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Telerik ASP.Net Ajax & .Net 4.5 support plan

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Ben Hayat asked on 01 Mar 2012, 06:46 PM

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

23 Answers, 1 is accepted

Accepted

answered on 06 Mar 2012, 01:15 PM

Hi Ben,

We do plan to support the new Model Binding that will be introduced in .NET 4.5. At present, I cannot provide firm estimate when this new functionality will be available for RadControls. Depending on the actual release date of the .NET 4.5 framework RadControls support may vary with about a major version release.

Since there is no firm release date for .NET 4.5 we cannot plan beforehand the implementation of the new features for RadControls. Nevertheless, I can assure you that when we do have required information these new features will be announced with a blog post and / or in the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX RoadMap.

Greetings,
Dobromir
the Telerik team

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answered on 30 Aug 2012, 09:04 AM

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

Accepted

answered on 03 Dec 2012, 03:09 PM

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

Accepted

answered on 06 Dec 2012, 09:56 AM

Hi Ben,

Regarding your first question:
In Q1 2013 all controls which can be bound via .NET 4.5 ModelBinding feature will support ModelBinding validation via Data Annotation Attributes.

With respect to your second question:
The ModelBinding is feature introduced from Microsoft into the .NET 4.5, so if you want to use it you need to use the Telerik.Web.UI.dll build on .NET 4.5 framework. Into the .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0 version of the dll this feature won’t be available. In Q1 2013 release we will still support .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0 and the dll for all 3.5, 4.0 and 4.5 version of the framework will be available, however the ModelBinding will be supported only in 4.5.

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

Kind regards,
Radoslav
the Telerik team

answered on 25 Jan 2014, 04:36 PM

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!

answered on 28 Jan 2014, 09:43 AM

Example.zip

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

If you want to get updates on new releases, tips and tricks and sneak peeks at our product labs directly from the developers working on the UI for ASP.NET AJAX, subscribe to the blog feed now.

answered on 21 Oct 2015, 07:49 PM

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.

answered on 26 Oct 2015, 07:33 AM

proposed-article-location.png

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

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answered on 26 Oct 2015, 12:47 PM

proposed-article-location.png

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.