Tutorial 121 Creating a New Web Forms Page You will find that creating Web Forms is similar to creating traditional Windows applications in Visual Basic The Visual Studio.NET environment gives the programmer the ability to create both desktop applications, as well as Web applications In this tutorial, you will create two Web Forms applications for Pets Online: a welcoming Web page and a data page

Tutorial 122 Creating a New Web Forms Page With Visual Studio.NET and Web Forms, you can rapidly develop Web applications that can be used across computing platforms and with various Web browsers In Web programming, as in all programming, keep in mind that an application is only a software program Your Web server must have Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), Version 4 or later, and the.NET Framework installed on it

Tutorial 123 Creating a New Web Forms Page Be sure to verify that the default Web access mode for the project is set to FrontPage and that the project folder at the URL that you specified when you created the project can be opened with FrontPage. From the Windows taskbar, select Start, Settings, Control Panel, Administrative Tools, and Internet Services Manager. Select the Default Web Site and run the Check Server Extensions task

Tutorial 124 Creating a New Web Forms Page

Tutorial 125 Creating a New Web Forms Page

Tutorial 126 Adding HTML Text to the Web Forms Page HTML tags format Web Forms so they can be accurately created and displayed by Web browser programs HTML tags are enclosed in angled brackets (<>) These tags are divided into two broad categories: Those that define how the body of the document is to be displayed by the browser Those that define information about the document, such as the title or relationships to other documents

Tutorial 127 Adding HTML Text to the Web Forms Page

Tutorial 128 Setting HTML Text Attributes Just as you formatted and set attributes for text in Windows Forms, you will use the Formatting toolbar to set the HTML text attributes for your Web Forms application

Tutorial 129 Creating Web Forms HTML Server Controls A server control is a type of control that acts as a communications link between client applications and the server Server controls have properties, events, and methods that are specifically tailored to perform the tasks associated with the server Server controls in Visual Basic.NET can be Web or HTML controls The Web Forms HTML controls exist within the System.Web.HtmlControls namespace

Tutorial 1210 Creating Web Forms HTML Server Controls

Tutorial 1211 Creating Web Forms Server Controls Visual Basic.NET Web Forms server controls have several new features that simplify development efforts Web Forms server controls automatically detect the capabilities of the client browser and can customize the form properties and appearance to make the best use of that browser’s capabilities This feature is called Automatic Browser Detection

Tutorial 1212 Web Forms Controls The Visual Basic.NET code used to include the Web Forms server control in your application follows each control’s description Notice that each control’s code is enclosed in the brackets used to enclose HTML tags

Tutorial 1213 The Label Control The Label control is used to display either read-only unchanging (static) text or data- bound dynamic text in the page

Tutorial 1214 The TextBox Control Similar to the Label control, the TextBox control is used to allow editing of text on a form and can be data bound

Tutorial 1215 The CheckBox Control The CheckBox control is used to create a check box on a Web Forms application

Tutorial 1216 The RadioButton Control The RadioButton control, also called an Option Button, is similar to the CheckBox control However, it is used when you want to display a group of choices which only one can be selected at a given time

Tutorial 1217 The DropDownList Control The DropDownList control is used to create selections for a series of choices

Tutorial 1218 The Button Control The Button control generates a button icon used to submit a Web Forms page to the server for processing

Tutorial 1219 The LinkButton Control The LinkButton control is used to create a link that, once clicked, displays a hyperlinked page

Tutorial 1220 The ImageButton Control The Image Button control is used to submit pages from the Web client to the server and back

Tutorial 1221 The Calendar Control The Calendar control allows navigating between dates on the calendar

Tutorial 1222 Adding Web Forms Server Controls to Your Project When Pets Online publishes the Web Forms page as part of its Web site, the Button control generates a button icon that can be used by a Pets Online visitor to submit the page from his or her computer (the client) back to the server on the button’s Click event

Tutorial 1223 Adding Web Forms Server Controls to Your Project

Tutorial 1224 Creating an Event Handler Server controls on Web Forms can handle many different types of events, such as Click or Load The code to handle a Web Forms event is executed as server code, which means that the code is executed on the server rather than on the client

