Hello!

I'm just starting out and i'm using asp.net, masterpages, and mysql.. and i'm lost at one part.. and i'm desperately in need of help.. coz this is my submission for tomorrow..

i'm using mysql 5 with the .net connector 5.1.2.

Here's my problem..

i have a login.aspx page that is not connected to the masterpage. and then 4 other pages, default.aspx, studentinfo.aspx, studentgrades.aspx, and studentschedule.aspx that are connected to my masterpage named studentmasterpage.. i'm able to do everything from skining and changing overall layout and stuff by watching tutorial videos that i borrowed, but i can't connect the figure out how to connect the 3 pages to their databases.

here's how my webpage is supposed to work

 - when a student logs in with his username and password (i coded my own login page because i can't use my tables for the mysqlroleprovider thing), he is directed to the default.aspx page that display some welcome message. the 3 pages are on the left hand side as a treeview menu.

- then lets say the student wants to check his personal information, so he clicks the student information link. and he gets directed to the studentinformation.aspx page. in this page, i have a sqldatasource with a mysql table named studentino and a detailsview to show the data.  and heres where my problem is..

i don't know how to populate the detailsview. i tried to use request.querystring and get the username as a string. but i land on the default.aspx page first.

how can i be able to use the request.querystring, or any other method to be able to select the data from each of the pages?

and the other 2 pages holds the almost the same items, a sqldatasource with their databases and a gridview or detailsview. and each

should i use parameters? how do you use parameters to start with? and what about stored procedures? do i need them? 

sorry if my question seems too long and noobish.. coz i really am a noob... any help is really really appreciated..

 thanks...

 ps. and my codebehind is c# though i'm more proficient with vb.net

thanks again...

 If you are going to use MySQL, you'll pretty much have to hand code most of the data access stuff in the code-behind because it is not natively supported by the VS 2005 GUI.  The other option is to let the GUI create the Sql stuff and modify the code (yup, MySQL parameters start with ? instead of @).

mmm.. maybe could you help me out and give me some examples on how to do that? i tried using the parameters but i don't know how to.. i can pass the querystring value from the default.aspx but how can i pass it to the other 3 pages? i'm really lost..

which is actually easier to do? hand code? or use the query builder.. that was the one you were talking about right?  

thanks... 

sorry specnyt, i'm not fully understanding your problem.

i don't know how to populate the detailsview. i tried to use request.querystring and get the username as a string. but i land on the default.aspx page first.

What is redirecting you do the default.aspx page?  How are you passing the information from page to page (maintained in URL or cookie)?

sorry for not being able to make it clear.. its like this..

when the user logs in, he is first directed to a main page called default.aspx. this page is the first masterpage and i just have labels describing what the different link do. like "click on student grades to check your current grades".

mmm.. i tried passing the information to the default page using querystring. like this

Response.Redirect("~/Students/Default.aspx?username=" + UserNameTextBox.Text) 

i can see the querystring on the url on top. but after that, i don't know what to do next..

should i make a hidden text box to get the querystring info from the url? how can i pass the querystring from the default.aspx page to the other 3 pages when the student clicks on the other links.. i'm really lost.. :(

thanks for the reply...  

Unless you really want to embed the username in every single link on the site, your best bet is to use Sessions or Cookies.  After the user successfully logs in, set a Session or Cookie variable with the user details.  You'll probably want to encrypt the information so I can't just go to the site and set a cookie with whatever username I want.

You can then access the session or cookie variable from other pages.

mmm.. how can i do that? by embedding the username you mean that the username will be embedded to the each url everytime they click the link? how can i do that?

and the session and cookies.. how do i go about with it? sorry for the amount of questions..  i actually feel bad asking this much.. but i'm really desperately in need of help...

any tutorials and some examples would really be appreciated.. you'll have my eternal gratitude...  

