Knockout.js

Knockout.js is a JavaScript library Which works on the principal of Model – View – View Model. It allows us to bind html elements of the view with data model. The best part of Knockout is it provides a simple two-way data binding between data model and UI element. In Simple Words if you make any change in the  data model then those changes will be automatically reflected in the DOM(UI) or if there are any changes done against DOM elements those will automatically reflected to the data model.  We can say that these are similar to the Binding features present in WPF.

Some of the Key benefits of Knockout are :

Ø  Bindings of UI elements with data model. 

Ø  Dynamic data model creation is simple.  

Ø  Knockout supports event-driven programming model.  

Ø  Cross browsers are support.

Knockout was developed and maintained by Steve Sanderson, a Microsoft employee. This is a Open Source product. We can get the Library or files from the Below mentioned Location.

Using nu-get 

To install knockout.js, run the following command in the Package Manager Console

PM> Install-Package knockout.js         

The Latest version is knockout.js 3.1.0. It is also available on the CDN at below mentioned location.

http://ajax.aspnetcdn.com/ajax/knockout/knockout-3.1.0.js

http://github.com/downloads/SteveSanderson/knockout/knockout-3.1.0.js

Sample Application in Knockout  Hello, Planet Earth!

 Create the Below  Two Text Box on the HTMl page.

First name: < input data-bind="value: firstName" />

Last name: < input data-bind="value: lastName" />

Hello, data-bind="text: fullName"> !

Use the Knockout binding as below. Note the Word KO is  the short-form of Knockout. Which is reserved for referring  Knockout object.

// create data model

var ViewModel = function(first, last) {

    this.firstName = ko.observable(first);

    this.lastName = ko.observable(last);

    this.fullName = ko.computed(function() {

 // Binding will be take care by Knockout.

       return this.firstName() + " " + this.lastName();

    }, this);

};

// Relation will be bind by below satatement 

ko.applyBindings(new ViewModel("Planet", "Earth"));

You can download the sample application from Download. Please share your comments on the same. Will be happy to answer any doubts if you have. :)

 Thanks

Anil Kumar Pandey
Microsoft MVP, Microsoft MCC, DNS MVM

New MVP's for April 2014

 1^st April, we don’t celebrate the way it supposed to be in rest of the world , rather We celebrate it by announcing the names of newly awarded & re-awarded individuals for the prestigious Most Valuable Professional Award. Here are the name of the Microsoft technology community Champs, who have done some extra ordinary work in their respective field to be a star of the community.

New Awardees

Tadit Kumar Dash (ASP.net/IIS) – Bhubaneswar

Pradeep AJ (Client Development) – Chennai

Vishal Kaushik (Client Development) – Delhi

Vijay Agarwal (Excel) – Delhi

Maheshkumar Tiwari (Microsoft Integration) – Pune

Sai Prasad B (Project) – Chennai

Latheesh NK (SQL Server) – Chennai

Muthukrishnan Ramasamy (Visual C#) – Chennai

Utkarsh Shigihalli (Visual Studio ALM) – UK / Bangalore

Vishal Saxena (Windows Azure) – US / Delhi

Kapil Arya (Windows Consumer) – Betul (MP)

Shantanu Nayak (Windows Consumer) – Bangalore

And Here are the champs who has successfully renewed their status of MVP for one more year

Re-Awardees

Dhananjay Kumar (ASP.net/IIS)

Krishna Chaitanya (Internet Explorer)

Nitin Sadashiv Paranjape (Office 365)

Anoop Madhusudanan (Visual C#)

Gouri Subodh Sohoni (Visual Studio ALM)

Mayur Tendulkar (Windows Phone Developer)

I would like to welcome all the dear friends in the elite group of community contributors. Please join us in Congratulations  these shining stars.