Tutorial 1225 Running the Web Forms Application You cannot run the Web Forms application until the class file has been compiled However, you can view the page in your browser by clicking the PreviewWebForm1.aspx tab at the top of your IDE

Tutorial 1226 Saving and Exiting the Web Forms Application Before exiting Visual Basic.NET, you should save all the components of your Web Forms application In Visual Basic.NET an application’s executable file is created automatically when you save all files

Tutorial 1227 The Pets Online Web Application Data Project Pets Online, like most businesses, stores data in many different places These may include spreadsheets, databases, word processing documents, and even HTML Web pages Accessing the information in each of these data stores requires different methods The UDA approach uses many complex interfaces, called Object Linking and Embedding Database (OLE DB), and cannot be accessed directly from Visual Basic

Tutorial 1228 Learning More About Web Application Projects This type of project is used for creating an application with a Web-user interface As with the projects you created in Visual Basic 6.0, the Web application project serves as a container

Tutorial 1229 Technical Requirements for Your Web Applications Project Web applications in Visual Basic.NET require that you run Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) on your computer IIS is the Microsoft Web server software program

Tutorial 1230 The Visual Studio.NET Cache When you create a Web application project, the files in your Web application will be stored in two different places The primary location is the Web server, where the application is stored; however, Visual Studio.NET also keeps files in a local cache on the programmer’s computer The cache is a temporary directory used by Visual Studio.NET for storing your Web application project files

Tutorial 1231 Files Created with Web Applications When you create a Web application project in Visual Basic.NET, a project structure is automatically set up in the file system on your computer Visual Basic.NET also sets up a Web application on the target Web server

Tutorial 1232 Creating the PetProj Web Application Project Before you begin to create your Web application project, verify that the computer on which you are working is running IIS with FrontPage Server Extensions installed If your operating system is Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional, you will find the IIS and FrontPage Server Extension components on your installation disk Your computer must also be running Microsoft Access 2000 to run the PETS database

Tutorial 1233 Creating the PetProj Web Application Project

Tutorial 1234 Creating a Data-Access Component You will create the component in Visual Basic.NET and also write the necessary code to fill the data control component with data from your PETS database found in your Tut12 folder To add and configure a data source, refer to the steps outlined on pages 866 and 867 of the textbook

Tutorial 1235 Creating a Data-Access Component

Tutorial 1236 Creating a Data-Access Component

Tutorial 1237 Creating a Data-Access Component

Tutorial 1238 Binding the DataGrid The way Visual Basic.NET handles data binding in Web Forms differs from how previous versions of Visual Basic handled the task Visual Basic.NET data binding even differs from the methods used in Windows applications In Visual Basic.NET Web Forms, the page accesses data in the form of classes The strength of Web Forms is that they can take advantage of almost any publicly available information, such as information accessible on the Web

Tutorial 1239 Binding the DataGrid

Tutorial 1240 Binding the DataGrid

Tutorial 1241 Binding the DataGrid

Tutorial 1242 Binding the DataGrid

Tutorial 1243 Adding a Details Panel to Your Web Forms Application You can access additional information about the animals in the Pets Online database without cluttering the DataGrid with unwanted information from your database The Details Panel allows you to view this additional information by filtering the Main table in the PETS database so that only the currently selected row is displayed To add Label controls perform the procedures shown on page 875 of the textbook The last step in adding the Details Panel to the Web Forms page is to add the necessary code to show only the information you filtered from your database

Tutorial 1244 Adding a Details Panel to Your Web Forms Application To activate the Details Panel follow the instructions outlined on page 876 of the textbook

Tutorial 1245 Adding a Details Panel to Your Web Forms Application

Tutorial 1246 Deploying the Web Forms Application Project The last step needed to complete your Web Forms application project is to deploy the project The term deploy literally means “to spread out” You will spread the Pets Online application project to the Internet Deployment involves uploading all the individual pages, graphics, and programmatic elements of your Web Forms application project to the Internet and fully testing the Web Forms page for functionality