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.

I did add some additional bullet points and text content to the slide deck since I’m not a big fan of standing in front of a bunch of that during a presentation and would rather talk with the attendees and show some code. Either way, check the slides out if you’d like.

http://www.slideshare.net/adammokan/introduction-to-signalr-10082193

Next up is some tweaks to my samples, which were not cooperating with me so much during my session. I will expose that repo on Github soon and post an update.

Enjoy.

So, I setup a new sample project and pushed it to github for anyone to try. I have succesfully tested this sample in IIS Express as well as IIS 7. Both had no issues after some minor adjustments. For IIS Express I do note some modifications in the README in the github repo that you should take note of. But simply cloning and running should get you going. Be sure, if you are in Visual Studio, that you tell the project to use IIS Express though.

Here is the link to the sample project on github - https://github.com/amokan/Nuget.Server-Sample-Project

The basic steps to create the project like I did were:

1. Create a new “ASP.NET Empty Web Application” in Visual Studio.
2. Either use the GUI or NuGet Console to install the Nuget.Server package.
3. Adjust the web.config, as needed.
4. Profit (or happiness… i’m not sure what’s motivating you here)

Based on the test yesterday, I dug up an old blog post by Steve Marx (@smarx on twitter) that demonstrated running the Mongoose web server in a Windows Azure Worker Role on port 80. Using his example as a basis, I did the same with node.exe and it worked on the first attempt.

Check out the live site here* - http://nodetest.cloudapp.net/

node.js worker role in my azure dashboard

worker role settings in azure

I’ve not even messed with nvm or npm on Windows (and have no clue if they even work yet) or frameworks such as Express, which I enjoy for larger node projects. Here is a gist for the basic sample in the project. Even if you have never looked at node (but understand HTTP), it should be fairly clear.

I have posted the full source for the entire project on github and you should be able to simply download/clone and deploy to Azure with no issues. As mentioned in the readme file, the node application code is in the src/WorkerRole/node/ directory, along with node.exe itself.

I used a single ‘Extra Small’ instance and OSFamily ’2′ in case I wanted to do anything more advanced with PowerShell later on. I’m sure OSFamily ’1′ would be perfectly fine.

Github source - https://github.com/amokan/node-on-azure

If anyone else is doing any work with node.exe in an Azure role, be sure to post your findings and let’s see how far we can push this thing. Node is an amazing piece of technology and a great solution for high-performance APIs and shows the true power of JavaScript. The next step is integrating node with Azure Table Storage and other features in the Azure ecosystem. Maybe that’s already been done?

* I will leave the live sample running on Azure for a while. If the extra small instance gets slammed for some odd reason, I will drop it and update the post.

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!

It’s been a fairly successful start, although I’m the first to admit my raw JavaScript skills have gotten rusty after years of web forms and, more recently, relying on things like jQuery for UI work in my web applications. Combining that with my first heavy foray into Mongo, which I’ve tinkered with in the past, and it’s provided a lot of excitement for me to learn some totally new approaches to system architecture which always inspires me to look at how to leverage some of the approaches/techniques to my primary role as a .NET consultant.

As with many edge frameworks, node.js is easy to get going with on OSX or Linux. Windows is a bit trickier, but Tatham Oddie posted a good little tidbit of info explaining how to get node up and running using the MinGW approach described. I tried this last night on my Windows7 boot and it worked pretty well.

I encourage those of you who at least haven’t looked into node.js to do so. Just to understand what it is. I’m not looking at this as a replacement for Rails, Sinatra, ASP.NET, or anything like that; But for an API that just responds to and receives data via RESTful calls, it seems ideal.

Once I get the project wrapped up, I plan to do some more posts showing what I’ve learned and pitfalls to avoid, from a .NET-developers perspective.

Below are the sessions I will be teaching and links for you to show interest, which will help the organizers determine the room and time it will be held (based on projected attendance/interest level).

Development Sessions

Intro to ASP.NET MVC 3 – basic intro for those with little to no experience with the Microsoft MVC implementation.

Getting Things Done With ASP.NET MVC 3 – Coverage of NuGet, Scaffolding, and other ways to get up and running faster.

Non-Development Sessions

Using simple electronics to make noise! (ages 7+) – This is a Gangplank Jr session aimed at helping kids each build a simple sound generating circuit they can take with them.

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