How to use/handle a loader in an MVC app? - asp.net-mvc-4

in a ASP.NET MVC application that I am currently working there are multiple places in a single page that the user can click. So there is a main menu that's in _layout and for each inidividual page there can be links associated with that page.
I am trying to use a loader which will be shown on every click, mainly where the response takes time but for now it's for every click.
For example in the home page, from the main menu the user can click Students and the loader should come up and hide when the page loads completely. On the students page there can be an ajax call that gets data and binds it to the grid.
So from the time the user clicks on a menu link and the page loads the loader is active/shown. It's hidden once the page loads completely.
The grid can have editing functionality and when the user clicks on any of the CRUD links the loader should show and hide.
I am looking at suggestions on implementing this requirement.
If I can hookup any of the MVC events, that would be cool as I want less of Javascript/jQuery stuff but if Javascript/jQuery is the way then that's fine too.
Currently I don't have anything so anypointers are appreciated.

Assuming AJAX is being used
I don't see a way to keep this server-side without a middle page with a redirect being used (which would just be unnecessary bloat). And, since you're not opposed, you can implement this fairly easily using jQuery and something like blockUI.
I'll let you play with refining the binding to only links you care about, but for now we'll assume all links. Also, MVC should be using jQuery for things like Ajax.Actionlink so we can hijack events like $.ajaxStart and $.ajaxStop:
function showLoadingScreen(enabled){
return enabled ? $.blockUI() : $.unblockUI();
}
$(document).ajaxStart(function(){
showLoadingScreen(true);
}).ajaxStop(function(){
showLoadingScreen(false);
});
Later on you can maybe apply classes to the links you care about and just bind to them (instead of $.ajaxStart) but I'll leave that up to you.

Related

Net Core 6 - posting between razor pages

Is there a way to post between razor pages without disabling the Anti-forgery Token? I appreciate that sounds stupid, but what I'd like the user to be able to do is submit a mini version of the contact us form on one page and the submit action takes them to a different razor page where they can continue to fill in the rest of the form. It's essentially so we can include a mini contact us form in the footer of all pages as a view component. The view component can't handle the post because there is no endpoint for the view component. Whereas this could probably be achieved by carrying the form data on the query string, that then exposes their name/email data which is undesirable. Adding the [IgnoreAntiforgeryToken] attribute on the contact us page works, but is there a way to make it work without removing the validation/checks?

For Page Object Pattern, when designing the page objects in Selenium, how do you handle multiple modals correctly?

Let me further explain.
You have a page where an application lives. However, upon first login, the user is prompted with a welcome screen that loads in the center of the browser. Like a pop-up from the application. This welcome screen is to help the user get familiar with the app. You can move on through the screens by reading the information and clicking the Continue button. After several of these pop-ups, the application will now be available for testing.
So how would I handle this in the Page Object Pattern using Selenium. Should I have a main page that just has functionality to navigate through these modals? Or should the main page return objects that represent each of the individual modals? Or should each modal be a separate page that I interact with?
Basically, I can think of several options:
ApplicationPage.Modal1.Continue();
or
Modal1.Continue();
Modal2.Continue();
or
ApplicationPage.ContinueThroughModal1();
or
ModalPage.Continue1();
ModalPage.Continue2();
I prefer to look at pages as collection of services. So
should the main page return objects that represent each of the individual modals?
PageObject helps you to improve the maintenance and reduces code duplication. So you can use it as an interface to a page of your AUT.
should each modal be a separate page that I interact with?
I would say - yes. If some future change occurs (in any modal), your PageObj will handle it without changing the test itself. Why not introduce a IModalPopup with Continue() method which will handle the skipping that your tests need. Further more in your MainPage class you can keep a ICollection<IModalPopup> welcomeScreens and iterate those.
Aiming at a full answer here - there is no need to actually go through this
welcome screen that loads in the center of the browser.
Once is enough. Every other test can utilize URL navigation over crawling each middle page. Single test that covers your end-user journey (by clicking required buttons/links) should be sufficient.

Duplicate dijit widget instead of recreating it

Is there a way by which I can duplicate or clone dijit widgets?
Basically, idea is to improve page rendering performance by minimizing widget creation time.
We have a single page web application and we do not reload the entire page whenever the user performs any action.
The flow of events is as follows,
The main page is loaded by the browser. It contains a dijit ContentPane which acts as a master container and displays the entire page using various other dijit widgets like textboxes, tabs, datefield, Enhanced grid etc.
The user performs an action (e.g. click on a dijit button)
The application sends an ajax call to server which processes the button click event and generates UI of the next page.
Browser receives successful response from ajax call and calls refresh method of dijit ContentPane. Which triggers destruction of existing widgets and new set of widgets are created and placed at appropriate position. (instead of refreshing the entire page)
The user again performs some action and again the refresh method is called which triggers destruction of existing widgets and new set of widgets are created and placed at appropriate position.
Because of such architecture the browser has to destroy existing widgets and recreate them again and again. Which results in slow performance.
The idea is to have a set of widgets always readily available on the browser clone them and place at appropriate position and update them instead of recreating each time.
Yes this is possible with something called _AttachMixin.
Basically there is no getting around the fact that your widgets would need to attach event listeners to the HTML Document. What can be cut out though is the time in the Dijit Widget's lifecycle to generate the DOM. As we well know, simple Dijit widgets like a dijit/form/Button has a div inside a div inside a div etc.
This is explained in detail here http://dojotoolkit.org/reference-guide/1.9/dijit/_AttachMixin.html
Here is an example using Node.JS as a backend. http://jamesthom.as/blog/2013/01/15/server-side-dijit
This is a tough problem and this concept isn't explained very thoroughly. If you have a backend that is not Node.JS you have to manually make the widget string and pass it as a response to your AJAX and an follow the example from the 1st link (Ref Doc)
We have had lots of widgets of our app render nicely within the client side. A far less complicated approach would be to simply show / hide (instead of render and destroy) widgets as and when they are needed. I assume that you app's access policy would focus on data and not which person has access to which widget.

