Chapter 19. Basic Web Programming

Windows Forms is the technology for writing Windows applications; with ASP.NET, Web applications that are displayed in any browser can be built. ASP.NET enables you to write Web applications in a similar way to that in which Windows applications are developed. This is made possible by server-side controls that abstract the HTML code and mimic the behavior of the Windows controls. Of course, there are still many differences between Windows and Web applications because of the underlying technologies HTTP and HTML on which Web applications are based.

This chapter provides an overview of programming Web applications with ASP.NET, how to use Web controls, how to deal with state management (which is very different from how it's handled in Windows applications), how to perform authentication, and how to read and write data to and from a database.

Specifically, this chapter covers the following topics:

  • What happens on the server when a HTML request is sent from the client

  • How to create a simple Web page

  • Using Web server controls in a Web page (and seeing the HTML code they generate)

  • How to add event handlers to act on user actions

  • Using validation controls to validate user input

  • How to implement state management with different methods, such as ViewState, cookies, and session, application, and cache objects

  • How to use authentication and authorization features offered by ASP.NET controls

  • How to display and update database information

Overview

A Web application causes ...

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