If you have worked with ASP.NET GridView Control you must be aware of GridView.EmptyDataTemplate Property which Gets or sets the user-defined content for the empty data row when a Gri
dView control data source has no records. Similarly ShowHeaderWhenEmpty property allows you to show or hide the Header row when there is no records. These are the really good and very frequent required properties. Now, if you are working with the Repeater Control, it doesn’t have any direct features which enables you to set user define content when data source is empty. In this blog post I will discuss how we can create a custom ASP.NET Repeater control with support of EmptyTemplate along with few more important features.
Category: Tips and Tricks
Run ASP.NET Web Application from Command Prompt
Visual Studio has its own integrated ASP.NET Runtime engine, which helps to run any ASP.NET web application with in Visual Studio. While running application from Visual Studio, you must have seen a popup notification in System Tray (As shown in below image) , which is notification of ASP.NET Development Server.
This ASP.NET Development Server is nothing but a executable file (WebDev.WebServer) which used by Visual Studio to execute you web application when it’s running in the context of Visual Studio. You can find the executable file at <\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\microsoft shared\DevServer\10.0> . This folder contain two different executable
- WebDev.WebServer20.EXE
- WebDev.WebServer40.EXE
WebDev.WebServer20 is targeted to CLR 2.0, which means all the ASP.NET Application which are targeted till FW .NET 3.5 will be taking care by WebDev.WebServer20.EXE and WebDev.WebServer40.EXE for ASP.NET 4.0 based application.
Now, let’s see how we can use these executable to run an ASP.NET 4.0 Application with out using Visual Studio. 
How to make ViewState secure in ASP.NET ?
The ASP.NET ViewState is a client side state management. ViewState is stored in hidden field with ID named __VIEWSTATE. Typically, stored ViewState information looks as below:
Now let us look at the value. It looks likes an encrypted string. This is nothing but Base64 Encoded string and it is not an encrypted string. So it can be easily decoded.
The main reasons for making it Base64 encoding are as follows:
1. Base64 makes a string suitable for HTTP transfer
2. It makes it a little harder to read .
But people often get confused that this is an encrypted string.
Use shortcut key to generate GUID very quickly in Visual Studio
One of the common tasks involved in the development is GUID’s generation. This is even more frequent when we are working on a SharePoint solutions. Even during writing unit test we need to 
generate static GUID to validate data’s. Visual Studio comes with a tool called guidgen.exe ( c:\program files (x86)\microsoft sdks\windows\v7.0a\bin\NETFX 4.0 Tools\guidgen.exe ) which is registered with visual studio as an external tool and invoked from Tools > Create GUID. But whenever you need an unique static GUID you have to navigate to tool and copy the ID evertime. Last few days of my development involved with lots of GUID generation where I found it’s taking time to generate so many guid’s. So, I came up with an small approach where we can generate a GUID by just pressing some shortcut key. Behind the seen I wrote a macro for the same and that is being triggered with the key press.
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When we can use HttpContext.Current.Items to stores data in ASP.NET?
To answer this question In a single statement, you can use HttpContext.Current.Items for very short term storage. By Short term storage means, this data is valid for a single HTTP Request. There are many confusion around regarding storing data in HttpContext.Current.Items and storing data in Session variable. In this blog post I am going to describe what are the different scenarios where we can use HttpContext.Current.Items and what is the exact difference with session variable.
Items collections of HttpContext is and IDictionary key-value collections and that are shared across a single HTTPRequest. Yes, HttpContext.Current.Items valid for a single HTTPRequest. Once after processing, server information is sent back to the browser, the variables that were set in the Items[] collection will lost. Where as for Session Variable, information valid for multiple request as this is user specific. The session variable only expires either on Session Time Out or explicitly clear the values.
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Exception Occurred ? – Get Troubleshooting tips from your favorite blogs
In this blog post, I am going to share a quite interesting tips, where you can customize the “Exception Assistant” in visual studio. I have explained how we can use this features for an custom exception class, where we want to provides custom or additional help information . As an example, I have shown how we can set some favorite blogs urls in troubleshooting tips section.
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Tips from Daily .NET Tips – Week 1
Here is the quick reference of Week 1 .NET Tips from http://dailydotnettips.com .
Generate Method Stubs using Shortcut Key in Visual Studio
In this tips I have shown how you can generate a method stub using shortcut key
Calling Methods From Watch Window
From this tips you will get to know how you can call a method from watch window
Conditional Breakpoints with Method Calling in Visual Studio
Know how you can use some return value from a method with in conditional breakpoints.
