PHP vs ASP.NET Comparison

Things that need to observe before finalize between PHP and ASP.NET on any project.

ASP.NET code executes a lot faster compared to PHP. In general most of time of pages rendering time dependent on accessing DB and querying database.

In connecting database ASP.NET is a lot better - in asp.net we typically use LINQ which translates our object queries into stored procedures in SQL server database. Also connection to database is persistent, one for one website, there is no need for reconnecting.
PHP, in comparison, can't hold SQL server connection between request, it connect, grab data from DB and destroys, when reconnecting the database is often takes 20-30% of page rendering time.

ASP.NET have two main frameworks designed for it (Web forms and MVC), installed with environment, where in PHP you must get a open-source framework. There is no standard framework in PHP like in ASP.NET.
Since PHP is open source, its popularity differs based on people usage. So every year a new framework will come up for PHP in top list.

Whereas ASP.NET language is so rich, standard library has solutions for very much common problems, for PHP its standard library very open to public and any one can override.

Regarding Costing, PHP, MySQL server, PostgreSQL server, Apache server, and Linux OS are all free and upgrades are also free. 
ASP.NET and IIS are free if you purchase Windows OS. There is a substantial licensing cost for a Microsoft Windows Server, Microsoft SQL Server and future upgrades. For example, Microsoft Server 2008 R2 Standard - 64-bit cost is about approximately $1029 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition For Small Business cost approximately $1038.

For Hosting, Now a days both hosting of PHP and .NET websites are no different. Both a similar or more over same when compared Windows and Linux environments.
PHP requires LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) which is popular among hosting companies. ASP.NET requires Windows hosting.

Until a few years ago, Windows hosting used to be significantly more expensive than Linux web hosting. This is hardly true today; you can easily find Windows hosts for almost the same price as Linux web hosts. When we have PaaS, Platform as a Service all hosting provides are offering Pay as you service. Ex: Azure, Amazon WS etc.,

PHP is platform independent and can run on any platform — Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, Windows.

ASP.net is built to run only on Windows platform.

There has been much debate about this subject and most of the debates have been biased and have been tailored to promote one of the programming languages instead of informing the audience.
Scalability and ease of maintenance have nothing to do with whether you select PHP or ASP.NET platform. Web Application scalability and ease of maintenance primarily depend on:

• Programmers' experience
• Using the best programming practices
• Using a solid programming framework
• Following programming guidelines and standards

In my experience ASP.NET can certainly compete and surpass PHP in terms of raw speed. My personal opinion is that a ASP.NET-MVC compiled web application would run more efficiently/faster than the same project that would be written in PHP.

And this debate goes on and on!!!
 
Thank you

How to access ViewState of one page in another page in Asp.Net?

You can't access ViewState of one page from another page directly. If you want to access a particular ViewState value then you can pass the value in Context collection and then access the value in other page.

In Page 1:

Context.Items.Add("employee" ,ViewState["employee"].ToString());

In Page 2:

string employeeName = Context.Items["employee"].ToString();

Hope this helps!

How to: Disable Button after Click while maintaining CausesValidation and an OnClick-Method

Here is how you can do it by adding these two lines in your code behind to prevent multiple clicks on a button.

string strProcessScript = "if (!Page_ClientValidate()){ return false; } else{ this.value='Processing...';this.disabled=true; }";
CheckOutButton.Attributes.Add("onclick", strProcessScript + ClientScript.GetPostBackEventReference(CheckOutButton, "").ToString());

If you have ASP.NET Validation controls in your page, then you might need to do this by adding specific validation group to Page_ClientValidate method.

string strProcessScript = "if (!Page_ClientValidate('PaymentValidationGroup')){ return false; } else{ this.value='Processing...';this.disabled=true; }";
CheckOutButton.Attributes.Add("onclick", strProcessScript + ClientScript.GetPostBackEventReference(CheckOutButton, "").ToString());

 

Only thing you need to change in ASPX is to add following attribute in ASP Button code UseSubmitBehavior="false"

 

<asp:Button runat="server" ID="PaymentCheckOutButton" ValidationGroup="PaymentValidationGroup"                                          
Text="Proceed to Checkout" UseSubmitBehavior="false" class="btn btn-primary btn-cons pull-right" OnClick="PaymentCheckOutButton_Click" />

 

Hope this helps!!

How do you clear temporary files in an ASP.NET website project?

All you need to do is stop IIS from Services, go to c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\ or respective Framework directory, open the Temporary ASP.NET Files and delete the folders

What happens when we delete these files? Is it safe?

Yes, it's safe to delete these, although it may force a dynamic recompilation of any .NET applications you run on the server.

For background, see the Understanding ASP.NET dynamic compilation article on MSDN.

How To Show A Message When DataList Is Empty

DataList doesn’t have EmptyDataTemplate like GridView or ListView, Here is how we can achieve use FooterTemplate in DataList

<FooterTemplate>
<asp:Label ID="lblEmpty" Text="No test types found." runat="server"
Visible='<%#bool.Parse((SearchValuesList.Items.Count == 0).ToString())%>'> </asp:Label>
</FooterTemplate>

How to access a div or HTML controls is inside a gridview?

