Microsoft has recently announced the availability of ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 with the addition of new Visual Studio 2012 web tooling, support for ASP.NET Web API, knockout IntelliSense and friendly URLs including the ability to make use of JSON as a .NET class.
The tool extends the existing ASP.NET runtime and includes a brand new Facebook application template for ASP.NET MVC which enables you to create a Facebook application that gets data from the logged in user as well as integrates with their friends. The latest update also includes a new single page application template that allows you to build interactive client-side web apps using Knockout, jQuery, and ASP.NET Web API.
It provides support for real time communication with ASP.NET SignalR which enables you to take advantage of the new WebSocket support in .NET 4.5. It also degrades to long-polling and other protocols for older clients.
"Paste JSON as Classes is a cool feature in ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 RC. This feature will help you generate strongly typed classes in C# or VB.NET from valid JSON text," mentions Dharmesh Sharma.
ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 includes support for OData, integrated tracing and automatically generates help page documentation for the relevant API. It includes several enhancements to Visual Studio 2012 web publishing and page inspector such as support for JavaScript selection mapping and facilitates real time CSS updates.
With the help of the ASP.NET friendly URL functionality, you will be able to easily create web applications with search engine friendly URLs without the traditional .aspx extension. It provides an ability to easily add mobile support for your applications with support for mobile ASP.NET pages and enables users to switch between desktop and mobile views.
DonaldAdams reported:
I installed and it broke my existing application:
In Global.asax.cs on the following line:
WebApiConfig.Register(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration);
Error:
Method not found: 'System.Web.Http.Controllers.ServicesContainer
System.Web.Http.HttpConfiguration.get_Services()'.
When trying to run my MVC4 WebAPI application
Uninstalling 2012.2 removed made things worse...
However, Angie xu who works with Microsoft replied back with an advice to install Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 and then install ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2.
ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2, formerly ASP.NET Fall 2012 Update BUILD Prerelease includes updates to Visual Studio 2012 project templates including the latest versions of jQuery, jQuery UI, jQuery Validation, Modernirz and Knockout.
"The new runtime functionality is delivered to ASP.NET via additional NuGet packages. This means that installing this update does not make any changes to the existing ASP.NET binaries, and thus does not cause any compatibility issues with existing projects. New projects will contain the new functionality and existing projects can be updated with the new NuGet packages," said Scott Guthrie.
Steve, a UK based freelance Asp.NET and Dynamic Data developer reported:
Scott Hanselman announced ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 (Release Candidate) and it's great for the first time it's easy to deploy a DD Web Application Project (WAP) site precompiled and un-editable it's just a check box now.
Regret installing Microsoft ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 RC. Unable to edit HTML in VS.
Matt Watson commented on Scott Hanselman's blog that he expects more features in the upcoming releases.
Any updates on SignalR's support for multiple web servers, load balancing, fail over, etc? Would love to use it but can't until these things are figured out.
Daz Wilkin:
I'm experiencing the freezing problem on HTML pages that contain knockout bindings. Unfortunately, VS doesn't seem to return even after 2-3 minutes (although I'll try waiting again) and I'm having to kill the process, start again and try to avoid the problem.
Brandon Wittwer
Scott, I'm head over heels for what the team has been doing with VS 2012 Web Essentials and 2012.x releases. The SPA template provides a solid structure that I will glean from in my current project. Thanks for all your hard work and evangelism for us MS stack developers.
Oliver Klemencic
The Facebook templates right now only support the canvas application type.