Know when your application pools recycling in IIS 7.5 – Log an entry in Event Viewer while recycling
In this tips you will learn how you can log information in event viewer whenever application pool getting recycle
How to count number of active session for State Server Session Mode ?
Know how to count number of active session from State Server session using Performance Monitor tool
How to calculate Session data size for SQL Server session mode?
In this tips I have show, how you can calculate the session data size in SQL Server Session mode.
To learn daily .NET Tips like this, visit http://dailydotnettips.com and follow @DailyDotNetTips
Thanks !
AJ
Add document header for files automatically in Visual Studio
In this blog post I am going to share how you can add a document header 
of xml comments with code file automatically. This is going to be an very interesting and helpful for all of you who are using styleCop to maintain coding standard. Actually extensive using of StyleCop helped me to think to make it automate. There are many tools available which can helps us in this case to do this automatically. But I always prefer let’s Visual studio do the job for me. Here I am going to share with you two different approaches to deal with this issue. Now it’s up to you which one to use.
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Tips : “Remove and Sort” Namespaces using Shortcut in Visual Studio
While dealing with maintaining coding standard like stylecop warning fix with code, most of the time we need to remove unused namespaces and sort the namespaces. We can do it easily from the context menu of the code editor. There you have three different option for “Organize Using” . Either you can Remove Unused Usings , Sort Usings or we can do it together by selecting “Remove and Sort” . Let’s see how we can make it more handy !
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Tips : Set Breakpoint to multiple Functions at a same time in Visual Studio
Visual Studio having great features to set breakpoint in multiple functions at same time. For most of the time, to set a breakpoint with in a function you just put a breakpoint in the first line of the function. Now, assume you have 10 different overloaded methods or you have same function in different project, and you want to put breakpoint all of them or few of them, then it will take time to put breakpoint in each and every function. In this post I am going to share two quick tips by which you can set breakpoint to function very easily. first one is by using “Break at Function” and second one by “Using Find Combo Box”.
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How to use out of scope object with in Conditional Breakpoint ?
During debugging of your application, you may need to keep track of some data which are already out of scope. Say, You call a MethodB() from MethodA() and did some operation inside MethodB(), now when you returned back to MethodA(), all the local variables inside MethodB() are
out of scope. But you want to use them in MethodA(). Now here is the trick, that you can create an ObjectID for an member variables or objects and can track the same when it’s out of scope as well, but until GC() does not collect it. In this post, I am going to explore how we can use an Out of Scope object value to deal with Conditional Break points. To start with, first you have to understand how to use Object ID to track and out of scope object. Here is my complete article How to track an object which is Out of Scope while Debugging ? . Though I described a quick look into use of out of scope object inside conditional breakpoints on that article, I received few query about more details on the same. So here I am going to give some more details.
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Use Shortcut or Context Menu for “Open Containing Folder” in Visual Studio
“Open Containing Folder” is one of the frequent used functionality to open a particular file location in windows explore from Visual Studio IDE . How did we do that ? Yes it’s very simple, Just right click on file from files Tab and select “Open Containing Folder” from the context menu as shown in below.
This will open the selected item location in windows explorer. This operation by default having no keyboard shortcut. But do you know we can assign keyboard shortcut for the same or even we can customize the context menu in code editor to achieve the same as shown in below images.
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How to use IIS Manager to get Worker Processes (w3wp.exe) details information ?
In one of my previous blog post, Identifying Worker Process (w3wp.exe) – IIS 6.0 and IIS 7.0 for Debugging ASP.NET Application – I have explained about how we can identify the list of currently running worker process using command prompt while we need to attach process from visual studio . But do you know for IIS 7.0 and IIS 7.5 we can get the worker process (w3wp.exe) details like Application Pool name, Process ID, CPU Usages from IIS Manager itself. Even you can get details of each worker process for a “Web Garden” scenarios. So when you need to attach some process for debugging from Visual studio, Instead of going to command prompt, you can easily identify the worker process Id from IIS itself.
Read More “How to use IIS Manager to get Worker Processes (w3wp.exe) details information ?”
Multipurpose Find Combo Box in Visual Studio
Most of the time we use Visual Studio find combo box (
) only for search contents with in the solution. But the find combo box is something more than what we know. We can use the find combo box in different purpose like create file, open files, create project, print, open watch windows etc. As for example you can close all the open files by just typing “>CloseAll” with in find combo box followed by a “Enter”. Fundamentally we can execute all the commands from Find Combo box which are available from Visual Studio Command Window. Like Command Window, In Combo Box, if you type “>” and aliases and press enter result will be the same.
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