Here is an example of how to access a div inside the TemplateColumn of a Grid:

aspx:

<asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Pick" HeaderStyle-HorizontalAlign="Center" ItemStyle-HorizontalAlign="Center">
<ItemStyle Width="60px" />
<ItemTemplate>
<div id="divpickstatus" runat="server">                                 
</div>
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:TemplateField>

codebehind

protected void gridview_schedule_RowDataBound(object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.Row.RowType == DataControlRowType.DataRow)
    {
        HtmlGenericControl divpickstatus = (HtmlGenericControl)e.Row.FindControl("divpickstatus");              
    }
}

Hope this helps.

SMTP Server Error: Bad sequence of commands. The server response was: you must authenticate first (#5.5.1)

This error occurs due to lock down of default mail server (127.0.0.1) by web hosting companies due to SPAM or what ever other security reasons. But if you use “localhost” or default server “127.0.0.1” on your local machine it should not be an issue. But if you have a situation where you need to relay e-mail to a remote mail server that is secured you get this exception.

So you need to handle well using built in classes provided by .NET. This is take care by NetworkCredential Class. This class provides credentials for password-based authentication schemes such as basic, digest, NTLM, and Kerberos authentication.

Here is a fully working quick code sample that you can use to get started on your own SMTP-Authentication supporting e-mail code.

   1: try

   2: {

   3:     SmtpClient smtpclient = new SmtpClient();

   4:     NetworkCredential NetworkCredential = new NetworkCredential(smtpUserName, smtpPassword);

   5:     smtpclient.Credentials = NetworkCredential;

   6:     string MailServer = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["SMTPServer"].ToString();

   7:     MailMessage objEmail = new MailMessage();

   8:  

   9:     string FromEmail = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ErrorReportEmailFrom"].ToString();

  10:     if (FromEmail.IndexOf(";") > 0)

  11:     {

  12:         FromEmail = FromEmail.Replace(";", ",");

  13:     }

  14:     MailAddress FromAddress = new MailAddress(FromEmail);

  15:     objEmail.From = FromAddress;

  16:  

  17:     string ToEmail = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ErrorReportEmailTo"].ToString();

  18:     if (ToEmail.IndexOf(";") > 0)

  19:     {

  20:         ToEmail = ToEmail.Replace(";", ",");

  21:     }

  22:     objEmail.To.Add(ToEmail);

  23:  

  24:     string CcEmail = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["CcEmail"].ToString();

  25:     if (CcEmail.IndexOf(";") > 0)

  26:     {

  27:         CcEmail = CcEmail.Replace(";", ",");

  28:     }

  29:     objEmail.CC.Add(CcEmail);

  30:  

  31:     string BccEmail = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["BccEmail"].ToString();

  32:     if (BccEmail.IndexOf(";") > 0)

  33:     {

  34:         BccEmail = BccEmail.Replace(";", ",");

  35:     }

  36:     objEmail.Bcc.Add(BccEmail);

  37:  

  38:     objEmail.Subject = strSubject;

  39:     try

  40:     {

  41:         objEmail.Body = strBody;

  42:         objEmail.IsBodyHtml = true;

  43:         smtpclient.Host = MailServer;

  44:         smtpclient.Send(objEmail);

  45:     }

  46:     catch (Exception ex)

  47:     {

  48:         throw ex;

  49:     }

  50:     finally

  51:     {

  52:         objEmail.Dispose();

  53:     }

  54: }

  55: catch (Exception ex)

  56: {

  57:      

  58: }

Enjoy coding!!

How to Add validations controls Programmatically

I was looking for some server side validation message which can done without posting back to server. I tried doing javascript and writing that script to literal control and I have been thinking of doing a better way. But here is the cool way to do this.

// Dynamically adding Validation control
RequiredFieldValidator Validator = new RequiredFieldValidator();
Validator.ErrorMessage = "No data to download for your request.";
// Validation group must be specified as to which group you need to bind
Validator.ValidationGroup = "Group1";
Validator.IsValid = false;
Validator.Visible = false;
Page.Form.Controls.Add(Validator);   

All you need to do is Depending on your need you need to change message and validation group. We need to set up validation group properly.

Happy coding

Web.config transformations in .NET 4.0

The web.config has now been refactored, and with ASP.Net 4 a lot of the settings that were previously found in the web.config file have now been moved to the machine.config file. This significantly reduces the size of the file, which I think is a great bonus.

Web.config transformations cater for moving your application between your relevant environments (e.g. DEV, QA, PROD). The transformations work on the relevant configurations you setup.
To create your own Configuration build with configuration transformations, create a new ASP.NET Web Application in Visual Studio 2010. Next, in the menu select "Build" and then "Configuration Manager". In the "Active Solution Configuration" drop down, select "New". Name the relevant configuration, for example I'm calling mine "DEV" and copying the settings from the "Debug" configuration.

Make sure "Create new project configurations" is selected. Once you click okay, you will see your Web.config file now has a "+" next to it in your solution explorer.

If you don't see the "+", build you solution, right click the web.config file and select "Add Config Transformations".
You will see for each of your build configurations there will be a "Web.[Build Configuration Name].config" file. If you open any of these files, you will see place holders for different sections of your original web.config file.

To change settings per your relevant build configuration, check out the following MSDN Article:Web.config Transformation Syntax for Web Application Project Deployment

Hope this helps.