Hello Team;

I was reading the new features in the ASP.Net 4.5 engine last night and seems like MSFT has done a great job in the "Data" handling department and has made lots of improvements. Better data binding, being able to take advantage of dataModel, be able to declare validations as attributes in our model and let it expose at client side. Use of jQuery & HTML5 for validation and so on.

Some of these features are basically part of the ASP.Net engine and some others will affect the third party controls.

I wanted to ask the team, what's the roadmap of supporting these new data binding and modeling in telerik controls, so I can plan out my development with VS2010 for now and when I should move to VS11 & .Net 4.5.

Could you please provide some ideas what the team is thinking and which Q we should plan for? Either as a reply to my post or blog post for everyone to see.
I greatly appreciate any input you can provide.

Thanks!
..Ben

Thank you for the confirmation; Just knowing the team has plan to support the major new features of .Net 4.5, is a good assurance for me. Thanks!
..Ben

Hi there,

it's been some time since Ben's question. .NET 4.5 and ASP.NET 4.5 have been released recently, but I can't find anything about new Model Binding features in the roadmap for the Q3 release of Telerik Rad Controls. It only mentions support for VS 2012. Does it mean that we will have to wait until the Q4 release?

I would be especially interested in SelectMethod property on RadGrid and BoundFields, which would provide the same functionality as described here: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2011/09/06/web-forms-model-binding-part-1-selecting-data-asp-net-vnext-series.aspx 

Thanks,
Steve

Hi Steve;

I was about to touch base with the team to see if we have some these new Model Binding and validations and the new 4.5 version supoorted in Q3 or not.

Let's see what the team has to say!

Hi Dobromir;
Thank you for your straight up answer and it helped to know at this point whether we should convert apps to 4.5 or wait till Q1. Now we can make a better decision about our conversion time period.

Also, could you please find out if the RADAsyncUpload will take advantage of the Async & Await features of .Net 4.5? I hope Telerik would incorporate the Async model to those controls that are applicable.

Thanks!
..Ben

Fair enough Peter; I trust the team's judgement and will accept your final outcome.

Thanks!
..Ben

Hello Team;

I would like to re-visit this thread again, since we got the roadmap for 2013 Q1 and there is no mention of support for ModelBinding. I would like to get a better confirmation or direction if ModelBining is going to be fully supported in 2013 Q1 or not, so we can plan accordingly.

I like to tank you in advance with any detail info you provide up.
..Ben

Hi Ben,

Currently, our focus is to support ModelBinding for RadGrid for the next major release (Q1 2013) and if everything goes as planned we may provide this functionality for our navigation controls.

All the best,
Dobromir
the Telerik team

Hi Dobromir;

Thank you for the reply and I understand it fully. Two other questions:
a) As you know as of 4.5, ASP supports validation via Data Annotation Attributes that we can add to our "Code First" classes which will be used with your model binding. Will you be supporting this new validation in Q1 or Q2?

b) If the grid is getting 4.5 model binding and since model binding is only supported in webform 4.5 and VS12 and .Net 4.5, does this mean as of Q1 of telerik we must upgrade to .Net 4.5 and VS12? or is it optional?

I'm thinking when you have ALL controls support model binding, validation and Async built in, then we can switch the dev and production to 4.5.
Thank you and looking forward to your answer.
..Ben

Hi Radoslav;

Thank you kindly for your well informed answers. I wish every company would follow Telerik's support style.
..Ben

Hello Team;

I started this thread back in March 2012 (almost 2 years ago), asking about the plans to support Model Binding and new ..Net 4.5 features (like annotations and etc.). I have a new client that I have told them to purchase Telerik DevCraft tools for their new ASP Ajax development and their team wants to make sure the new design and data annotations are all based on the new "ModelBinding" and not the old Datasource.

I'm also requested to convert an older app to the new ASP.Net 4.5 (using Bootstrap and new Identity) and they want to use ModelBinding. As I was looking at some of the demos this morning of some new controls like "Lightbox", I noticed they all still use "Datasource" and the controls didn't have the prevision to support ModelBininding.

Previous replies has assured me that all the data binding controls should be up to date by now with ModelBinding support. Could you please tell me if all controls have been converted to support that? If not, can you tell me what controls do not support ModelBinding?

This is very important to this new client and I want to make they are not disappointed.
Thank you in advance!

^BUMP^

Hi Ben,

All Telerik’s data bound controls for ASP.NET AJAX support ModelBinding into the .NET 4.5 framework. The RadLightBox is a data bound control, so it supports ModelBinding too. I am sending you a simple example which demonstrates RadLightBox bound to data via ModelBinding. Please check it out and let me know if it helps you.

Looking forward for your reply.

