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We've decided to change the products and articles voting system. Now you can vote only with yes or no:

Few words how it works: when user view page it has two pictures for voting (for yes and no), both are grey and he can vote by clicking on some of them. If he vote yes (clicking on yes picture) it becomes green and everytime he open the page, he'll see the green image, and the both picture won't be enabled for voting.

in this article we'll describe all issues when creating such control:

0. created neccessary db tables.

We have a table when save all votes:

...
CREATE TABLE [DB_CHEME].[Ratings](
...
[HostAddress] [nvarchar](20) NOT NULL,
[Vote] [bit] NOT NULL,

...
)

it's important to have HostAddress (the IP) of the user (next time he visits the page, you'll be able to check if he has already pass a vote),

Vote is bit (true or false), it's his vote.

1. create user control (ascx) and add this code there:

<asp:ImageButton ID="_yesBtn" runat="server" onclick="_yesBtn_Click" CausesValidation="false" />&nbsp;<asp:Label ID="_yesLbl" runat="server"></asp:Label>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<asp:ImageButton
ID="_noBtn" runat="server" onclick="_noBtn_Click" CausesValidation="false" />&nbsp;<asp:Label ID="_noLbl" runat="server"></asp:Label>

2. code behind class:

private const string _none_yes = "grey_y.gif"; // picture for yes (before user vote)
private const string _none_no = "grey_n.gif"; // picture for no (before user vote)
private const string _no = "no.gif"; // picture for no, after user vote no
private const string _yes = "yes.gif"; // picture for yes, after user vote yes

private string _images_path = "../images/yn/"; // path for the necessary pictures

#region Events

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{

if (!IsPostBack)
{

//TODO Add code here to check if the current user has already voted.

if (didntVote)
{
  FillNone(); // you can see this function below
}
else if (votedYes)
{
FillYes(); // // you can see this function below
}
else
{
FillNo(); // // you can see this function below
}
}

protected void _yesBtn_Click(object sender, ImageClickEventArgs e)
{
//TODO: register new vote for yes

FillYes();
}

protected void _noBtn_Click(object sender, ImageClickEventArgs e)
{

//TODO: register new vote for no

FillNo();

}

#endregion

#region Private Methods

private void FillNone()
{
_yesBtn.ImageUrl = _images_path + _none_yes;
_noBtn.ImageUrl = _images_path + _none_no;

_yesBtn.Attributes.Add("onmouseover", "src='" + _images_path + _yes + "' ");
_yesBtn.Attributes.Add("onmouseout", "src='" + _images_path + _none_yes + "' ");

_yesBtn.AlternateText = "it's cool!";
_noBtn.AlternateText = "it's NO cool!";

_noBtn.Attributes.Add("onmouseover", "src='" + _images_path + _no + "' ");
_noBtn.Attributes.Add("onmouseout", "src='" + _images_path + _none_no + "' ");
}

private void FillYes()
{
_yesBtn.ImageUrl = _images_path + _yes;
_yesBtn.Enabled = false;

_noBtn.ImageUrl = _images_path + _none_no;
_noBtn.Enabled = false;
}

}

#endregion

That's All, I hope this article'll be useful to someone else too :)

We've added a page with our team: Visit it

Maybe it'll be funny to see us :)

In this article I'll try to explain some common xml isue. Let's look at the example:

we have some xml file (list.xml):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<Root>
<Item>
<Title>AspNetSource.com</Title>
<ID>1</ID>
</Item>
<Item>
<Title>dev-the-web.com</Title>
<ID>2</ID>
</Item>
</Root>

and we want to select Title of this Item which ID is 2. Follows the code:

XmlDocument xmlDocument = new XmlDocument();
XmlNode xmlDocument.Load(Server.MapPath("~") + "App_Data\\list.xml");

xmlNode = xmlDocument.SelectSingleNode("Root/Item[ID='2']");

string OUR_TEXT = xmlNode["Title"].InnerText;

That's all. Happy Coding :)

Let's begin with an example of simple asp.net code:

<asp:ImageButton ID="_imgBtn" runat="server" ImageUrl="~/images/Img.jpg" Height="50px" 
Width="50px" BorderWidth="0px" BorderStyle="None" />


That's a valid asp.net code and it works fine, BUT when you try to validate it 
through W3C (http://validator.w3.org/) you will see error like this:

Error Line X column X : there is no attribute "border".

This is a problem caused by W3C running validation whilst reading the HTML rendered for a simple browser like Netscape !

Do you want your pages to be valid for old-fashioned browsers which nobody uses anymore?

If the answer of last question is 'No' here's a solution:

Add a BrowserFile.browser file with the content below inside an App_Browsers folder in the app's root. The section for validation tells it

to use the same code as IE 7 or Firefox will. Add this and your page should validate:

<!--
You can find existing browser definitions at
<windir>\Microsoft.NET\Framework\<ver>\CONFIG\Browsers
-->
<browsers>
<browser id="NewBrowser" parentID="Mozilla">
<identification>
<userAgent match="Unique User Agent Regular Expression" />
</identification>

<capture>
<userAgent match="NewBrowser (?'version'\d+\.\d+)" />
</capture>

<capabilities>
<capability name="browser" value="My New Browser" />
<capability name="version" value="${version}" />
</capabilities>
</browser>

<browser refID="Mozilla">
<capabilities>
<capability name="xml" value="true" />
</capabilities>
</browser>
<browser id="w3cValidator" parentID="default">
<identification>
<userAgent match="^W3C_Validator" />
</identification>

<capture>
<userAgent match="^W3C_Validator/(?'version'(?'major'\d+)(?'minor'\.\d+)\w*).*" />
</capture>

<capabilities>
<capability name="browser" value="w3cValidator" />
<capability name="majorversion" value="${major}" />
<capability name="minorversion" value="${minor}" />
<capability name="version" value="${version}" />
<capability name="w3cdomversion" value="1.0" />
<capability name="xml" value="true" />
<capability name="tagWriter" value="System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter" />
</capabilities>
</browser>
</browsers>

That's All :) Happy Coding :)