Slow first Time in ASP.NET applications

Well, this is a recurrent topic with ASP.NET:Why is the first page load always so slowjQuery152032498610322363675_1363786231988?

I don't think there is a definite answer but I can think on some explanations:

• ASP.NET applications by nature exhibit some degree of delay upon initial access to the site. This can be due to JIT compilation, caching, etc. 
• Note that it is also a common effect on some sharepoint sites. 
• Some people on StackExchange attribute this slowness to: " The IIS application pool is shut down after 30 minutes of inactivity. After that, when you make a request IIS basically has to start the website up again, which leads to the behavior you are describing. You can change the idle time of your website in iis though to avoid it." 

ASP.NET Site Warm up on GitHub

ASP .NET Pre heating and the App Warmup Addin for IIS

Auto Start Feature in ASP.NET 4

Share session state between ASP classic and ASP.NET or missing ASP classic and ASP.NET

Today my good friend Jafet asked me: "What do you think about sharing ASP classic and ASP.NET state?". And I told him that there were some projects for helping in this task.

I will mention some of them here.

The first one is NSession. This project provides an implementation that allows you to use the ASP.NET state server in ASP classic. You do not have to change your ASP classic code.

"You need to instantiate one of the COM objects in your ASP classic page before it accesses session state, either:

set oSession = Server.CreateObject("NSession.Session")

or

set oSession = Server.CreateObject("NSession.ReadOnlySession")

If you instantiate NSession.Session, the session state in the session store will be transferred to the ASP Classic session dictionary, and an exclusive lock will be placed in the session store. You do not need to change your existing code that accesses the ASP Classic session object. When NSession.Session goes out of scope, it will save the ASP Classic session dictionary back to the session store and release the exclusive lock.
If you have done with the session state, you can release the lock early with

set oSession = Nothing

If you instantiate NSession.ReadOnlySession, the session state in the session store will be transferred to the ASP Classic session dictionary but no locks will be placed."

The second option is SessionService. This project provides a mechanism for sharing the state between ASP classic and ASP.NET by serializing state data to an SQL Server.  The project page provides detailed information on how to setup IIS, how it is used in both platforms.

And the third option is a very interesting one called ASPClassicCompiler. This is a great great project. It provides a mechanism for compiling the ASP classic to .NET. This project is now opensource and we need to thank Li Chen for it.

Great ideas can be implemented thanks to this source. For example Brian Ellis suggested using the VBScript engine to replace the  MSScript.OCX. Another great one is an implementation of an View Engine that can be used with MVC and which support ASP Classic.

I really like the ASPClassic project and will be posting some interesting examples soon (as soon as I finish watching some Dr. Who episodes and the last Fringe season :) ) 

HTML5 lets you deploy your applications everywhere

Silverlight as a mechanism for simplification of application deployment

Using ClickOnce deployment over the web to simplify Windows Form Application deployment

Profiling and Couldn't open metabase error when profiling for ASP .NET in IIS

I was trying to profile an ASP.NET application that was hosted on my local IIS.

But everytime I started the profiler I got a message like:

"Could not start IIS"

"Couldn't open metabase ..." "account has reduced privileges..." bla bla.

I could not understand why? My account is in the administrator group and yes,

Visual Studio was running as Administrator

Solution:

1. Run cmd as Administrator

2. c:\windows\microsoft.net\framework\v4.0.30319

3. aspnet_regiis 

4. aspnet_regiis -ga Domain\User

And then log off and log in

Problem uploading large files in ASP.NET

If you try to upload large files you might get an exception like

HttpException: Maximum request lenght exceeded.

This problem occurs because the default value for the maxRequestLength parameter in the section 

of the machine.config or Web.config file is 4096 (4M).

So any file with a size bigger will fail.

However I think that the max size that you can write here is 2G 2097151

Some info can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;295626

So to change that for 512mb use something like:

<configuration>

    <system.web>

        <httpRuntime maxRequestLength="524288" /> 

    </system.web>

</configuration>

Binding problem when Sending JSON object to MVC3

After a frustrating couple of hours trying to determine WHY WHY my object did not bind with MVC3 I finally found why.

The story began like this.

I have a very simple method in a controller. Something like this:

public class Form1Controller : Controller
    {
        //
        // GET: /Form1/

        public ActionResult Index()
        {
            return View();
        }

        [HttpPost]
        public ActionResult DoButton1(Person zzz)
        { 
            System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(zzz.Name);
            return Json(data: "Good Test");
        }
   
       

    }

And I called that code with a jquery Statement like:

var person= JSON.stringify({ Name: "Mauricio", LastName: "Rojas" });              $.ajax({                                    
                    url: "/Form1/DoButton1/",
                    type: "POST",
                    dataType: "json",
                    data: person,
                    success: function () {
                        alert("OK");
                    },
   
                });

But!!! (maybe you already saw the obvious mistake) no matter what I sent, the Person object was not bind.
The action method got called but I was not able to see the sent values. I used Chrome developer tools and the network that show the
values I had modified.
SO WHYYYYY!!!!