I highly recommend checkout out the learning resources on this site (http://www.asp.net/learn/).  It sounds like you'll want to hit the quickstarts tutorials, and probably want to get a book or two.

thanks for the recommendations.. i already have a few books about asp.net with me, but none are really helpful when it comes to mysql.. i can't excatly change my database because my backend program is already finished and it would kill me if i have to migrate everything..

what excatly do i have to look for in the quickstart tutorial?

maybe you could explain to me how session variables and cookies work in passing data? all i know about cookies is that they track the user's access to the website right.. like how many times they accessed it.. how can i pass data through that? and i really know nothing about the session variables..
 

Those books you have should have something about Sessions and Cookies in them; they are in not tied to MySQL or SQL Server, but are part of web programming.

The HTTP protocol is stateless.  Every request is treated as a new visit.  Cookies and sessions bridge applications and make them more stateful by allowing you to store information on the user's computer.  A cookie is a small data file that resides on the client's computer.  When someone says, "set a cookie", they mean define a value, assign it to a cookie file, and send it to the user.  As long as the user is set up to accept cookies, you can retreive the values on subsequent requests.  A Session is similar, but it stores values in process on the web server and only sends an identifier cookie.

Example:

Dim strUserName As String = "myUsername"
Session("username") = strUserName        <= sets a session variable
strUserName = Session("username").ToString()      <= gets a session variable

Secondly, when you say that your backend program is already finished, what do you mean?  Do you already have a business and data layer set up?

Example:

Public Sub Login(ByVal strUserName As String, ByVal strPassword As String)
    ' Query your db for login
    If LoginSuccess Then
        Session("username") = strUserName
    Else
        Session("username") = Nothing
    End If
End Sub

Public Function GetUserName()
    Dim strUserName As String = Session("username").ToString()
    If String.IsNullOrEmpty(strUserName) Then
        Response.Redirect("login.aspx")
    Else
        'Query db for user information
    End If
End Function

thanks a lot for the information.. i think i got what the session variables do.. i'm gonna try reading now and see what i can do.. thanks again..

the thing with the backend program is that the we already developed a backend program for the school, and its already been deployed and used.. so i can't just take the system down and replace the database..

Sweeperq:

Dim strUserName As String = "myUsername"
Session("username") = strUserName        <= sets a session variable
strUserName = Session("username").ToString()      <= gets a session variable

and just a question with this.. with the first line,

is the myUsername the UserNameTextBox? 

thanks again.. 

no, "myUsername" is a string value.  To set the session equal to a textbox value you would use something like:

Session("username") = tbxUserName.Text      ' Where tbxUserName is the id of your username textbox

thank you so much for the help.. it really pointed me to the right direction, and i really appreciate it.. i was really stuck and was so frustrated with myself..

i'm sorry i was only able to post a reply now.. was busy trying out the codes

oh and one last question, is it alright to pass session state variables between different codebehind files? like from vb.net to c#? 

and again.. thank you   you saved my life!

The Session is available for 20 minutes by default.  As long as the pages are running in the same web site they should be able to access the session (I didn't think it was possible to intermix code types in a single project [e.g. vb.net & c# used for codebehind in same website]).  If you need to access the session values from within your other code-base, you'll need to get them in the web app and pass them as variables.

e.g.:

default.aspx.cs
Dim objOrderDAL As New OrderRepository()
MyDataGrid.DataSource = objOrderDAL.GetOrdersForUser(Session("Username"))
MyDataGrid.DataBind()

OrderRepository.cs
Public Class OrderRepository
    Public Function List<Order> GetOrdersForUser(ByVal strUsername As String)
        ...
    End Function
End Class

Hopefully this will be helpful,
Sam

P.S. - I see you are new to the board, so I would like to remind you to please be sure to mark posts that helped you with your problem as answers.  If you have additional questions that are unrelated to the original question, please post them as new threads to have the best chance of getting them answered.

well.. seeing that i'm just going to pass around the session state variable.. because i already have a login page that uses vb.net to login.. and after that, i'm just gonna pass the session variable to the default.aspx and other pages after, and i don't really have to go back to the login page.. and if possible, i don't want to recode the login page to save time..

so to be able to pass the variable to another code base, i have to make a .cs class to pass it? if i try to pass this just through the session variable would it still work or not?

and thanks for the reminder on the marking the posts as answers, i'll do this at once