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For your convenience Apress has placed some of the front matter material after the index. Please use the Bookmarks and Contents at a Glance links to access them.
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Contents at a Glance About the Author���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� xv About the Technical Reviewer������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ xvii Acknowledgments������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� xix Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� xxi ■■Chapter 1: The JavaScript You Need to Know�������������������������������������������������������������������1 ■■Chapter 2: A First Look at jQuery������������������������������������������������������������������������������������33 ■■Chapter 3: ASP.NET Controls and jQuery Selectors����������������������������������������������������������63 ■■Chapter 4: Event Handling���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������103 ■■Chapter 5: DOM Manipulation and Dynamic Content�����������������������������������������������������135 ■■Chapter 6: Traversal and Other Useful Methods������������������������������������������������������������157 ■■Chapter 7: Effects and Animations��������������������������������������������������������������������������������179 ■■Chapter 8: Ajax Techniques�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������193 ■■Chapter 9: Creating and Using Plugins��������������������������������������������������������������������������231 ■■Chapter 10: jQuery UI and jQuery Mobile����������������������������������������������������������������������255 ■■Chapter 11: Useful jQuery Recipes for ASP.NET Applications����������������������������������������281 ■■Appendix: Learning Resources��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������301 Index���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������303
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Introduction Welcome to the exciting world of jQuery! If you’re an ASP.NET developer looking to turbocharge your ASP.NET applications with jQuery, you picked the right book. Modern web applications leverage browsers’ resources through client-side scripting. Although JavaScript is a de facto standard as far as client-side scripting is concerned, there are several libraries built on top of JavaScript that help developers accomplish their job quickly and easily. jQuery is one of the most popular JavaScript libraries available today. If you want to develop Ajax-driven, dynamic, and cross-browser web applications using ASP.NET, understanding jQuery is an invaluable skill. While using jQuery in ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC projects, you need to combine the power of jQuery with server controls, controllers, services, and APIs. It is crucial to understand how jQuery can be used effectively in combination with ASP.NET features and technologies. To that end, this book teaches you how to harness the power of the jQuery library in your ASP.NET Web Forms and MVC applications. It helps you understand the foundations of jQuery from the perspective of an ASP.NET developer in a clear, step-by-step way, so that you can quickly ensure you have this invaluable skill under your belt.
Who This Book Is For This book is for ASP.NET web developers who want to tap the power of jQuery in their existing or new web applications. This book doesn’t teach you ASP.NET features. I assume that you’re already comfortable working with ASP.NET and doing web application development in general. All the code samples discussed in this book use C# as the server-side programming language, so you should also know C#. Although no prior knowledge of jQuery is expected, I assume that you’re familiar with the basics of JavaScript. The examples illustrated throughout the book use SQL Server and Entity Framework. Although you need not have a detailed understanding of these technologies, you should at least be familiar with them. The book uses Visual Studio as the development tool. You should know how to work with Visual Studio to perform basic tasks such as creating projects and debugging code.
Software Required To work through the examples in this book, you need the following software: •
Visual Studio 2013
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SQL Server 2012
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jQuery, jQuery UI, and jQuery Mobile library files
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Web browsers: Internet Explorer 9+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari
Although I used Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 to develop the book’s examples, most of the examples can also be developed using Visual Studio Express 2013 for Web.
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■ Introduction
All the data-driven examples were developed using SQL Server 2012 Express Edition. I use the Northwind sample database in many examples, and I suggest you install it. You can download the Northwind database and its script from the MSDN downloads web site. I used jQuery 2.0.3 to write the examples presented in this book. You should consider downloading the latest versions of jQuery, jQuery UI, and jQuery Mobile from their official web sites. It’s always a good idea to test the client scripts you write in all the major browsers. So you might consider installing the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari.
How This Book Is Structured This book is organized into 11 chapters and one appendix. Here’s a quick overview: •
Chapter 1 gives you a quick recap of JavaScript programming. You can brush up on your JavaScript skills before taking on jQuery.
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Chapter 2 gives you a peek into jQuery. You learn the basics, such as downloading and installing jQuery on your machine. You also develop a simple application in ASP.NET Web Forms and MVC.
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Chapter 3 gives you a detailed understanding of jQuery selectors. You learn to match DOM elements using powerful and flexible selectors. This chapter also details techniques to deal with server controls while selecting them in the jQuery code.
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Chapter 4 teaches you one of the most commonly used features: event handling. It covers commonly used events such as window, keyboard, and mouse events. Some advanced concepts relating to event handling, such as passing custom data to the event handler, are also covered.
