Entries for 'Clint Patterson'

When first learning DNN module development is is possible for things to get fuzzy... at least it did for me. I wanted to know where things lived and what exactly they did for me and my module. If you are like me and seek to understand all the bits and pieces and wnat to know how they work together then this entry is for you. In this blog entry we'll look at how all the components of our module work together to make a sweet module harmony.

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In our module development quest we've taken several steps thus far and in this entry we are fixing to score our first Touchdown as we will finally get data back into our view control! JavaScripters we'll be speaking your language in this blog entry as we will walk through the process of using jQuery AJAX to get data returned from our web service and finally placed into our View.ascx file

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Web services tie the web together! Well... almost at least :-) As indicated in the previous blog entry on Modern Module Development we are opting to use modern development techniques in our module as much as possible. A lot of web applications provide some sort of web service end points so that external systems can integrate with their data. In our case we're going to use web services internally for our own module (but we're not limited to just using web services with our own module). In this blog entry we will walk through building out our web service class for our tasks module.

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There has been a recent shift in web development. The shift has been to more client-side development practices with applications being heavily based on JavaScript and web services. This approach provides several benefits for the end-users. This blog entry discusses why we're opting for the "modern" development route in this series versus developing our "Tasks" module in the way modules were developed in the past. Want a module with a great user experience... then you will love developing modules via the modern approach.

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Have you wondered how exactly we can get code in our module to post data to the database? Well, I pondered that same mystery for a while, but it's really not such a mystery. The Task Controller Class is the "Traffic Director" between our module's code and the data in our database. In this blog entry we'll walk through the process of creating the TaskController class and sending data to our Tasks Table in SQL Server.

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Stored Procedures are scripts that get repeatedly executed in our database and they help us to have a "loosely coupled" system with separation of concerns. By using Stored Procedures we're also helping protect our data from SQL injections. In this blog entry we're going to walk through the process of creating our first stored procedure. The "GetTasks" stored procedure will handle the repetitive task of retrieving tasks from our tasks table in SQL.

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We are on a quest to develop our first module. Part of our module will be objects that are floating around in memory, but before we can create these objects we must lay out their definition. The definition of objects resides in something called a "Class". No, it's not a class that we'll attend, but rather a "class" serves as a blueprint for each object. In this blog entry we'll create a class in Visual Studio that represents the data that eventually be stored and retrieved from the database

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In the previous blog entries we’ve covered a lot of ground and are now at the point to where we actually need to return some data. Though, in order to return data back out to our view control we must first have a table in our database where data can exist! So, in this blog entry we'll walk through the process of creating our "Tasks" table in SQL Server so that we'll have a location where all of our task data and information will reside.

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In order for your module to be user friendly and provide a pleasant user experience we need to have a nice user interface. User interfaces and user experience on your site (UI/UX) is critical to the success of your site. There are several different ways you can layout the design of your module. Ultimatley you should keep the end user in mind. In this blog entry we will layout and style the user interface of our View control.

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One awesome feature about DNN Module development is that we don't have to start completely from scratch! That's right, those who have gone ahead of us in the module development journey have freely contributed back to the community by donating their module development templates for the rest of the DNN Community. In this blog entry we'll walk through using Chris Hammond's module development template as it will help us be most efficient in our module development quest.

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