Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 E-Commerce in C# 2005 (eBook)

Cristian Darie is a software engineer with experience in a wide range of modern technologies. He is the author of numerous books, including his popular ASP.NET C# e-commerce tutorial, his Ajax and PHP tutorial, and his search engine optimization tutorial for PHP developers. Cristian studied distributed application architectures for his Ph.D, and is getting involved with various commercial and research projects. When not planning to buy Google, he enjoys his bit of social life. If you want to say "Hi," you can reach Cristian through his personal website, www.CristianDarie.ro.

Contents 5
About the Authors 13
About the Technical Reviewer 14
Introduction 15
Chapter 1 Starting an E-Commerce Site 20
Deciding Whether to Go Online 20
Getting More Customers 21
Making Customers Spend More 21
Reducing the Costs of Fulfilling Orders 22
Making Money 22
Considering the Risks and Threats 23
Designing for Business 24
Phase I: Getting a Site Up 25
Phase II: Creating Your Own Shopping Cart 25
Phase III: Processing Orders 26
The Balloon Shop 27
Summary 28
Chapter 2 Laying Out the Foundations 29
Designing for Growth 30
Meeting Long-Term Requirements with Minimal Effort 30
The Magic of the Three-Tier Architecture 31
Choosing Technologies and Tools 36
Using ASP.NET 2.0 37
Using C# and VB .NET 41
Using Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition 41
Using SQL Server 2005 42
Following Coding Standards 44
Creating the Visual Web Developer Project 45
Implementing the Site Skeleton 49
Building the First Page 51
Adding the Header to the Main Page 56
Creating the SQL Server Database 59
Downloading the Code 61
Summary 61
Chapter 3 Creating the Product Catalog: Part I 62
Showing Your Visitor What You’ve Got 62
What Does a Product Catalog Look Like? 63
Previewing the Product Catalog 64
Roadmap for This Chapter 67
Storing Catalog Information 69
Understanding Data Tables 70
Creating the Department Table 78
Communicating with the Database 80
Speaking the Database Language 81
Creating Stored Procedures 85
Adding Logic to the Site 87
Connecting to SQL Server 88
Issuing Commands and Executing Stored Procedures 91
Implementing Generic Data Access Code 93
Catching and Handling Exceptions 95
Sending Emails 98
Writing the Business Tier Code 98
Displaying the List of Departments 107
Preparing the Field: Themes, Skins, and Styles 107
Displaying the Departments 111
Adding a Custom Error Page 117
Summary 121
Chapter 4 Creating the Product Catalog: Part II 122
Storing the New Data 122
What Makes a Relational Database 123
Enforcing Table Relationships with the FOREIGN KEY Constraint 127
Adding Categories 128
Adding Products 133
Querying the New Data 139
Retrieving Short Product Descriptions 139
Joining Data Tables 140
Showing Products Page by Page 142
Writing the New Stored Procedures 146
Using ADO.NET with Parameterized Stored Procedures 152
Using Input Parameters 152
Using Output Parameters 152
Stored Procedure Parameters Are Not Strongly Typed 153
Getting the Results Back from Output Parameters 153
Completing the Business Tier Code 153
Implementing the Presentation Tier 164
Displaying the List of Categories 165
Displaying Department and Category Details 170
Displaying Product Lists 174
Summary 184
Chapter 5 Searching the Catalog 185
Choosing How to Search the Catalog 185
Teaching the Database to Search Itself 187
Implementing a Custom Search Engine 187
Introducing the SearchCatalog Stored Procedure 191
Implementing Paging 193
Writing the Code 194
Implementing the Business Tier 198
Implementing the Presentation Tier 200
Creating the Search Box 201
Displaying the Search Results 207
Searching Smarter 211
Summary 213
Chapter 6 Improving Performance 214
Handling Postback 214
Managing ViewState 218
Using Output Cache 221
Summary 223
Chapter 7 Receiving Payments Using PayPal 224
Considering Internet Payment Service Providers 225
Getting Started with PayPal 226
Integrating the PayPal Shopping Cart and Checkout 227
Using the PayPal Single Item Purchases Feature 233
Summary 234
Chapter 8 Catalog Administration 235
Preparing to Create the Catalog Administration Page 235
Authenticating Administrators 241
ASP.NET 2.0 and Using Declarative Security 243
Implementing Security 244
Administering Departments 257
Stored Procedures for Departments Administration 258
Middle-Tier Methods for Departments Administration 258
The DepartmentsAdmin User Control 263
Customizing the GridView with Template Columns 277
Administering Categories 280
Stored Procedures for Categories Administration 280
