Deborah's Developer MindScape

The virtues of a Web API Help Page were extolled in a prior post. That prior post demonstrated the "out of the box" functionality of the Microsoft ASP.NET Web API Help Page. This post extends that functionality to include the XML comments from your code. You can adjust the configuration file for the Help Page […]

If your ASP.NET Web API service is on the ‘net and no one is around to explain it, does it provide a service? Unlike no one hearing the tree falling in the woods, this question is more than a philosophical thought experiment. It could be a big issue for the clients needing your service. [See […]

One of the new unit testing features in VS 2012 (Premium or Ultimate) is the continuous test runner. When turned on, it automatically executes your unit tests after every successful build. Digressing a moment … in the early 1990’s Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop would sing a version of "The Song that Never Ends" at […]

There is nothing perfect in life, not even an ASP.NET Web API service. The service may not understand the provided parameters, or may not find the requested data, or may have trouble connecting to the database. Whatever the issue, if the service cannot return the desired data it would be nice to instead return an […]

An ASP.NET Web API service provides support for many different types of client applications. One such client is a JavaScript application. This post provides a very simple JavaScript client you can use to test your Web API service. [See this prior post for an introduction to building an ASP.NET Web API service. The service created […]

Internet Explorer 9 allows you to see the HTTP request and response information using the F12 developer tools. This can be useful when debugging or testing your ASP.NET Web API service. [See this prior post for an introduction to building an ASP.NET Web API service. The service created in that post is the example service […]

This post demonstrates how to use the ASP.NET Web API to access plain old custom objects (POCO) and build a service for a line of business application. No Entity Framework (EF). The Web API is a new easy-to-use framework that allows you to build a service that can send or receive data over HTTP to […]

One of the new things about testing in Visual Studio 2012 is that it is now available in *all* editions of Visual Studio all the way to Visual Studio Express! The Test Explorer in Visual  Studio 2012 replaces the Test View window in Visual Studio 2010. The following posts outline the Test Explorer features: Layout […]

OK 101 is an exaggeration, but there are many ways to run your tests in Visual Studio 2012. From the test code file While you are writing or editing a test method, you can right click anywhere within the method and run or debug the test. [Red rectangle added for illustration.] All of the tests […]

Visual Studio 2012 Test Explorer has extensive searching and limited grouping capabilities. (Visual Studio 2010’s Test View window had more grouping options by way of its many sorting parameters.) Searching Entering text into the Test Explorer Search box filters the list of tests to those containing the entered text. In the example below, entering "customer" […]