Rajeeshcv.com

Download the source code for this tutorial from  - http://www.rajeeshcv.com/download/ProfilingSample.zip

What happens if your client complains that your application is running very slow!!! or in your load/stress testing you found that some functionalities are very slow in executing than expected. This is the time where you go for profiling the execution, to analyse the root cause of these issues.

So how we could develop a profiler, where we don’t have to wrap our normal code in a profiling code.

Before going to create the profiler, we have to decide where to put the profiled information. In this tutorial, I am making use of Log4Net as underlying layer to store this information. If you have not used Log4Net before, I suggest you to read http://www.beefycode.com/post/Log4Net-Tutorial-pt-1-Getting-Started.aspx as a starting point.

With the help of AOP (Aspect-Oriented Programming) we could do the profiling task without interrupting the actual code.

AOP is a programming paradigm in which secondary or supporting functions are isolated from the main program's business logic

Source : Wikipedia

So in order bring the AOP functionality into this application, I am going to use a third party library PostSharp  which I believe this is one of the best that is available in the market. Please download it from http://www.sharpcrafters.com/postsharp/download.

So, now we have got the basic things to start with and now let’s start coding….

Start a new solution in visual studio and add a new console application project to it. Then add the below references to the newly created project

1. Add reference to the Log4Net.dll
2. Add reference to PostSharp.Laos.dll and PostSharp.Public.dll (Please read http://www.sharpcrafters.com/postsharp/documentation/getting-started to get the basic installation procedure)

Next, create a new attribute class called “ProfileMethodAttribute” – this class is responsible for doing the profiling work. Make sure that you have decorated this class with “Serializable” attribute

This is an update to my previous post regarding conditional rendering partial views, in that I used the internal implementation of the Html.RenderPartail(…) method to create the Html extension. Later I found a simple way to achieve the same using Action<T> delegate

<p>Partial rendering with Action Methods</p>        
<% Html.PartialIf(this.Model.Exists, html => html.RenderPartial("MyPartialView")); %>

If you look at the “PartialIf” implementation, it is simple, cleaner than the previous technique I have mentioned in my post.

public static void PartialIf(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, bool condition, Action<HtmlHelper> action)
{
    if (condition)
    {
        action.Invoke(htmlHelper);
    }
}

That’s it :)

Update : Later I found a cleaner and simple approach to do the same – read this post ASP.Net MVC – Conditional rendering Partial Views with Action<T> delegate

Following my previous post about Conditional Rendering, one of my colleague asked me how to render the partial view based on a condition.

Normal way of doing this is

<p>Normal partial rendering based on condition</p>           
<% if(this.Model.Exists)
 {
     Html.RenderPartial("MyPartialView");
 } %>

I am not sure about any other technique for rendering partial view conditionally other than this (correct me if I am wrong :) ).

Then I thought about copying the pattern I have used in my previous post and came up with this code which could conditionally render partial views and you could use the Html extension like below, which more clean than the previous

<% Html.PartialIf(this.Model.Exists, "MyPartialView"); %>

We come across situations like rendering elements based on the conditions in Model. For example, in the view if we want to show a TextBox if some property is true. A normal way of doing this is like below

<% if (this.Model.Exists)
      {%>
      <%= Html.TextBox("Test") %>
   <% } 

This looks like old classic asp style, and when it comes to code maintenance this will be a pain. So a clean way is to use an Html helper to generate this

  <%= Html.If(this.Model.Exists, action => action.TextBox("Name")) %>

which looks cleaner than the old one. Source code for this helper method is

public static string If(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, bool condition, Func<HtmlHelper, string> action)
{
    if (condition)
    {
        return action.Invoke(htmlHelper);
    }

    return string.Empty;
}

What about IfElse condition, we could write another helper method for that