Middle-Tier Methods for Categories Administration 281
The CategoriesAdmin Web User Control 284
Administering Products 291
Stored Procedures for Products Administration 292
Middle-Tier Methods for Products Administration 294
The ProductsAdmin Web User Control 298
Administering Product Details 307
Stored Procedures for Product Details Admin 309
Middle-Tier Methods for Product Details Admin 312
The ProductDetailsAdmin Web User Control 316
Summary 323
Chapter 9 Creating a Custom Shopping Cart 324
Designing the Shopping Cart 327
Storing Shopping Cart Information 327
Implementing the Data Tier 330
Implementing the Business Tier 333
Generating Shopping Cart IDs 333
What If the Visitor Doesn’t Like Cookies? 338
Implementing the Shopping Cart Access Functionality 338
Implementing the Presentation Tier 342
Creating the Add to Cart Buttons 342
Showing the Shopping Cart Summary 344
Displaying the Shopping Cart 348
Editing Product Quantities 354
Adding “Continue Shopping” Functionality 356
Administering the Shopping Cart 359
Deleting Products that Exist in Shopping Carts 359
Removing Old Shopping Carts 359
Summary 365
Chapter 10 Dealing with Customer Orders 366
Implementing an Order-Placing System 366
Storing Orders in the Database 368
Updating the Business Layer 373
Adding the Checkout Button 374
Administering Orders 376
Creating the OrdersAdmin Web Form 378
Displaying Existing Orders 380
Administering Order Details 394
Summary 412
Chapter 11 Making Product Recommendations 413
Increasing Sales with Dynamic Recommendations 414
Implementing the Data Tier 415
Adding Product Recommendations 419
Adding Shopping Cart Recommendations 421
Implementing the Business Tier 422
Implementing the Presentation Tier 424
Summary 427
Chapter 12 Adding Customer Accounts 428
Handling Customer Accounts 428
Creating a BalloonShop Customer Account Scheme 429
The SecurityLib Classes 430
Customer Logins 459
Customer Details 466
The Checkout Page 485
Setting Up Secure Connections 490
Obtaining an SSL Certificate from VeriSign 491
Enforcing SSL Connections 491
Including Redirections to Enforce Required SSL Connections 493
Summary 495
Chapter 13 Advanced Customer Orders 496
Implementing Customer Order Functionality 496
Placing Customer Orders 496
Accessing Customer Orders 501
Tax and Shipping Charges 511
Tax Issues 511
Shipping Issues 512
Implementing Tax and Shipping Charges 513
Summary 526
Chapter 14 Order Pipeline 527
Defining an Order Pipeline 527
Understanding the BalloonShop Order Pipeline 528
Building the Order Pipeline 532
The Basic Order Pipeline 532
Adding More Functionality to OrderProcessor 545
Summary 549
Chapter 15 Implementing the Pipeline 550
Considering the Code for the Pipeline Sections 550
Business Tier Modifications 550
Presentation Tier Modifications 563
Administering BalloonShop Orders 570
Database Modifications 570
Business Tier Modifications 574
Presentation Tier Modifications 584
Testing the Order Administration Page 598
Summary 600
Chapter 16 Credit Card Transactions 602
Learning the Credit Card Transaction Fundamentals 602
Working with Credit Card Payment Gateways 603
Understanding Credit Card Transactions 604
Implementing Credit Card Processing 605
Considering the DataCash XML API 605
Integrating DataCash with BalloonShop 624
Business Tier Modifications 625
Testing the Pipeline 630
Going Live 630
Using the PayFlow Pro API 630
Summary 633
Chapter 17 Integrating Amazon Web Services 634
Accessing the Amazon E-Commerce Service 635
Creating Your Amazon E-Commerce Service Account 636
Getting an Amazon Associate ID 636
Accessing Amazon Web Services Using REST 637
Accessing Amazon Web Services Using SOAP 640
Integrating the Amazon E-Commerce Service with BalloonShop 640
Writing the Amazon Access Code 641
Implementing the Presentation Tier 648
Summary 651
APPENDIX A Installing the Software 652
What Do These Programs Do? 652
Installing Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition and SQL Server 2005 Express Edition 653
Installing SQL Server 2005 Express Manager 654
Installing the IIS 5.x Web Server 655
Installing IIS 5.x on a Web Server Machine 656
Working with IIS 658
APPENDIX B Project Management Considerations 659
Developing Software Solutions 659
Considering the Theory Behind Project Management 660
The Waterfall (or Traditional) Method 660
The Spiral Method 662
The Rapid Application Development (RAD) Method 664
Extreme Programming (XP) Methodology 665
Picking a Method 665
Understanding the E-Commerce Project Cycle 666
Maintaining Relationships with Your Customers 667
Index 668