MSDN Magazine - January 2008 - (Page 70)

Figure 4 JavaScriptCommentStripper MSBuild Task ’$(TargetDir)%(RecursiveDir) %(Filename)%(Extension).Stripped’)”/> Figure 5 The Top of Microsoft.Debug.js // // Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. // // MicrosoftAjax.js // Microsoft AJAX Framework. Function typeName = ‘Function’; Function class = true; Function.createCallback = function Function$createCallback(method, context) { /// /// /// var e = Function._validateParams(arguments, [ {name: “method”, type: Function}, {name: “context”, mayBeNull: true} ]); debug versions are identical and, more importantly, the release versions are not optimized and are bloated with comments and white space. Fortunately, ASP.NET AJAX has a solution. The AJAX Control Toolkit includes a MSBuild task called JavaScriptCommentStripper to address this exact problem. This task takes a JavaScript file as an input and outputs the same file with the comments and white space stripped out. Figure 4 shows a simple MSBuild script that converts debug.js files into stripped versions of the same files. So in our example, the MicrosoftAjax.Debug.js and MicrosoftAjax.Debug.fr.js files would result in two additional files—MicrosoftAjax.Debug.js.Stripped and MicrosoftAjax.Debug.fr.js.Stripped. When you are happy with the result, rename these to MicrosoftAjax.js and MicrosoftAjax.fr.js, respectively, and you’re all set. You can see the effect that this task has on the JavaScript by opening up the before and after JavaScript files. Figure 5 shows the top part of the original Microsoft.Debug.js file. Here’s the stripped code from the Microsoft.Debug.js.Stripped file. It is clearly shorter (and less readable). In this example, the JavaScriptCommentStripper task has reduced the file in size from 260,096 bytes to 182,454 bytes: Function typeName = ‘Function’;Function class = true; Function.createCallback = function Function$createCallback(method, context) {var e = Function._validateParams(arguments, [ {name: “method”, type: Function}, {name: “context”, mayBeNull: true} ]); Globalizing ASP.NET AJAX framework. Open MicrosoftAjax.Debug.fr.js, go to the bottom of the file where Sys.Res is located, find the argumentType field and change its value to “L\’ objet ne peut pas être converti le type demandé.” (This is the French translation of “Object cannot be converted to the required type.”) Now add a button to the form with an OnClientClick event that calls showError. Add the showError JavaScript function here to default.aspx: function showError() { window.alert(Sys.Res.argumentType); return false; } Add Culture and UICulture attributes to the page and assign them values of “auto”. Run the application. When the browser’s language is French, you’ll see the French resources being displayed. To say that JavaScript is lacking in globalization support compared to the .NET Framework is something of an understatement. The .NET Framework has a vast ocean of globalization classes, and the support in JavaScript could fit into a puddle. And there’s a bit of a dilemma surrounding adding more. A very large part of the System.Globalization namespace could be implemented in the ASP.NET AJAX framework, but should it be? Each class increases the download size, so the business case needs to be assessed. Consequently, even with globalization support in the ASP.NET AJAX framework, support is considerably more limited than in the .NET Framework. With that in mind, let’s look at what we do have. By default, globalization support in ASP.NET AJAX is disabled. To enable it, you must set the ScriptManager’s EnableScriptGlobalization property to true. This simple act includes a __cultureInfo variable in the generated runtime page, which will look like this: var __cultureInfo = ‘{“name”:”en-GB”,”numberFormat”:{ “CurrencyDecimalDigits”:2, “CurrencyDecimalSeparator”:”.”,”IsReadOnly”:true, “CurrencyGroupSizes”:[3],”NumberGroupSizes”:[3], “PercentGroupSizes”:[3],”CurrencyGroupSeparator”:”, “,”CurrencySymbol”:”£”,”NaNSymbol”:”NaN”, “CurrencyNegativePattern”:1,”NumberNegativePattern”:1, “PercentPositivePattern”:0,”PercentNegativePattern”:0, “NegativeInfinitySymbol”:”-Infinity”,”NegativeSign”:” Creating a Release Version of the Framework The problem is solved—but only as far as the debug version is concerned. If you set the ScriptManager’s ScriptMode to Release, the application will fail at run time because it will be looking for the MicrosoftAjax.js or MicrosoftAjax.fr.js file, and these are clearly missing. The simplest solution is to copy the debug versions of these files and rename them to their release file names. This solves the initial problem, but obviously it means that the release and 70 msdnmagazine aJaX world ready This variable is generated from the server’s CultureInfo.CurrentCulture and respects the server’s user settings. ScriptManager does not have an option to ignore the user’s settings. MicrosoftAjax.js contains a reference to this large variable: Sys.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture = Sys.CultureInfo._parse(__cultureInfo); delete __cultureInfo;

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of MSDN Magazine - January 2008

MSDN Magazine - January 2008 Contents Toolbox CLR Inside Out Data Points Advanced Basics Cutting Edge IIS 7.0 - Enhance Your Apps with the Integrated ASP.NET Pipeline World Ready - Around the World with ASP.NET AJAX Applications WCF Syndication - HTTP Programming with WCF and the .NET Framework 3.5 Wicked Code Foundations Extreme ASP.NET {End Bracket}

MSDN Magazine - January 2008

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