Tuesday 24 May 2016

Razor - C# Loops and Arrays

For Loops

If you need to run the same statements repeatedly, you can program a loop.
If you know how many times you want to loop, you can use a for loop. This kind of loop is especially useful for counting up or counting down:

<html>
<body>
@for(var i = 10; i < 21; i++)
    {<p>Line @i</p>}
</body>
</html>

For Each Loops

If you work with a collection or an array, you often use a for each loop.
A collection is a group of similar objects, and the for each loop lets you carry out a task on each item. The for each loop walks through a collection until it is finished.
The example below walks through the ASP.NET Request.ServerVariables collection.

<html>
<body>
<ul>
@foreach (var x in Request.ServerVariables)
    {<li>@x</li>}
</ul>
</body>
</html>

While Loops

The while loop is a general purpose loop.
A while loop begins with the while keyword, followed by parentheses, where you specify how long the loop continues, then a block to repeat.
While loops typically add to, or subtract from, a variable used for counting.
In the example below, the += operator adds 1 to the variable i, each time the loop runs.

<html>
<body>
@{
var i = 0;
while (i < 5)
    {
    i += 1;
    <p>Line @i</p>
    }
}

</body>
</html>

Arrays

An array is useful when you want to store similar variables but don't want to create a separate variable for each of them:

@{
string[] members = {"Jani", "Hege", "Kai", "Jim"};
int i = Array.IndexOf(members, "Kai")+1;
int len = members.Length;
string x = members[2-1];
}
<html>
<body>
<h3>Members</h3>
@foreach (var person in members)
{
<p>@person</p>
}

<p>The number of names in Members are @len</p>
<p>The person at position 2 is @x</p>
<p>Kai is now in position @i</p>
</body>
</html>

Difference between ListView and GridView

ListView
GridView
It was introduced with Asp.Net 3.5.
It was introduced with Asp.Net 2.0.
Template driven.
Rendered as Table.
Built-in supports for Data grouping.
Need to write custom code.
Built-in supports for Insert operation.
Need to write custom code.
Provides flexible layout to your data.
Need to write custom code.
Performance is fast is compared to GridView.
Performance is slow as compared to ListView.

Difference Between GridView and DataGrid and ListView

GridView
DataGrid
It was introduced with Asp.Net 2.0.
It was introduced with Asp.Net 1.0.
Built-in supports for Paging and Sorting.
For sorting you need to handle SortCommand event and rebind grid required and for paging you need to handle the PageIndexChanged event and rebind grid required.
Built-in supports for Update and Delete operations.
Need to write code for implementing Update and Delete operations.
Supports auto format or style features.
This features is not supported.
Performance is slow as compared to DataGrid
Performance is fast as compared to GridView.

Monday 23 May 2016

MVC Sending Email

Create Action

The next step is to create an Action method that takes care of sending the email. Let us create a new class called Emailer.java with the following contents.
package com.tutorialspoint.struts2;

import java.util.Properties;
import javax.mail.Message;
import javax.mail.PasswordAuthentication;
import javax.mail.Session;
import javax.mail.Transport;
import javax.mail.internet.InternetAddress;
import javax.mail.internet.MimeMessage;

import com.opensymphony.xwork2.ActionSupport;

public class Emailer extends ActionSupport {

   private String from;
   private String password;
   private String to;
   private String subject;
   private String body;

   static Properties properties = new Properties();
   static
   {
      properties.put("mail.smtp.host", "smtp.gmail.com");
      properties.put("mail.smtp.socketFactory.port", "465");
      properties.put("mail.smtp.socketFactory.class",
                     "javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory");
      properties.put("mail.smtp.auth", "true");
      properties.put("mail.smtp.port", "465");
   }

   public String execute() 
   {
      String ret = SUCCESS;
      try
      {
         Session session = Session.getDefaultInstance(properties,  
            new javax.mail.Authenticator() {
            protected PasswordAuthentication 
            getPasswordAuthentication() {
            return new 
            PasswordAuthentication(from, password);
            }});

