In Occam’s Razor and DotNetNuke, I showed you how to create a Razor script that you can run using the DotNetNuke Razor Host module.  This is great for simple scripts.  One of the downsides of scripts is that Scripts don’t have packaging and installation support.  If you want to re-use the script, or allow others to re-use the script, then you will have to provide manual installation steps for the scripts.

For more complex solutions or those which I want to re-deploy on another site, I will want to package my script as a DotNetNuke module.  Future versions of the Razor Host module will automate this for me, but for now I’ll need to do this by hand.  It’s not really all that difficult, and in this post I’ll show you how to accomplish this for your scripts.

In my first post, a user asked me how hard it would be to add a role selector, so in addition to packaging up my script as a module, I’ll also add this feature.  One of the main purposes of modules is to re-use functionality on multiple sites.  This often requires some configuration of the script to make it usable for many different sites which may be configured differently.  For example, in my original script, I was listing out the users in the “CoreTeam” role, however, other sites may want to list users in a different role.

Occam’s Razor is an often referenced heuristic that basically states that the simplest explanation is more likely to be the correct one.  This principle has many corollaries in computer science as we often strive to find the simplest solution to a problem in order to keep the complexity of our applications under control.  The new ASP.Net Razor view engine embraces this philosophy and certainly shows that even simple solutions can be very powerful.  Charles Nurse has a recent series of blog posts which discuss how you can even use Razor within DotNetNuke, with the focus being on lowering the barrier for creating DotNetNuke modules.

In keeping with this focus on simplicity, On December 6th, the Seattle DotNetNuke User Group (SEADUG) will be hosting the DotNetNuke Razor Hackathon.  Like previous Hackathons, we’ll be live streaming the kick-off event on DotNetNuke.com. 

This article is cross-posted from my DotNetNuke blog.

On August 18th we kicked off the Mobile DotNetNuke Hackathon at the St. Louis DotNetNuke User Group. ...

This article is cross-posted from my company blog.



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Overview

Last Wednesday night we kicked off the DotNetNuke Mobile Hackathon in St. Louis.  The focus of this hackathon is developing applications that span the DotNetNuke and mobile application space.  Participants have until the 6PM CST on August 25th to submit their entries.  As we mentioned at the user group meeting, we have been working on a community application that allows DotNetNuke users to stay connected even when they are not in front of their computer.  Starting today we are distributing the source code for DNN Pulse on the DotNetNuke Forge.

DNN Pulse is being built with Appcelerator Titanium and takes advantage of Xmlhttprequests, geolocation and mapping services to connect the user to the DotNetNuke community in their local area and on DotNetNuke.com.  During the coming months we will continue to add new features and functionality to the app so that no matter where you are, you can always stay plugged into the community.  Titanium was a natural fit for us since it allows us to target multiple mobile platforms with a single codebase, and because all of the code is written in Javascript we can re-use our existing coding skills without needing to learn a new language.

The initial code release is still beta quality code.  After the hackathon is complete we will incorporate a few remaining features which are not in the current codebase and clean up some of the error handling.  If you plan to use some of this code in your own app, then keep that in mind and code appropriately.

Last night we held the kick-off for the third in our DotNetNuke Hackathon series of events.  Now that the user group meeting is over and the UStream event is through, we can focus on building some really exciting mobile applications for the actual Hackathon.  The following schedule lays out the timeline for the remainder of this event:

We left plenty of time so that anyone who wants to participate has enough time to come up to speed on mobile app development and still get an awesome app built by the August 27th deadline.  I know that we already have participants talking about all of the great mobile apps they are working on and plan to submit for the contest.  With an iPad and some Android phones up for grabs I am certain we’ll have some really amazing entries, and like all of our community contests, the code for all of these applications will be available in the DotNetNuke Forge.  Even if you don’t win, you are certain to learn a new skill that will come in handy as mobile devices become more ingrained in our day to day lives and mobile application development takes a more prominent place in the software development world.

This morning I updated the source code for the Silverlight Pages module that I am building as part of the DotNetNuke Hackathon.  Based on some feedback from Michael Washington, I did a little refactoring to separate out my XAML display markup into a separate view.  This makes the code just a little bit cleaner and allows me to develop the view in Blend (of course that is a whole new thing to learn which will have to wait for later).  For now I will continue to hack away in XAML, learning a bit more each day and shaking off some of the cobwebs from what I had learned 2 years ago.

 

As part of the DotNetNuke Hackathon at the Capital DotNetNuke User Group on June 16th, I discussed using Silverlight to create rich DotNetNuke modules.  The example that I presented was a work in progress which I’ll be working on during the course of the Hackathon, even as participants are working on their own submissions.  You’ll be able to follow along with my progress over the next few days as I continue to flesh out the module.

The module that I am working on is a Silverlight based replacement for the core Pages module that appears on the Admin menu of a standard DotNetNuke installation.  That module has a very basic UI that makes it difficult to manage a site with dozens or even hundreds of pages.  The postback model used for moving pages in the heirarchy can make page re-organization...

In May, Nik Kalyani traveled to the Orlando DotNetNuke User Group to present the first DotNetNuke Hackathon event.  The Orlando Hackathon was very well attended and focused on teaching developers about the new MVP design pattern and the WebformsMVP framework that was included in DotNetNuke 5.3.

What is a Hackathon?

A Hackathon is a developer event that occurs over a short period of time.  Hackathons are informal events aimed at teaching developers some new technology which the developers then use in the development of a new project.  Because of the immersive nature of the events, developers are able to get a good jumpstart on using some new technology or development technique.  These events are designed to encourage participation by people who may not be familiar with a particular technology or concept.