ExtJS4 Combo & ASP.NET MVC3
PDF First see basic ExtJS4 & ASP.NET MVC3 setup tutorial
In this example I will demonstrate just how easy it is to implement a type-ahead dropdown that will ping the server over AJAX every time a user types something in, and show a list of results with rich markup. It's amazing just how easy it is to do this with ASP.NET MVC3 and ExtJS4 data stores.
The end result looks something like this:
ExtJS4 & ASP.NET MVC3 Dictionary
See my previous example on getting ExtJS4 working with ASP.NET MVC3
Back when I used to work with ASP.NET AJAX Extensions 1.0 (5 year old tech), I used to do the following all the time:
JavaScript
Ext.Ajax.request({ url: ... , jsonData: { data: form.getForm().getValues() } ... }); // eo Ajax
ASP.NET AJAX Extensions 1.0
[WebMethod(EnableSession = true)] public static void MyWebMethod( Dictionary<string,object> data ) { ... }
...ASP.NET AJAX Extensions 1.0 handled the conversion of data from JSON to C# Dictionary, which is a pleasure to work with. To my great disappointment, I discovered that ASP.NET MVC3, the latest and greatest, won't do that for you! I had to find a solution...
ASP.NET MVC3 & ExtJS4 Errors
In my previous post I presented an example of a basic ASP.NET MVC3 controller connecting to an ExtJS4 data store and passing some data in XML format via store's load method.
So far I've run into just one issue with this setup - clean error handling. By default, ASP.NET MVC will spit out any exceptions in clear text (with <html> tags and everything), which is not very useful when building a quality web application. Here's what I want on my errors:
ASP.NET MVC3 XML & ExtJS4
In this example I will demonstrate how to use an ExtJS4 store to perform an XML data read from an ASP.NET MVC3 controller. First let me say that I wasted a LOT of time reading fake tutorials on these keywords - seems there are a lot of people who can explain the ASP.NET MVC3 side, but not how to actually connect it to an ExtJS4 store using a clean proxy, AND pass parameters to the server. Especially using XML for the return data.
So, let's say we just want a basic search box - when user types something in and hits Search, we will use an ExtJS4 store and POST to an ASP.NET MVC3 method, passing the search query as a JSON parameter, while returning results in XML. Here's the basic ExtJS model & store configuration:
// Basic model Ext.define('MY.model.SearchResult', { extend: 'Ext.data.Model', fields: ['id','html'] }); // Basic store Ext.create('Ext.data.Store',{ model: 'MY.model.SearchResult', proxy: Ext.create('MY.proxy.MSAjaxProxy', { url: '/User/Search', reader: { type: 'xml', root: 'matches', record: 'match' } }) // eo proxy }) // eo store
ExtJS4 IE Resize on Zoom
Here's an easy way to break zoom in and out capability in IE7+ in your ExtJS4 application:
There's a <meta> tag (the ones that go into <head>) that was recommended to me for the sake of reducing IE testing efforts:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8"/>The idea here is it forces many IEs to act all in IE8 mode, so you can basically do quick tests in just IE8 and still get a good test coverage. However, it took me some effort to figure out that this breaks re-sizing capability of a Viewport on zoom in IE.