP, adding objects to ViewData was a bit difficult, but now that the ViewData property is an IDictionary on the Controller base class, getting objects in is very easy.  If you like this post, subscribe to my feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/jeffreypalermo.

Consider the following usage

[Test]

public void ShouldRetrieveSingleObjectByType()

{

    var bag = new Dictionary<string, object>();

    var url = new Url("/asdf"); //arbitrary object

    bag.Add(url);

    Assert.That(bag.Get<Url>(), Is.EqualTo(url));

    Assert.That(bag.Get(typeof(Url)), Is.EqualTo(url));

}

We are adding a Url object to the dictionary, and then we can retrieve the object through the Get<T> method or by passing the type.  No need for a string key if only a single Url is in the dictionary.  If you have multiple Url objects, you can fall back to keys, or you can pass in a Url[] and then Get<Url[]>(). 

In CodeCampServer, I’ve removed SmartBag and added these ViewDataExtensions.  These are extension methods to IDictionary<string, object> and System.Web.Mvc.ViewData.  In my opinion, System.Web.Mvc.ViewData should inherit from Dictionary<string, object>, so maybe that will happen in the next release.

I’ve added ViewDataExtensions to MvcContrib, so you you’d like to use them, just build the trunk of MvcContrib, and you’ll have them.  Look at CodeCampServer for widespread use of these extension methods.  Strongly typed views don’t scale when the application complexity increases, but these view data extensions make working with the dictionary a snap.  My annoyance factor is very low with viewdata now.

MvcContrib is a free, open-source project.  Feel free to use it and contribute patches to it.  Building it takes less than 1 minute on my box, and the build runs all 840 unit tests to verify the features continue to work.

I was having a hard time easily testing controller classes with the MVC Framework December CTP.  Now it’s easier.  For some background, I’m writing ASP.NET MVC in Action for Manning, so I’m going through all kinds of scenarios, and in the first chapter with the tiny little Hello World samples, it’s now easier to test these.  Consider the following controller:

using System.Web.Mvc;

namespace MvcApplication.Controllers

{

    public class HelloWorld1Controller : IController

    {

        public void Execute(ControllerContext controllerContext)

        {

            controllerContext.HttpContext.Response.Write(

                "<h1>Hello World1</h1>");

        }

    }

}

And here’s my unit test:

using MvcApplication.Controllers;

using NUnit.Framework;

using NUnit.Framework.SyntaxHelpers;

namespace MvcApplicationTest.Controllers

{

    [TestFixture]

    public class HelloWorld1ControllerTester

    {

        [Test]

        public void ShouldRender()

        {

            var response = new ResponseWriteStub();

            var contextStub = new HttpContextStub(response);

            var controller = new HelloWorld1Controller();

            controller.Execute(new ControllerContextStub(controller, contextStub));

            Assert.That(response.ActualWritten, Is.EqualTo("<h1>Hello World1</h1>"));

        }

    }

}

Pretty darned simple.  Below are my stub classes.

using System.Web;

using System.Web.Mvc;

using System.Web.Routing;

namespace MvcApplicationTest

{

    public class ControllerContextStub : ControllerContext

    {

        public ControllerContextStub(IController controller)

            : base(new RequestContext(new HttpContextStub(), new RouteData()), controller)

        {

        }

        public ControllerContextStub(IController controller, HttpContextBase contextBase)

            : base(new RequestContext(contextBase, new RouteData()), controller)

        {

        }

    }

}

using System.Web;

namespace MvcApplicationTest

{

    public class HttpContextStub : HttpContextBase

    {

        private readonly HttpResponseBase _response;

        public HttpContextStub(HttpResponseBase response)

        {

            _response = response;

        }

        public HttpContextStub()

        {

        }

        public override HttpResponseBase Response

        {

            get { return _response; }

        }

    }

}

using System.Web;

namespace MvcApplicationTest.Controllers

{

    public class ResponseWriteStub : HttpResponseBase

    {

        public string ActualWritten;

        public override void Write(string s)

        {

            ActualWritten = s;

        }

    }

}

It’s time again.  I’m hiring.  If you’d like to work for me at Austin’s leading agile consulting company, please apply through our website job posting.  The applications all get routed to me, so if you apply and fit well, I’ll end up giving you a call.  We’re hoping to hire locally, so if you already live in Austin, TX, that’s a plus.

Here’s our team page.

Here’s the job posting.

For a little more on what what do, read here.

We are a corporate member of the AgileAlliance.

For information on our Agile Boot Camp.

And, finally, if you’d like me to visit your company for a day to give you an agile assessment of your software department, just let us know.  I’m doing more and more of those lately.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cli_dev/ is closed.  A poll of the group showed that this was the best course of action.  The archives are still there.  Anyone who was a member can still search the archives.  Unfortunately, Yahoo doesn’t provide a mechanism for public message access for a closed group, so this is as good as I could get it.  All messages are still there.

If you would like to participate in more Alt.Net stuff, go to http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/altdotnet/

On CodePlex.  Read more from Scott Guthrie:  http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/03/21/asp-net-mvc-source-code-now-available.aspx

For more stuff on ASP.NET MVC, subscribe to my feed:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/jeffreypalermo

Last week I taught the March Headspring Agile Boot Camp.  Since it’s a course for developers, it’s all about Extreme Programming, process, and architecture decisions that lead to a zero-friction project.   Stay tuned to my rss feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/jeffreypalermo because I’ll be releasing the source code for the reference application we work on during the course.  It’s a work order system, and it has all the hairy things you expect in a line of business application, like statuses, state transitions, notifications, etc. 

Mke Palermo (MVP and Microsoft Regional Director) was in my course, and I was glad to see him again.  No we’re not related, but he’s a good friend, and I normally only see him at conferences. 

John Blackman (former Microsoft employee – moved to Austin, TX) was also in the course, and he wrote a review on his blog.

Karthik from Telligent Systems was in the January course, and his blog review is here.

For those who frequent the TechPodcasts network, like I do, you’ve probably heard of the 10% discount code for GoDaddy.com orders.  Everybody and their brother gives away GoDaddy 10% off codes.  The problem is that today it doesn’t seem to work.  Could it be a hidden policy (fine print) or could GoDaddy use some unit tests around thier shopping cart total calculations?