Visual CSharp 1002005 A Developers Notebook [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

4.5. Personalize with Complex Types

Although personalizing a site for your users is terrific, to make a
useful commercial site you often have to store complex user-defined
types (classes) or collections. The ASP.NET Web Site Administration Tool
(WAT) makes that easy.

Note: Commercial sites often have to store complex user-defined
types (classes) or collections for individual users (for example,
shopping carts).

4.5.1. How do I do that?

Once again you need a new web site. Create one and call it
ComplexPersonalization. Use the Copy Web Site
Wizard to copy the previous lab to a new lab, or download the source
from the previous lab and copy it to a new lab from the
SitePersonalization folder.

In this lab you'll create the
world's simplest shopping cart.

To create a complex profile property
you'll need to edit the
Web.config file. In this case,
we'll add a collection of strings called
CHOSENBOOKS that will allow the user to choose one
or more books and have those choices stored in the profile.

Add a line to Web.config for your new property:

<profile>
<properties>
<add name="lastName" />
<add name="firstName" />
<add name="phoneNumber" />
<add name="birthDate" type="System.DateTime"/>
<add name="CHOSENBOOKS" 
type="System.
Collections.Specialized.StringCollection" />
</properties>
</profile>

To see this collection at work, drag a
CheckBoxList from the Visual Studio Toolbox onto
the ProfileInfo page, which you will populate
with the names of four books. Hand-populate this list by clicking the
Items property and filling in the ListItems
Collection Editor, or by adding the control by hand to the
.aspx page using the following code:

<td style="width: 193px">
<asp:CheckBoxList ID="cblBooks" Runat="server" >
<asp:ListItem>Programming C#</asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem>Programming ASP.NET</asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem>Programming .NET Apps</asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem>Programming VB.NET</asp:ListItem>
</asp:CheckBoxList>
</td>

Click the Save button; the handler will add the books to the profile:

void save_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Profile.lastName = this.lastName.Text;
Profile.firstName = this.firstName.Text;
Profile.phoneNumber = this.phone.Text;
Profile.birthDate = Convert.ToDateTime(this.birthDate.Text);
Profile.CHOSENBOOKS = new System.
Collections.Specialized.StringCollection( );
foreach (ListItem item in this.cblBooks.Items)
{
if (item.Selected)
{
Profile.CHOSENBOOKS.Add(item.Value.ToString( ));
}
}
Response.Redirect("Default.aspx");
}

Tip: Each time you save the books, you create an instance of the
String collection, and then you iterate
through the checked listboxes, looking for the selected items. Each
selected item is added to the String collection
within the profile (the
CHOSENBOOKS property).

To confirm that this data has been stored, add a listbox
(lbBooks) to the
Default.aspx
page, and bind that listbox to the collection in the profile:

public partial class Default_aspx : System.Web.UI.Page
{
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (Profile.UserName != null && Profile.IsAnonymous =  = false)
{
this.lblFullName.Text = "Full name: " +
Profile.firstName + " " + Profile.lastName;
this.lblPhone.Text = "Phone: " + Profile.phoneNumber;
this.lblBirthDate.Text = "Born: " +
Profile.birthDate.ToShortDateString( );
this.pnlInfo.Visible = true;
}
else
{
this.pnlInfo.Visible = false;
}
if (Profile.CHOSENBOOKS != null)
{
this.lbBooks.DataSource = Profile.CHOSENBOOKS;
this.lbBooks.DataBind( );
this.lbBooks.Visible = true;
}
else
{
this.lbBooks.Visible = false;
}
}

To make your code a bit easier to maintain, you want to have the
selected values (name, phone, selected books, etc.) prefilled when
you return to the Profile Information page, so
you'll implement a bit of code on
Page_Load to get the initial values from the
Profile object:

public partial class ProfileInfo_aspx : System.Web.UI.Page
{
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (!IsPostBack && Profile.UserName != null)
{
if (Profile.IsAnonymous =  = false)
{
this.lastName.Text = Profile.lastName;
this.firstName.Text = Profile.firstName;
this.phone.Text = Profile.phoneNumber;
this.birthDate.Text = Profile.birthDate.ToShortDateString( );
}
if (Profile.CHOSENBOOKS != null)
{
foreach (ListItem li in this.cblBooks.Items)
{
foreach (string s in Profile.CHOSENBOOKS)
{
if (li.Text =  = s)
{
li.Selected = true;
}   // end if text is the same
}      // end foreach string in saved isbns
}         // end foreach item in the listbox
}            // end if savedisbns not null
}               // end if not postback
}            // end Page Load

Each time you navigate to the Profile Information page, the values
are updated from the existing profile (if any) and you are free to
change them and save the changes, as shown in Figure 4-34.

When you return to the default page, your saved profile information
is reflected, as shown in Figure 4-35.

4.5.2. What about...

...anonymous personalization?

Most sites would like to allow the user to make choices (for example,
add to a shopping cart) before logging in. In
this lab that is not possible, but anonymous personalization is
covered in the next lab.

4.5.3. Where can I learn more?

Numerous articles on personalization are available on
ONDotnet (http://www.ondotnet.com), as well as in the
MSDN.