Regards,
Radoslav
Telerik

Thank you Radoslav for your reply and confirmation. I think the confusion started when we (The client's team and myself) started looking at some of the demos and Online Docs and didn't see any mention of ModelBinding and only DataSources and this raised the alarm. It would be very helpful to update the Docs and Demos, because many new prospects look for MB in your demos.

Thank you again and I'll look at the demo and if I have any questions, I'll let you know.
..Ben

Hello Ben,

You are right about the documentation. The model binding of the RadLightBox is not mentioned nowhere. However I will make sure that the corresponding documentation will be updated with the information about model binding functionality.

If you need further assistance, do not hesitate to contact us again.

Regards,
Radoslav
Telerik

Actually, I only think a couple of components refer to ModelBinding (Grid and TreeView) in the online docs, the rest don't. Same thing with all the demos. I think it was the lack of presence of ModelBinding samples in the demo that concerned my client first. So, many prospects may assume Modelbinding is not supported because there are no samples in the demos.

Hope this feedback helps!
..Ben
Telerik MVP

Hello all. Its closing in on two years since Radoslav's response stating that the documentation would be properly updated with regard to model binding functionality. This was about the time I started working for a company that used Telerik Controls. Until a couple weeks ago, I was unaware that strongly typed data controls and model binding were available. The lack of documentation {two blog posts from 2013, a handful of SDKs from the same time, and the documentation article for RadGrid {duplicated under RadTreeList}.. and random threads scattered about the internet. My favorites are the ones that talk about the 'undocumented' methods that intellisense doesn't display but will work anyway. Sure.. lets type random commands into the mark-up and see if it works!

I like the power and ease of using strongly typed data controls and the hints as to what they could do for my organization... if (a) I could figure them out and (b) they were updated to support data annotations fully and (c) if they had full Intellisense support.

 

It blew my mind when I realized the date of the blog post and how model-bound functionality, along with Entity Framework, seem to have been shunted into the garbage file.

 

PS. I have a ticket {or three} in for assistance as well as reports on the documentation issues. Wanted to put this out there for others like me who had not idea this existed.

 

 

Hello David,

Model Binding is a feature that comes from the core MS classes and our data bound controls (that inherit the MS data bound controls) get that automatically.

Our documentation, on the other hand, strives to explain the important aspects and features of our own toolset instead of duplicate content that is part of MSDN's resources.

RadGrid and RadTreeList are two major data bound controls and they have some specifics regarding model binding, so we had to write some extra code in them to get that feature working as it is, hence the presence of specialized articles.

That being said, we value your feedback and I would like to hear your opinion on how we could improve our documentation, so I would appreciate it if you could answer the following questions for me:

• what type of resource would you like to see created so you can easily find that our controls can be used with model binding (e.g., a help article, a demo, a KB, a code library entry, a sticky note)
• where would you like to see this resource so it is both easy to find and in a logical place (e.g., an article right after the list of controls - see the attached screenshot - or something else)
• what information would you like to see in such a resource, considering that the feature comes from .NET and the bindItem method, for example, is not ours to document

Regards,

Marin Bratanov
Telerik

I understand not wanting to duplicate MSDNs documentation, however its not clear to me which control inherit the model binding functionality.

 

What I would recommend is two-fold:

 - in the documentation between 'Deployment' and 'Controls' add an article about DataBinding that covers the basics of each type of data binding. The sub-article on model binding could describe the concept and then link to the MSDN articles. Each sub-article should have a demo or sufficient code displayed in the article itself.
- in the documentation of each control you already have a 'DataBinding' subarticle. In addition to the specialized articles that address unique issues of the given control, add a 'Available Methods' article that lists what databinding methods the control accepts, with links to the above primary article for details.

The key information in such a resource must answer the following questions:

1) Can I use DataBinding X method with this control?

2) What does the code look like to properly bind to the datasource {examples of code-behind and mark-up, not just design view smart-tags }

 I don't mind clicking through to MSDN articles, forum threads, and blogs. I do mind that after digging through the documentation I have to use Google to figure out how to use a Telerik control in its simplest implementation.

The articles would be best if they also dug into the more complicated implementations. For example with Models, how do you properly retrieve a virtual data element from the model.. something MVC does automatically.

 

Bottom line. The reason my organization uses Telerik controls is because of the ease of rapid development. Slapping a Rad Control on the page with model binding is about the fastest CRUD-capable implementation I have ever seen, but it seems to have undocumented limitations. 
       For instance, Org Charts and TreeViews requiring the root records 'parent id' to equal zero or null, so model-bound views of a partial tree are not an option. You have to pull a datatable, filter to your partial view, modify the partial tree's root entry, and then display it.

 

Hello David,

Thank you for your feedback. We will keep it in mind when working on such resources. I have updated your Telerik points for sharing our thoughts and experience with us in such detail. I have also raised the priority of model binding resources so they are closer to the top of our backlog.

Regards,

Marin Bratanov
Telerik