Thanks
Anil Kumar Pandey

Create Task in TFS Using C# Code

Hi All,

Now a day’s most people make use of Team Foundation Server. We perform any activity either in form or a Task or a Bug. I have come up with a sample code by using which we can create a Task in the TFS server using Programming or C# code. I have try this With Team Foundation Server 2010 and Visual Studio 2010. For doing this we required the 2 important DLL’s of team Foundation Server which we can find while adding reference in the .Net section, the DLL’s are

                  Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client

           Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client

We will make use of a code and will try to add a task in our TFS repository, for this we required the details to connect to our TFS server like the Root folder name, Username, Port and Password details.

Either task or Bug both the Part of the Work Item so we will create the object of the Work Item Class like

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

using System.Text;

using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client;

using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client;

namespace SampleTFSTask

{

    class Program

    {

        static void Main(string[] args)

        {

            Console.WriteLine(" // Connect to the TFS, and get the WorkItemType object");

           

            Uri collectionUri = (args.Length < 1) ?

                new Uri("http://tfs.abc.com/MyGroup/Abc") : new Uri(args[0]);

            TfsTeamProjectCollection tpc = new TfsTeamProjectCollection(collectionUri);

            WorkItemStore workItemStore = tpc.GetService();

            Project teamProject = workItemStore.Projects["MVP"];

            WorkItemType workItemType = teamProject.WorkItemTypes["User Story"];

            // Create the work item.

            WorkItem userStory = new WorkItem(workItemType)

            {

                // The title is the only required field that does not have a default value.

                // You must set it, or you cannot save the work item.

                Title = "Recently awarded MVP",

                Description = " I want to see List of all MVP."

            };

            // Save the new user story.

             userStory.Save();

        }

    }

}

Hope You find this piece of information useful. Please feel free to extend and provide comment on the same.

Thanks
Anil Kumar Pandey
Microsoft MVP, Microsoft MCC, DNS MVM

What is KANBAN

Kanban is a new technique for managing a software development process in a highly efficient way. Kanban underpins Toyota's "just-in-time" (JIT) production system. It is first developed and used by them. Kanban is a visual signal that’s used to trigger an action. As we know the word kanban is Japanese. Roughly translated, it means “card you can see.”

Toyota introduced and refined the use of kanban in a relay system to standardize the flow of parts in their production lines in the 1950s.  Kanban process starts with the customer’s order and follows production downstream. Because all requests for parts are pulled from the order, kanban is sometimes referred to as a "pull" system.

In software development process, it can be thought of as a pipeline with feature requests entering one end and improved software emerging from the other end. In simple terms the requirement comes in simple form from the user and finally comes with a finished product or services or part of service.

We can divide the input and output as below mentioned category:-

1. Analyze the requirements

2.  Develop the code

3. Test it works.

Simply we make use of a Board generally called the KanaBan Board which can have the representation as

There are six generally accepted rules for kanban:

1.      Downstream processes may only withdraw items in the precise amounts specified on the kanban.
2. Upstream processes may only send items downstream in the precise amounts and sequences specified by the kanban.
3. No items are made or moved without a kanban.
4. A kanban must accompany each item at all times.
5. Defects and incorrect amounts are never sent to the next downstream process.
6. The number of kanbans should be monitored carefully to reveal problems and opportunities for improvement.

Thanks
Anil Kumar Pandey
Microsoft MVP, Microsoft MCC, DNS MVM

Visual Studio 2013 RC

Tools for Visual Studio 2013 RC

The New RC 2013 Visual studio is ready and you can download it from the below mentioned location “Download”.  The Visual Studio 2013 RC express edition is free and can be downloaded from the MSDN site.  There are a couple of new tools are introduce that are required and are very helpful. Here we are going to see the discussion about some of the new tools.

1. One ASP.NET  : To starts with “The One ASP.NET”  Now the template to select any Web application is a part of One ASP.NET tool where you can select the various application template and even select the technology  as well for example web form or MVC.

