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Dominic Burford - Professional Profile



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I am a professional software engineer and technical architect with over twenty years commercial development experience with a strong focus on the design and development of web and mobile applications.

I have experience of architecting scalable, distributed, high volume web applications that are accessible from multiple devices due to their responsive web design, including architecting enterprise service-oriented solutions. I have also developed enterprise mobile applications using Xamarin and Telerik Platform.

I have extensive experience using .NET, ASP.NET, Windows and Web Services, WCF, SQL Server, LINQ and other Microsoft technologies. I am also familiar with HTML, Bootstrap, Javascript (inc. JQuery and Node.js), CSS, XML, JSON, Apache Cordova, KendoUI and many other web and mobile related technologies.

I am enthusiastic about Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery and Application Life-cycle Management having configured such environments using CruiseControl.NET, TeamCity and Team Foundation Services. I enjoy working in Agile and Test Driven Development (TDD) environments.

Outside of work I have two beautiful daughters. I am also an avid cyclist who enjoys reading, listening to music and travelling.

 

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GeneralSetting environments in ASP.NET Core Pin
Dominic Burford16-Jul-18 21:29
professionalDominic Burford16-Jul-18 21:29 
GeneralCreating a zipped deployment for an ASP.NET Core web application Pin
Dominic Burford28-Jun-18 23:59
professionalDominic Burford28-Jun-18 23:59 
GeneralI’m turning into a Microsoft fanboy Pin
Dominic Burford8-Jun-18 5:45
professionalDominic Burford8-Jun-18 5:45 
GeneralAdding a confirmation dialog to an ASP.NET Core 2.0 form page handler Pin
Dominic Burford7-Jun-18 4:34
professionalDominic Burford7-Jun-18 4:34 
GeneralUploading a file in ASP.NET Core 2.0 Pin
Dominic Burford1-Jun-18 4:07
professionalDominic Burford1-Jun-18 4:07 
GeneralASP.NET Core 2.0 Razor Page Handlers Pin
Dominic Burford15-May-18 0:01
professionalDominic Burford15-May-18 0:01 
GeneralMocking the HttpContext Session object in ASP.NET Core 2.0 Pin
Dominic Burford30-Apr-18 4:31
professionalDominic Burford30-Apr-18 4:31 
GeneralUsing ViewComponents in ASP.NET Core 2.0 Pin
Dominic Burford16-Apr-18 22:49
professionalDominic Burford16-Apr-18 22:49 
While developing our new web application, we wanted to take a component-based approach and build up the user-interface from small, discreet UI components. So instead of having monolithic Razor Pages containing many different controls, we thought it would be a far better design approach to develop the UI from smaller, discreet components that we could then re-use in other parts of the application.

I initially looked into the concept of partials in ASP.NET Core, and while these are great for re-using static markup, they're not so great for building dynamic, data-driven content such as menus (which would be the first component I would in fact be developing).

Where your requirement is to re-use dynamic and / or data driven content, then the correct design approach is to use a ViewComponent. From the Microsoft documentation[^]

Quote:
New to ASP.NET Core MVC, view components are similar to partial views, but they're much more powerful. View components don't use model binding, and only depend on the data provided when calling into it. A view component:

- Renders a chunk rather than a whole response.
- Includes the same separation-of-concerns and testability benefits found between a controller and view.
- Can have parameters and business logic.
- Is typically invoked from a layout page.

View components are intended anywhere you have reusable rendering logic that's too complex for a partial view, such as:

- Dynamic navigation menus // bingo!! this is what we're looking for!!
I won't copy the entire list here, I've posted the link to the documentation so you can have a read of it for yourself.

So our menu tree structure is handled by a ViewComponent. All the business logic for building a user-specific menu is contained within the ViewComponent, and the ViewComponent returns the menu tree structure. This is then displayed by the Razor Page that is associated with the ViewComponent.

So building our application's menu is encapsulated in a re-usable, discreet and unit-testable ViewComponent. Going forwards, we will use ViewComponent's for all of our UI components, and build up our Razor Pages from multiple ViewComponents.

This gives us huge benefits.

