DaveTheNinja.Net

I have just setup my brothers new website for his company Lucid Concepts.

He is a 3d/CGI/Illustrator/Artist and is available to do any work - his stuff is awsome!

The website is just up and he will be adding all of his portfolio and current news and work over the next couple of days so check it out.

Website: www.lucid-concepts.com

Email: mrhappy (at) lucid-concepts.com

I love this one, reminds me of Ninja Scroll Manga movie http://www.lucid-concepts.com/post/portfolio-the-pilgrim.aspx

The Ninja

Getting started – Project Structure

I have a standard project structure that I work to on 90% of all MVC.net web applications that I develop and would like to give some insight to what each part of the application

Folder Structure

The image below is the file system folder structure of this project.

• Build
  Contains the build scripts for the CI server
   
• Lib
  Contains all of the third party assemblies that will be used in this application.
   
• Licenses
  Contains all of the third party assembly licences.
   
• Src
  Contains the source code and project files.
   
• Tools
  Contains the tools required for building and testing the application such as Nant and Nunit.

Visual Studio Solution

The image on the right is of my Visual Studio solution explorer which contains the following projects:

• Build
  I create a Solution Folder and attach the build script files for easy access to edit within visual studio.
   
• Core
  Initially when I create a new project, I keep all of my application and domain code in a core project separating the layers by namespaces as I personally do not see the need to overly complicate a project structure until such time as the codebase grows large enough to justify separating out to codebase into individual projects.
   
• Core.Specifications
  Core.Specifications is referenced by Core.Specifications.Integration and Core.Specifications.State.  Core.Specifications is where I keep all of my test setup/helper classes.
   
• Core.Specifications.Integration
  When it comes to testing an application, I prefer to separate out my integration and state based tests into separate projects.  It enables me to easily differentiate between the slower integration tests and fast state based tests when setting up my continuous integration server.
  
  The integration tests are those which actually execute against databases or other live services.
   
• Core.Specifications.State
  The state based tests are those which are only testing the current “state” of the class under test.  For example when I add a Page to a Section, I want to assert that the page has actually been added to the sections page collection.
   
• UI
  The UI project is the presentation layer of the application.  Harnessing the MVC framework and the Spark view engine give so much more freedom than the ASP.net Web Forms model.  It also has major benefits over the default MVC.net view engine, such as the formatting of the views – no classic asp spaghetti code in sight!
   

Next post will be on configuring the projects prerequisites - setting up castle/nhibernate/test helper libraries/MVC/Spark etc etc...

The Ninja

p.s the next post will be up when I return from Hong Kong (January)

Only 4 days left until I am in Hong Kong!  I really can not wait to get over there for Xmas and New Years and see my fiance again, shes been over there since August this year.

I am sure to have lots of blog posts about it including photographs from my (mis)adventures!

The Ninja

Key Elements

Section

Page

Content<T>

Media

Iteration 1 Functionality

I have been planning on doing an open source CMS application for .net MVC platform for quite some time now, and with all of the recent activity on twitter and blogs its time that I actually get this project up and running.

What is a CMS?

Background

Technologies

• MVC.net / MVC Contrib
• Spark View Engine
• NHibernate
• Castle Windsor
• Binsor
• Boo
• Rhino Tools

End Goal

The wonderful chaps at Jetbrains have just sent me out a full Enterprise OSS licence for Team City build server.

I would like to say a massive thank you to Jetbrains from all of us at the Horn development team for supporting our project.

Long live Jetbrains!!

Ninja

Here are some classic taiji push hands videos performed by the late Grandmaster Huang Sheng Shyan.

Last night’s grading was, well, interesting to say the least!Started off being graded on the Taiji Yang Family short form (which is anything but short), then the Taiji Bagua Circle, then Da Lu 1 and finally the Taiji broad sword form.

I had a few hairy moments throughout the night, forgetting some connecting moves but eventually remembered them during pre-grading practice.

I have been told by Si Fu that from a martial (combat/fighting) perspective, I am already at black belt level.  What‘s holding me back from getting my black belt is my knowledge of the acupuncture meridians, and the delivery of my form’s.

However, last night I passed my grading, and have actually skipped a belt to go from purple to brown belt 1^st tab – 2 more tabs on brown and I will have my black belt.

I am really happy about this as I feel that I am actually making great progress now.

Having been doing this art for 15 years now, about 5 years ago I handed my belts back in and started from scratch again through respect for the club as I had been out of training for over 2 years due to injury and being too occupied with work.

Onwards and upwards now!

The Ninja

 Here are some helper extension methods I use within MVC.net to convert IEnumerable lists of T into SelectList's for use on form Dropdown lists.

Code:

    public static class ListExtensions
    {
        public static IEnumerable<T> ForEach<T>(this IEnumerable<T> collection, Action<T> action)
        {
            foreach (var item in collection) action(item);
            return collection;
        }

        public static SelectList ToSelectList<T>(this IEnumerable<T> collection)
        {
            return new SelectList(collection, "Key", "Value");
        }

        public static SelectList ToSelectList<T>(this IEnumerable<T> collection, string selectedValue)
        {
            return new SelectList(collection, "Key", "Value", selectedValue);
        }

        public static SelectList ToSelectList<T>(this IEnumerable<T> collection, string dataValueField, string dataTextField)
        {
            return new SelectList(collection, dataValueField, dataTextField);
        }

        public static SelectList ToSelectList<T>(this IEnumerable<T> collection, string dataValueField, string dataTextField, string selectedValue)
        {
            return new SelectList(collection, dataValueField, dataTextField, selectedValue);
        }
    }

Usage:

ViewData["Countries"] = Country.AsList.ToSelectList("Code", "Name", "GB");

Cheers

The Ninja

I have finally got round to setting up my blog.  It has been a long time coming and the only thing that was holding me back was the lack of code formatting within the blog engines out there but thanks to “The Wookie” this has now been resolved.

So what can you expect to find in here? You can expect to find articles on programming, my daily life and kung fu – and that’s about it!

Up and coming articles:

• Life: Results from tonights Taiji grading
• OSS Code: PayPal Express Checkout through C#
• Programming: TDD with MVC.net
• Programming: Setting up a basic CMS system with MVC.net

Cheers

The Ninja