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Chapter 5 is about DOM manipulation using jQuery. Topics covered include applying CSS styles, working with attributes, and manipulating DOM elements.
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Chapter 6 covers DOM navigation and filtering techniques, including tree traversal, iterating, searching, working with custom data attributes, and more.
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Chapter 7 teaches you how to apply jQuery effects and animations to Web Form controls and page elements. You learn to apply fancy effects such as fade-in, fade-out, slide-up and slide-down. You also learn to apply custom animation effects to page elements.
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Chapter 8 covers an important topic: Ajax techniques offered by jQuery. This chapter discusses how ASMX web services, WCF services, MVC action methods, and the Web API can be called from the jQuery code. It also discusses the JSON format and its use in Ajax communication.
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Chapter 9 discusses plugins—a technique to extend the jQuery core. You can develop plugins to enhance and extend the core functionality offered by jQuery. The chapter discusses the steps involved in building a plugin and gives you some recommendations to be followed during the process.
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Chapter 10 gives you an overview of jQuery UI and jQuery Mobile. jQuery UI provides various widgets that you can add to ASP.NET web applications to provide professional user interface elements such as dialogs, menus, accordions, and sliders. jQuery Mobile helps you develop web applications targeted at mobile devices.
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Chapter 11 presents a few recipes that you will find useful in real-world applications. The recipes covered include implementing Ajax-based paging, client-side sorting, file upload, autocomplete text box, and cascading drop-down lists.
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The Appendix lists some jQuery learning resources.
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■ Introduction
Downloading the Source Code The complete source code for the book is available for download at the book’s companion web site. Visit http://www.apress.com and go to the book’s information page at http://www.apress.com/9781430263043. You can then download the source code from the Source Code/Downloads section.
Contacting the Author You can reach me via my web site: http://www.binaryintellect.net. You can also follow me on popular social-networking web sites such as Facebook and Twitter (visit my web site for details).
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Chapter 1
The JavaScript You Need to Know JavaScript is a programming language that adds interactivity and dynamic content to otherwise static HTML pages. Behind most fancy frills such as mouseover effects, animations, drop-down menus, and form validations, you will usually find JavaScript being used in some way or another. jQuery is a JavaScript library that simplifies your client-side programming tasks and uses the same programming constructs as JavaScript for variables, branching, and looping. While writing jQuery code, you often need to use these JavaScript programming constructs. Therefore, before you delve into jQuery programming, you must refresh your JavaScript skills. This chapter is intended to give you a quick overview of commonly used JavaScript features so that you can use the knowledge gained in this chapter in the remainder of the book. If you are already familiar with JavaScript, you can skip this chapter, or glance over its content and jump to the next chapter. Specifically, you will learn how to do the following: •
Understand basic programming constructs used in JavaScript for branching and looping
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Work with JavaScript variables and data types
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Use built-in string, number, and date functions
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Create and use your own functions
■■Note Although this chapter is intended to give you an overview of the JavaScript language, it does not cover all JavaScript features. For more information on JavaScript programming, see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript.
Your First JavaScript Program In this section, you will develop a simple ASP.NET Web Form that makes use of JavaScript to seek a confirmation from the end user. Although the application is not very sophisticated, it does throw light on some basics of JavaScript. Figure 1-1 shows the Web Form you will develop.
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Chapter 1 ■ The JavaScript You Need to Know
Figure 1-1. Your first JavaScript program As shown in Figure 1-1, the Web Form consists of a couple of Label controls, a TextBox, and a Button server control. Once you enter a name and hit the Submit button, a confirmation dialog is shown that seeks your consent to submit the form. Depending on your choice, either the form submission is canceled or the form is submitted to the server. Upon postback, the entered name is displayed in a Label control. To begin developing this application, create a new ASP.NET Web Application based on the Empty project template using Visual Studio (see Figure 1-2).
Figure 1-2. Creating a new ASP.NET Empty Web Application using Visual Studio
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Chapter 1 ■ The JavaScript You Need to Know
Add a new Web Form to the project and name it FirstJS.aspx. Design the Web Form as shown in Figure 1-1 by dragging and dropping the respective server controls from the toolbox. The HTML and server control markup of the Web Form is shown in Listing 1-1. Listing 1-1. Markup of FirstJS.aspx <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="FirstJS.aspx.cs" Inherits="Chapter_01. FirstJS" %> ...