ViewStateException - Validation of viewstate MAC failed - Sitefinity ASP.NET MVC with Jquery Mobile

I am getting this error most of the time when I submit my form. I am using Sitefinity 6.2 with ASP.NET MVC 4.0 and JQuery Mobile.
As I have Sitefinity in Hybred mode I am using the #Html.BeginFormSitefinity() command to create the form. On the Controller I have my action with the [HttpPost] attribute. The code always hits my default action on the controller with no problem. No matter what I put in the form when I submit I only get an error message on the page...never hits the HttpPost action.
I've looked around and there are many pages with fixes for the MAC failed issue, but none are working for me. I have a machine key in the web.config and I am NOT going to set enableViewStateMac to false as that is a security hole.
OK I tried working with both of the below solutions but they are both really bad. Here is what I am doing now, which is still not great, but I have Sitefinity, MVC, and JQuery Mobile all on the same page and forms are not giving me View State Exceptions anymore.
First thing is that adding data-ajax="false" is not enough, for this to work you need to disable Ajax before JQuery Mobile starts. So, to do this you need to add in this script BEFORE the JQuery Mobile File loads but after the JQuery file loads.
$(document).bind("mobileinit", function () { $.mobile.ajaxEnabled = false; });
After doing this I then do not use the Sitefinity Begin Form, I just JQuery to change the form on the main page to have the correct action.
<script>
$("#aspnetForm").attr("action", "Home/Login");
</script>
Together this means that there is a complete page load for each page change, and form posts use the form declared in my WebForms Master Page.
-Old Answer -
Actually...what I have below is not working. What I am
currently doing is really ugly but is usually working.
As long as the user enters the site from the home page then the home
page is the Jquery Mobile first page. The view state errors that I
was getting was because it saw the current page as the first page and
the form submit was to the active page. What if the controller for
the home page was just set to handle ALL HTTPPost calls? I have
removed the #Html.BeginFormSitefinity() from all the views with forms
and am just using the form on my top level masterpage. Then I add in
code on the view to change the action of this form to point to the
main page controller. ex
<script>
$("#aspnetForm").attr("action", "Home/Login");
</script>
Once I made this change the forms are not throwing view state
exceptions...as long as the home page is the Jquery Mobile first page.
If the user comes in from a different page then all is scrambled.
Don't have an answer for that yet.
Really Old Answer -
OK, think I have found it. I read somewhere, lost the link now, a
list of issues that can cause the error message. One of them is the
form being submitted from a different page.
I looked at the error message I was getting with Fiddler and noticed
that the Referer was my home page but the URL of the form post was the
URL for the page with my form. In stead of browsing through my site
to the page with the form I typed the URL in the address bar. I tried
submitting my form again and now it works!
So, this is an issue of Sitefinity and JQuery Mobile fighting it out.
When asp.net MVC is run in Hybred mode in Sitefinity it is actually
run in a Web.Forms master page that contains a form. When you use the
#Html.BeginFormSitefinity() to add a form to the view it is actually
just adding a div and then using AJAX to submit the form on the
Web.Forms master page.
JQuery Mobile loads up the first page that you visit, but later pages
are just injected into the existing page. So, there are multiple
data-role="page" divs loaded up in the DOM, inside of the Sitefinity
Web.Forms Master Page.
This all together is causing the form to post with the URL of the
active data-role="page" but the server sees that it is being refered
from the original page I loaded up. So, if I went to the page with
the form first all would work, start at any other page it does not
work.
Now that I know this I can put in data-ajax="false" on the link to the
page with the form and all looks to be working. This will cause
JQuery Mobile to not inject the target page into the current page but
will load all fresh with the target.
data-ajax="false" is the answer!

jQuery Mobile does not process elements in Partial View

I'm converting my site from using jQueryUI to jQuery Mobile, and I'm having some trouble.
I have a page that lets users add new timesheet entries. They click the "Add" button and it retrieves a Partial View from the server right onto the page.
The problem is that jQuery Mobile is not applying to any of the elements in the Partial View.
How can I force jQuery Mobile to process my elements after they've been inserted into the page?
The short answer is that you can just trigger the create method on the parent element of where you inserting your partial view.
For example $('#container').trigger( "create" );
Alternatively most widgets can be manually initialized by calling them on the element, for example for a listview: $('#myListview').listview(). This can be useful if you have only a few elements that need to be enhaced and you don't want to traverse all the child elements of the container. You should also know that for many widgets there is also a refresh method which you can call if you add elements to it after it has already been initialized for example $('#myListview').listview('refresh).
Also have a look at the following Q & A from the JQM docs which deals with this issue and for an explanation as to why it is necessary to call these methods.
Question: Content injected into a page is not enhanced.
Answer:
jQuery Mobile has no way to know when you have injected content into a
page. To let jQuery Mobile know you have injected content that must be
enhanced, you need to either make sure the plugins are called to
enhance the new elements or trigger("create") on the parent container
so you don't have to call each plugin manually.