         Message message = new MimeMessage(session);
         message.setFrom(new InternetAddress(from));
         message.setRecipients(Message.RecipientType.TO, 
            InternetAddress.parse(to));
         message.setSubject(subject);
         message.setText(body);
         Transport.send(message);
      }
      catch(Exception e)
      {
         ret = ERROR;
         e.printStackTrace();
      }
      return ret;
   }

   public String getFrom() {
      return from;
   }

   public void setFrom(String from) {
      this.from = from;
   }

   public String getPassword() {
      return password;
   }

   public void setPassword(String password) {
      this.password = password;
   }

   public String getTo() {
      return to;
   }

   public void setTo(String to) {
      this.to = to;
   }

   public String getSubject() {
      return subject;
   }

   public void setSubject(String subject) {
      this.subject = subject;
   }

   public String getBody() {
      return body;
   }

   public void setBody(String body) {
      this.body = body;
   }

   public static Properties getProperties() {
      return properties;
   }

   public static void setProperties(Properties properties) {
      Emailer.properties = properties;
   }
}
As seen in the source code above, the Emailer.java has properties that correspond to the form attributes in the email.jsp page given below. These attributes are
  • from - The email address of the sender. As we are using Google's SMTP, we need a valid gtalk id
  • password - The password of the above account
  • to - Who to send the email to?
  • Subject - subject of the email
  • body - The actual email message
We have not considered any validations on the above fields, validations will be added in the next chapter. Let us now look at the execute() method. The execute() method uses the javax Mail library to send an email using the supplied parameters. If the mail is sent successfuly, action returns SUCCESS, otherwise it returns ERROR.

Create main page

Let us write main page JSP file index.jsp, which will be used to collect email related information mentioned above:
<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
   pageEncoding="ISO-8859-1"%>
<%@ taglib prefix="s" uri="/struts-tags"%>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Email Form</title>
</head>
<body>
   <em>The form below uses Google's SMTP server. 
   So you need to enter a gmail username and password
   </em>
   <form action="emailer" method="post">
   <label for="from">From</label><br/>
   <input type="text" name="from"/><br/>
   <label for="password">Password</label><br/>
   <input type="password" name="password"/><br/>
   <label for="to">To</label><br/>
   <input type="text" name="to"/><br/>
   <label for="subject">Subject</label><br/>
   <input type="text" name="subject"/><br/>
   <label for="body">Body</label><br/>
   <input type="text" name="body"/><br/>
   <input type="submit" value="Send Email"/>
   </form>
</body>
</html>

Create Views

We will use JSP file success.jsp which will be invoked in case action returns SUCCESS, but we will have another view file in case of an ERROR is returned from the action.
<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
 pageEncoding="ISO-8859-1"%>
<%@ taglib prefix="s" uri="/struts-tags"%>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Email Success</title>
</head>
<body>
   Your email to <s:property value="to"/> was sent successfully.
</body>
</html>
Following will be the view file error.jsp in case of an ERROR is returned from the action.
<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
 pageEncoding="ISO-8859-1"%>
<%@ taglib prefix="s" uri="/struts-tags"%>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Email Error</title>
</head>
<body>
   There is a problem sending your email to <s:property value="to"/>.
</body>
</html>

Configuration Files

Now let us put everything together using the struts.xml configuration file as follows:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE struts PUBLIC
   "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Struts Configuration 2.0//EN"
   "http://struts.apache.org/dtds/struts-2.0.dtd">

<struts>

   <constant name="struts.devMode" value="true" />
   <package name="helloworld" extends="struts-default">

      <action name="emailer" 
         class="com.tutorialspoint.struts2.Emailer"
         method="execute">
         <result name="success">/success.jsp</result>
         <result name="error">/error.jsp</result>
      </action>

   </package>

</struts>
Following is the content of web.xml file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
   xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" 
   xmlns:web="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd"
   xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee 
   http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"
   id="WebApp_ID" version="3.0">
   
   <display-name>Struts 2</display-name>
   <welcome-file-list>
      <welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file>
   </welcome-file-list>

   <filter>
      <filter-name>struts2</filter-name>
      <filter-class>
         org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.FilterDispatcher
      </filter-class>
   </filter>

   <filter-mapping>
      <filter-name>struts2</filter-name>
      <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
   </filter-mapping>
</web-app>