- Encapsulate the underlying business logic for a Razor Page in a separate component
- Allow for the business logic to be unit-tested
- Allow for the UI component to be re-used across different forms
- Leads to cleaner code with separation of concerns

Here's a (very) simplified example of how we've used a ViewComponent to build our menu tree structure. Note that all exception handling, logging etc has been removed for brevity.

public class MenuItemsViewComponent: ViewComponent
{
    public async Task<IViewComponentResult> InvokeAsync(int parentId, string email)
    {
        var response = await new MenuServices().GetModulesItemsForUser(parentId, email);
         
        return View(response);
    }
}
The ViewComponent calls one of our ASP.NET Web API services to retrieve the menu tree specified menu level and user. It then returns this wrapped inside an instance of IViewComponentResult, which is one of the supported result types returned from a ViewComponent.

Here is the (very) simplified Razor Page that displays the output from the ViewComponent. Note that all styling has been removed for brevity.
@model Common.Models.MainMenuModels
    
@if (Model != null && Model.MenuItems != null && Model.MenuItems.Any())
{
    foreach (var menuitem in Model.MenuItems)
    {
        <a asp-page=@menuitem.Routing>@menuitem.DisplayText</a>
    }
}
And finally here's how we invoke the ViewComponent from our layout page.
@await Component.InvokeAsync("MenuItems", 0, "myemail@company.co.uk")
I am very impressed with the ViewComponent concept. From a design point-of-view, it is the correct approach if you are building forms that contain any sort of dynamic content. By allowing for clean separation of concerns and supporting unit testing, you can ensure your applications are far more robust and less likely to fail in production. These are just a couple of reasons why you should consider using ViewComponent's in your own ASP.NET Core 2.0 applications. Why not give them a try.
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare

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GeneralWeb application metrics with Application Insight Part 2 Pin
Dominic Burford10-Apr-18 22:50
professionalDominic Burford10-Apr-18 22:50 
GeneralWriting flexible code in ASP.NET Core 2.0 Razor Pages Pin
Dominic Burford3-Apr-18 5:06
professionalDominic Burford3-Apr-18 5:06 
GeneralPerforming Code Coverage for .NET Core 2.0 applications Pin
Dominic Burford23-Mar-18 4:54
professionalDominic Burford23-Mar-18 4:54 
GeneralRe: Performing Code Coverage for .NET Core 2.0 applications Pin
Slacker00723-Mar-18 5:12
professionalSlacker00723-Mar-18 5:12 
GeneralRe: Performing Code Coverage for .NET Core 2.0 applications Pin
Dominic Burford23-Mar-18 5:15
professionalDominic Burford23-Mar-18 5:15 
GeneralBuilding ASP.NET Core 2.0 web applications Pin
Dominic Burford21-Mar-18 5:39
professionalDominic Burford21-Mar-18 5:39 
GeneralObtaining the authentication token returned from Azure AD B2C in ASP.NET Core 2.0 Pin
Dominic Burford16-Mar-18 2:03
professionalDominic Burford16-Mar-18 2:03 
GeneralVersioning a .NET Core 2.0 application Pin
Dominic Burford13-Mar-18 2:34
professionalDominic Burford13-Mar-18 2:34 
GeneralThe next generation technical stack Pin
Dominic Burford12-Mar-18 4:43
professionalDominic Burford12-Mar-18 4:43 
GeneralWriting flexible code Pin
Dominic Burford22-Jan-18 23:58
professionalDominic Burford22-Jan-18 23:58 
GeneralA cautionary tale of over-confidence in your own opinions Pin
Dominic Burford22-Dec-17 1:57
professionalDominic Burford22-Dec-17 1:57 
GeneralWhat lies ahead in 2018 Pin
Dominic Burford21-Dec-17 0:18
professionalDominic Burford21-Dec-17 0:18 
GeneralTemplated HTML emails using RazorEngine Pin
Dominic Burford30-Nov-17 4:49
professionalDominic Burford30-Nov-17 4:49 
GeneralSending emails using Azure Sendgrid service Pin
Dominic Burford29-Nov-17 11:18
professionalDominic Burford29-Nov-17 11:18 
GeneralBuilding native enterprise apps is (probably) the wrong approach Pin
Dominic Burford28-Nov-17 1:05
professionalDominic Burford28-Nov-17 1:05 
GeneralAppropriate vs Consistent Pin
Dominic Burford9-Nov-17 3:24
professionalDominic Burford9-Nov-17 3:24 
GeneralCreating Generic RESTful API Services Pin
Dominic Burford20-Oct-17 5:01
professionalDominic Burford20-Oct-17 5:01 

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