Introduction

Setting up a NavWin MVP project is designed to be really fast and easy. The project will work as both a Windows application (for fast testing and development) and also a Web application. The project uses Windows User Controls for designing the view layout. The controls are used directly in the Windows version of the project and the layout is used directly in the web version of the project. Each project can have as many presenters as needed and these are easily linked together using the three core navigation methods

• NWChangePresenter (new presenter)
• NWUpdatePresenter()
• NWGoBackPresenter()

You can either put all your presenters in a single ‘big’ project or you can break them up into multiple Visual Studio projects. In general it is recommended that you have one Visual Studio project per distinct Web application. This means each application can be developed independently of all the others. As you finish an application, you can simply include your project into a single ‘master’ web project and select one top-level application. In the NavWin web site, we have made an application called ‘AppSelector’ which is simply a stateless application that allows you to navigate to the other applications.

Steps to make a stateless starter project

A stateless starter project does not require any model to preserve the state when the user navigates away from the view. For completeness we include an empty model class below but this can be deleted if it remains unused

1)      Create a normal Class Library project, we will call ours NavWin.MVP.MyAppName

2)      Rename the default class to ModelMyAppName.cs (delete this class if your app does not require any state to be stored)

3)      Add a reference to the assembly  NavWin.MVP.Framework

4)      Add a ‘using’ to NavWin.MVP.Framework to this class

using NavWin.MVP.Framework.Model;

 

5)      For now, just add one User Control item to represent the top level presenter. Call the user control PresenterMyAppName.cs

6)      Add the following ‘using’ to statements to this class

using NavWin.MVP.Framework.WinControls; using NavWin.MVP.Framework.Model;

 

7)      Important – Change the top level class declaration of the user control from

public partial class PresenterMyAppName : UserControl

 

to

public partial class PresenterMyAppName : NWBasePresenter

 

8)      Add the following method to the presenter (this is the minimum you need)

public override void NWInitialisePresenter() { }

 

9)      Using the normal Visual Studio user control designer, create a control layout using the special ‘NW’ web controls e.g. here is the design for the NavWin login presenter

 

10)   To test this control as Windows application, add a new Windows Application project to the solution.

a.       Set this project as startup

b.      Add a reference to the assembly  NavWin.MVP.Framework

c.       Add a reference to the project NavWin.MVP.MyAppName

d.      In the form load event, add the following code, use a suitable location to store your test data (this location is used for all models)

private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) {     NWModel.ModelDirectory = @"D:\Work\TestData";     PresenterMyAppName presenter = new PresenterMyAppName();     this.Controls.Add(presenter);     presenter.NWResizeControls(); }

 

e.      Run the Windows application and you will see the following

11)   Before we enable this application as a web application, we need to define one more special class which is a unique requirement to a stateless Web application. This is called the presenter router class. This class can take the information in a URL in order to identify the correct presenter to use in any one client request.

a.       Create a class called RouterMyAppName

b.      Add a ‘using’ to NavWin.MVP.Framework to this class

using NavWin.MVP.Framework.WinControls;

c.       Change the class declaration to implement the INWPresenterRouter interface

public class RouterMyAppName : INWPresenterRouter

d.      Add the following method to implement the interface. Note in this example there is only one presenter so the ‘presenterName’ argument is ignored

public const string APPLICATION_NAME = "MyAppName";   public NWBasePresenter GetPresenter(string presenterName, List<string> parameters) {     return new PresenterMyAppName(); }

 

12)   To test this control in as Web application, add a new Web Application project to the solution

a.       Set this project as start-up

b.      Add a reference to the assembly  NavWin.MVP.Framework

c.       Add a reference to the project NavWin.MVP.MyAppName

d.      In addition to the Default.Aspx form, add a second form called Response.Aspx. Note that you will only need these two forms to drive the entire web application. The Default.Aspx is the start up form. The Response.Aspx is the callback form and this is never displayed to the user.

e.      In the page load event for the Default.Aspx add the following bootstrap code

public partial class WebApps : System.Web.UI.Page     {         protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             NWMessageHandler handler = new NWMessageHandler();             handler.ProcessPageLoad(this, "Response.Aspx");         }     }

 

f.        In the page load event of the Response.Aspx add the following client call back code. The code can be extended to as many routers as you want, depending on how many applications you support (just add more ‘if’ conditions). There is always one router per application.

NWPresenterRouter router = null; NWMessageHandler handler = new NWMessageHandler(); NWRequestUrl url = handler.ParseUrl(this);   if (url.ApplicationName == String.Empty) {     router = new RouterMyAppName(); // default router } else if (url.ApplicationName == RouterMyAppName.APPLICATION_NAME) {     router = new RouterMyAppName(); } handler.ProcessResponse(this, router, url, "WebApps.Aspx");

 

g.       You can now run the Web application and you will see this screen