For those that haven’t checked it out, bring MiniProfiler into your application via NuGet with a

Install-Package MiniProfiler

If you are working in a web project (MVC, WebForms), you simply add the following line of code in your head block AFTER your jQuery reference (this line is formatted as Razor for MVC 3) -

@MvcMiniProfiler.MiniProfiler.RenderIncludes()

One thing worth mentioning is that on IE9, I had some issues with the UI of the profiler displaying appropriately. I looked around and found a post mentioning adding the following to your CSS file and sure enough, it fixed my IE9 issue. So, give it a shot if you have any problems displaying the profile on Internet Explorer.

div.profiler-popup
{
    overflow: visible !important;
}

Mini-Profiler UI on a simple ASP.NET MVC 3 page

I’ve had success using this for profiling ASP.NET MVC3 applications as well as Entity Framework 4.2 “Code First” queries within the apps, which is great. I still really like the Entity Framework Profiler tool from Hibernating Rhinos and rely on it heavily, but Mini-Profiler does a good job of showing ORM query issues.

I plan to try this out with some old WCF projects in the near future as well. In the meantime, pop it into one of your development applications and make sure your code is performing how you expect.

On deck, in no particular order :

• A detailed post (with code and a Templify template to get you started) on a generic repository pattern for ASP.NET MVC 3 and Entity Framework 4.1 along with a unit tests that utilize SQL Compact edition that automatically create a new SQL Compact file upon starting tests, populates the schema with sample data, and then subsequently deletes the file after tests are complete. Dependency injection is done via Ninject, which is my IoC of choice for MVC3.
• A post on consuming portable areas in MVC 3 for a plugin-like architecture. Think “modules” that can be dynamically loaded.
• A post on the MVC lifecycle and when and why to use the various filter interfaces provided by ASP.NET MVC3.
• A post on Node.js from a .NET developers perspective and how to get started with hosting, the current state of node on Windows and so-on.
• A post on custom HtmlHelpers for MVC3 showing various techniques to keep those views nice and DRY.
• A post on running JetBrains TeamCity 6.5 in the cloud using Amazon’s EC2 “micro” instance and automatically bringing up build agents and terminating them after the build. The post would be aimed at .NET development.

* If you attended any of my sessions, please rate them for me. The feedback helps. I understand a lot of things were skipped due to time constraints, but I’d appreciate any constructive criticism as this was my first time speaking in a short one hour format. I learned, the hard way, topics need to be extremely concise!

Tools

• Templify – http://opensource.endjin.com/templify/
  • The Templify template I used to start my MVC project during my 11:30am session can be found here (in zip format).
  • I intend, when I have time, to put the template project on GitHub and add a build task to generate the template automatically. Until then:
    • To install the template, unzip the file. You should see a *.pkg file.
    • Copy the pkg file to your AppData\Roaming\Endjin\Templify\repo (as an example, on Win7, mine is C:\Users\amokan\AppData\Roaming\Endjin\Templify\repo)
    • You should then be able to make a new folder in Windows Explorer, right click on it and say “Templify Here”.
    • Enjoy my weird project conventions, find gaping issues with my template, make your own, or just downright loathe the whole situation.

Web Links/Bundles

• MVC Scaffolding – http://bit.ly/mvc_scaffolding
• PowerShell & T4 Template docs at MSDN – http://bit.ly/powershell_and_t4

That’s it for tonight. More coming soon along with code on GitHub!

The group meets at Interface Technical Training near the corner of Thomas and Central in downtown Phoenix.

More info can be found here – http://bit.ly/pcsug_apr11

Here is a bundle thanks to bit.ly and bridgeurl.

http://bit.ly/sevdnug_mvc3_presentation_links

If you are in the valley and have never attended, I highly recommend you do so. Nothing like a day of free sessions on all aspects of the industry from development (on nearly every platform), project management, data visualization, web development, etc.

My session will be focused on productivity using ASP.NET MVC3 and I will be demonstrating tools for custom project templates, NuGet (and how to use it within your organization to leverage good building blocks), Razor, and more.

http://bit.ly/adammokan_dcc2011

I will also be posting all code samples on my GitHub account a few minutes before the presentation and posting the URL here and on my twitter account.

The meeting will start at 6pm and is held at Gangplank in downtown Chandler, Arizona.

More info and details can be found here – http://bit.ly/sevdnug_mvc

So I came up with an assembly I’m calling “ControllerNavigator” for now (http://github.com/amokan/ControllerNavigator). I didn’t spend time to come up with a cool name like the Ruby folks normally do yet. Will have to reference a cult-classic 80s flick or something if I do much more work on it. To use ControllerNavigator (man, I’m hating the name already), you reference the assembly in your MVC project, and add a line to your Application_Start() in Global.asax.

protected void Application_Start()
{
	AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();

	RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);

	ControllerNavigator.Navigator.DisplayNavigator(RouteTable.Routes);
}

That generates this markup at a custom route, which you could set as the default start page in Visual Studio during development.

What happens in DisplayNavigator is some fun C# reflection code that queries your MVC assembly to find all of the controllers, methods in those controllers, and any actionfilters/attributes they have. There are options before calling DisplayNavigator() to filter out certain attributes and also to specify which base class your controllers are inherited from, if different than System.Web.Mvc.Controller. Then, by stealing some of Mr Haack’s code from his RouteDebugger, it takes the data and generates a custom route (defaults to “/Navigator”) that shows a table listing your controllers, methods, method return types (ActionMethod, JsonMethod, etc), and finally a hyperlink that will launch that route in a new window.

I have some more ideas to make this more useful, which are listed on the GitHub page, but in the meantime feel free to check it out or steal the code to make your own version. If you have questions or comments, hit me up on twitter.