Guidance on ASP.NET authentication, state management and dynamic h

[geodev]

Hello,

I’m currently writing an asp.net application that will be running on a
Windows XP Professional workstation utilising IIS and MSDE Database. At a
later date this application will need to run on a Windows Server 2003 IIS web
farm utilising either MSDE Database or SQL Server Database.

I’m developing this application utilising Microsoft’s Development
Environment 2002 version.

By the way this is my first ASP.NET application. I have previously developed
applications utilising ASP but I’m really excited at developing this
application.

I need some guidance and/or links to helpful resources on the following
issues; your help would be much appreciated:

1. Authentication: I need to put together a username and password system.
How do I deal with authentication for different users for different pages etc?

2. State Management: I will need to develop a web page that can be utilised
to enter customer details that are subsequently written to a database. Adding
customer details will require a number of different question to be asked that
alters the different data required from the customer. Therefore the customer
questions and input fields will need to be over a number of different web
screens. I would like to handle this utilising one single web page and some
form of State Management. I know that the following state management
techniques exist: Application State, Session State, Client-Side Cookies and
ViewState. But I do not know which to use and how to structure a single web
page to handle state management and multiple page view flows.

3. Dynamic html code. On a number of the customer display screens I would
like to hide some of the details. Unless the user wants to see this which in
that case they simply click on a particular hyperlink which dynamically
produces the HTML code without having to go back to the web server.

Please note if there are any further issues that I’m not dealing with
regards to these issues please feel free to mention them, I would be very
thankful of that.

Thank you in advance.

[J]

Take a look at the tutorials section at http://www.asp.net, should get you
started on everything that you need.

Your application sounds like a good scenario for a tabbed single page, you
could achieve this using panels that you can show/hide by clicking them
through a wizard type of interface, each click returns to the server and
shows/hides the next panel, you could use the built in validation controls
to ensure they have completed the previous step correctly.

As for the showing and hiding of client side info, this could be achieved
through divs that switch a boolean between showing and hiding the info,
perhaps in what would look like a collapsible bar, the default you could
have as false(collapsed) with an onclick that opens up the div to display
the info.

If this is a new project and all is fresh I'd take your time and organise it
following as many best practice guidelines as possible, think big basically
and even if it is only going to be for a handful or couple of hundred people
try to imagine that one day it will be made available to thousands, comment
your code, document as much as you can, blah, blah, blah...

good luck,
J.
"geodev" <ge****@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:98**********************************@microsof t.com...

Hello,

I'm currently writing an asp.net application that will be running on a
Windows XP Professional workstation utilising IIS and MSDE Database. At a
later date this application will need to run on a Windows Server 2003 IIS
web
farm utilising either MSDE Database or SQL Server Database.

I'm developing this application utilising Microsoft's Development
Environment 2002 version.

By the way this is my first ASP.NET application. I have previously
developed
applications utilising ASP but I'm really excited at developing this
application.

I need some guidance and/or links to helpful resources on the following
issues; your help would be much appreciated:

1. Authentication: I need to put together a username and password system.
How do I deal with authentication for different users for different pages
etc?

2. State Management: I will need to develop a web page that can be
utilised
to enter customer details that are subsequently written to a database.
Adding
customer details will require a number of different question to be asked
that
alters the different data required from the customer. Therefore the
customer
questions and input fields will need to be over a number of different web
screens. I would like to handle this utilising one single web page and
some
form of State Management. I know that the following state management
techniques exist: Application State, Session State, Client-Side Cookies
and
ViewState. But I do not know which to use and how to structure a single
web
page to handle state management and multiple page view flows.

3. Dynamic html code. On a number of the customer display screens I would
like to hide some of the details. Unless the user wants to see this which
in
that case they simply click on a particular hyperlink which dynamically
produces the HTML code without having to go back to the web server.

Please note if there are any further issues that I'm not dealing with
regards to these issues please feel free to mention them, I would be very
thankful of that.

Thank you in advance.

[Brock Allen]

I'd suggest getting a copy of Fritz Onion's book "Essential ASP.NET".

-Brock
DevelopMentor
http://staff.develop.com/ballen

Hello,

I'm currently writing an asp.net application that will be running on a
Windows XP Professional workstation utilising IIS and MSDE Database.
At a later date this application will need to run on a Windows Server
2003 IIS web farm utilising either MSDE Database or SQL Server
Database.

I'm developing this application utilising Microsoft's Development
Environment 2002 version.

By the way this is my first ASP.NET application. I have previously
developed applications utilising ASP but I'm really excited at
developing this application.

I need some guidance and/or links to helpful resources on the
following issues; your help would be much appreciated:

1. Authentication: I need to put together a username and password
system. How do I deal with authentication for different users for
different pages etc?

2. State Management: I will need to develop a web page that can be
utilised to enter customer details that are subsequently written to a
database. Adding customer details will require a number of different
question to be asked that alters the different data required from the
customer. Therefore the customer questions and input fields will need
to be over a number of different web screens. I would like to handle
this utilising one single web page and some form of State Management.
I know that the following state management techniques exist:
Application State, Session State, Client-Side Cookies and ViewState.
But I do not know which to use and how to structure a single web page
to handle state management and multiple page view flows.

3. Dynamic html code. On a number of the customer display screens I
would like to hide some of the details. Unless the user wants to see
this which in that case they simply click on a particular hyperlink
which dynamically produces the HTML code without having to go back to
the web server.

Please note if there are any further issues that I'm not dealing with
regards to these issues please feel free to mention them, I would be
very thankful of that.

Thank you in advance.