You can also select various configuration related setting directly from the consecutive windows. This will make the life of the developer more simple and easy compare to the earlier version of the Visual studio.

2. Signal-R Channel between the Browser and Visual Studio.

Remember this issue when each time you make a change in the code and you want it to reflect it in the browser you have to switch to the browser and need to refresh the page. Now you can take a deep breath and leave this task to the Visual studio.  This feature will allows the developer to link the browser to the visual studio directly so that you can refresh any browser page from the visual studio menu directly. This is using the Signal R tool.

3.  New HTML Editor

To Cope up with MVC Razor syntax and new asp editors the HTML editor of the Visual studio is now refreshed. Here you can easily use the HTML5 standard tags. There is also improvement in area like intellisence and JqueryUI and some other JQuery tools. But for some issues the legacy editor is still used in the application. You can set various settings for the HTML editor using 

Tools >> Options >> text Editors. The Window will allow you to configure the HTML editor as per your setting.

4. Scaffolding

Unlike many other language like Java or Ruby there was a need to have a strong Scaffholding which will lead to the easier and faster development of commonly used task in the application. This is now addressed by the feature called Scaffolding.  This is completely new as we have seen in the earlier version for MVC. There are some new templates are added. The MVC 5 support scaffolding are also added in this release.

5. MVC 5

MVC5 is now a part of the Visual studio 2013 RC, a lot of improvement is done to integrate it with the tradional asp web forms application. The New MVC5 template is now part of the one ASP.net where an MVC application is created by selecting the MVC option.

6. New MEF ( Microsoft Entity Framework)

The latest version if the MEF is released with Visual Studio 2013 RC the version number is 6.0 RC1.  This is also available in the NUget package which you can download from the below mentioned location. “Download”.

7. ASP.NET Identity

A new Identify framework is present in the ASP.net which is called asp.net Identity. The maintenance if the user related information is now easier to handle and you can even store the data in some other store rather than SQL Server. Some important part of this Identity is listed below…

One ASP.NET Identity system

• ASP.NET Identity can be used with all of the ASP.NET frameworks such as ASP.NET MVC, Web Forms, Web Pages, Web API and SignalR

Ease of plugging in profile data about the user

• When you create new users in your application, it is now easy to add extra information about the user. For eg.. if you wanted to add a Birthdate option for users when they Register an account in your application.
• ASP.NET Identity uses Entity Framework Code First and it is possible to extend the POCO classes.

Persistence control

• By default the ASP.NET Identity system will store all the user information in a database. ASP.NET Identity uses Entity Framework Code First to implement all of its persistence mechanism.
• If your application requirements are that this information might be stored in a different storage mechanism such as SharePoint, Azure Table Service, No Sql databases etc. it is now possible to plug in different storage providers.

Unit testability

• ASP.NET Identity makes the web application more unit testable. You can write Unit Tests for the parts of your application that use ASP.NET Identity

Simple Role Provider

• There is a Simple Role providers which lets you restrict access to parts of your application by Roles. You can easily create Roles such as “Admin” and add Users to Roles.

Claims Based

• ASP.NET Identity supports claims-based authentication, where the user’s identity is represented as a set of claims. There is a Claims

External Logins 

• You can easily add external logins such as Microsoft Account, Facebook, Twitter and Google to your application store the user specific data in your application using this system.
• You can also add login functionality using Windows Azure Active Directory and store the user specific data in your application using this system.

When upgrading from Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 to Visual Studio 2013 you will take advantage of a refreshed and simplified environment with enhanced performance without any additional hardware requirements. Some of these core enhancements make use of capabilities that are only present in the latest versions of Windows and might require you to upgrade to a supported operating system.

This was a brief information about the Visual Studio 2013 RC tools. You can Refer MSDN for more details. Please provide your valuable comments and suggestion on this.

Thanks
Anil Kumar Pandey
Microsoft MVP, Microsoft MCC, DNS MVM