I tried to debug the MVC code, but VS studio could not load the pdb, something I get that I still not sure why.

So how could I intercept what was happening? Simple with a ModelBinder.

A ModelBinder is class that is used to bind your request to a model object.

So I went to the Global.asax file and register my binder, and set some breakpoints.

//Code in Global.asax to register a Person Binder
    protected void Application_Start()
        {
            AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();
            ModelBinders.Binders.Add(typeof(Person), new PersonBinder());
            RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);
            RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);
        }

    public class PersonBinder : IModelBinder
    {
        public object BindModel(ControllerContext controllerContext, ModelBindingContext bindingContext)
        {
            var contentType = controllerContext.HttpContext.Request.ContentType;
            if (!contentType.StartsWith("application/json", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
                return (null);

            string bodyText;

            using (var stream = controllerContext.HttpContext.Request.InputStream)
            {
                stream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
                using (var reader = new StreamReader(stream))
                    bodyText = reader.ReadToEnd();
            }

            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(bodyText)) return (null);

            var xx = new JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize<Person>(bodyText);

            return xx;
        }
    }

And voila!! the content type I was getting was something like:application/x-www-form-urlencoded

So I just added the content type parameter to my javascript code:

$.ajax({                                    
                    url: "/Form1/DoButton1/",
                    type: "POST",
                    dataType: "json",
                    data: viewModelStr,
                    success: function () {
                        alert("inside");
                    }//,
                    contentType: 'application/json; charset=utf-8' 
                });

Binding problem when Sending JSON object to MVC3

After a frustrating couple of hours trying to determine WHY WHY my object did not bind with MVC3 I finally found why.

The story began like this.

I have a very simple method in a controller. Something like this:

public class Form1Controller : Controller
    {
        //
        // GET: /Form1/

        public ActionResult Index()
        {
            return View();
        }

        [HttpPost]
        public ActionResult DoButton1(Person zzz)
        { 
            System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(zzz.Name);
            return Json(data: "Good Test");
        }
   
       

    }

And I called that code with a jquery Statement like:

var person= JSON.stringify({ Name: "Mauricio", LastName: "Rojas" });              $.ajax({                                    
                    url: "/Form1/DoButton1/",
                    type: "POST",
                    dataType: "json",
                    data: person,
                    success: function () {
                        alert("OK");
                    },
   
                });

But!!! (maybe you already saw the obvious mistake) no matter what I sent, the Person object was not bind.
The action method got called but I was not able to see the sent values. I used Chrome developer tools and the network that show the
values I had modified.
SO WHYYYYY!!!!

I tried to debug the MVC code, but VS studio could not load the pdb, something I get that I still not sure why.

So how could I intercept what was happening? Simple with a ModelBinder.

A ModelBinder is class that is used to bind your request to a model object.

So I went to the Global.asax file and register my binder, and set some breakpoints.

//Code in Global.asax to register a Person Binder
    protected void Application_Start()
        {
            AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();
            ModelBinders.Binders.Add(typeof(Person), new PersonBinder());
            RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);
            RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);
        }

    public class PersonBinder : IModelBinder
    {
        public object BindModel(ControllerContext controllerContext, ModelBindingContext bindingContext)
        {
            var contentType = controllerContext.HttpContext.Request.ContentType;
            if (!contentType.StartsWith("application/json", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
                return (null);

            string bodyText;

            using (var stream = controllerContext.HttpContext.Request.InputStream)
            {
                stream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
                using (var reader = new StreamReader(stream))
                    bodyText = reader.ReadToEnd();
            }

            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(bodyText)) return (null);

            var xx = new JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize<Person>(bodyText);

            return xx;
        }
    }

And voila!! the content type I was getting was something like:application/x-www-form-urlencoded

So I just added the content type parameter to my javascript code:

$.ajax({                                    
                    url: "/Form1/DoButton1/",
                    type: "POST",
                    dataType: "json",
                    data: viewModelStr,
                    success: function () {
                        alert("inside");
                    }//,
                    contentType: 'application/json; charset=utf-8' 
                });

Output unescaped string in Razor

var objectInStr = @(new HtmlString(Json.Encode(Model or your object)));