ASP.NET Page Flow Using Windows Workflow - Why All The Recent Chatter?
by David Hayden ( Microsoft MVP C# ), Filed: Web Client Software Factory
Have you seen all the recent chatter on the MSDN Blogs about ASP.NET Page Flow this past week that points here?
The Web Client Software Factory has a Page Flow Application Block that does the same thing and is very, very slick. I created the following in 10 minutes, which just shows a quick ASP.NET Page Flow from Page1.aspx to Page4.aspx.
And, yeah, you can add all kinds of workflow rules, store and retrieve data from state, etc.
The PageFlowProvider also automatically gets injected into the Application Controller thanks to the Composite Web Application Block:
[ProviderDependency(typeof(PageFlowDirectory))]
public IPageFlowProvider PageFlowProvider
{
get { return _pageFlowProvider; }
set { _pageFlowProvider = value; }
}
Much of the time if you have a simple wizard-like sequential path from one page to another like above, you can simply just define a default transition and call:
PageFlow.Next();
to get to the next page in the workflow. That really abstracts out the path of the workflow. You can, of course, specify a named transition as opposed to using a default transition:
PageFlow.Navigate("Submit");
The point here is that ASP.NET Page Flow using Windows Workflow exists in the Web Client Software Factory today and is supported by the Microsoft Patterns & Practices Team, so I am unsure what all the chatter is about. To be fair, however, I will download the example mentioned above and check it out.
News Feed: David Hayden ( Microsoft MVP C# )
Filed: Web Client Software Factory