Personally, we have not tested the compatibility of our product with other third party product.

However, our silverlight control is tested to accept observable collection data. If the IdeaBlade DevForce 2010 ModelView class return an observable collection data our Silvelight control should work with it.

Hi,

I am attempting to use the ClientUIBusinessApp project to integrate with DevForce. However, I am finding that it is very tightly coupled with WebContext.

Additionally, without documentation regarding UXShell it is quite difficult to work out how to store the current authenticated user (without using WCF RIA services).

I have a few questions which I hope you will be able to answer in order to assist me with proceeding:

1. Is there some way to de-couple the project from WebContext ? There are several places that it is used and it is not always clear as to how it is bound internally with the components.

2. In the XAML for any normal page eg. Customers, the UXPage control has a property of RequiresAuthentication="True". How does this work ie. how does it know whether a user has logged in and is appropriately authenticated?

3. Would it not be better to have ViewModels for the LoginStatus and Logout views?

4. When is the documentation for ClientUI going to be made public ?

5. Is there any ETA on the RTW/RTM for ClientUI ? Attempting to use this and work in the dark is extremely difficult

I would like to mention here that I think that the look and feel of your controls is quite amazing and I cannot wait for the full package to be released.

Thanks

Jeejee

I believe for the authethication, the sample is already using the default silverlight & WCF RIA services authebtication model. This blog post has more detailed explanation regarding the authentication service.

The WebContext will be used for authentication purpose and it is already bound to UXShell on the app.xaml. You could read more about the RequiresAuthetication property in this blog post.

I agree that this will be clearer if the documentation is available. The developer assured me that the documentation will be released with the RTM. However, at the time of this post I still do not have any information regarding the date the RTM will be released. 

Hi Glenn,

My question was regarding DE-coupling the Webcontext from the application. I know it is currently being used. I am attempting to NOT use it.

Is there any answer to my question 2 and 3

Thanks

Jeejee

Thank you for evaluating ClientUI RC.

I'll try to answer some of your questions:

1. Our UI components are not designed to coupled with any proprietary model or data service context. The use of WebContext (WCF RIA Services) for authentication is just a sample that we took based on many requests from Silverlight developers and community.
    
   
2. The key behind the authentication is the User property (IPrincipal) which is available in three levels of our component architecture. First, in the UXPage, secondly, in the UXFrame, and the third is in the UXShell level. This provides the most flexible configurations to achieve several business scenarios.
   
   In the business sample that we shipped, the User property is bound at the UXFrame level to achieve single-sign-on (SSO) scenario. So when the User is authenticated at the UXFrame level, the pages with RequiresAuthentication will be properly validated and displayed without requiring extra authentication (this actually also greatly simplifies the development effort).
   
   The UXShell is the central of the application model and fundamental architecture that we introduced in ClientUI, which includes asynchronous application initialization, asynchronous authentication, external XAP navigation, and many more. In the sample, you can notice that the key authentication is managed at the UXShell level, which is then bound to many other places such as UXFrame.
   
   So, to answer your questions, the page becomes aware of user authentication via the following codes.
   
   App.xaml.cs:
   

   // Bind WebContext's User to the Shell, so we can enable single sign-on login feature
   // and many other integrated features to easily query the authenticated user.
   
    shell.CreateBinding(UXShell.UserProperty, "User", webContext);

   In this process, the User property of UXShell is bound two-way to the WebContext.User.
   
   Login.xaml.cs:
   

    // Perform asynchronous server-side call to perform authentication
    
      WebContext.Current.Authentication.Login(
                       new LoginParameters(this.UserName, this.Password, this.RememberMe, null),
                       this.Login_Completed, null);

   When a user is successfully authenticated, the User property of the WebContext is populated and notified to the UXShell. Consequently, the UXShell notifies the rest subscribers such as UXFrame and others that a User is now authenticated.
   
   MainPage.xaml:
   

   <Intersoft:UXFrame x:Name="ContentFrame" Intersoft:DockPanel.Dock="Top" Intersoft:DockPanel.IsFillElement="True" 
                                  ...
                                  UseGlobalShell="True" 
                                  RedirectUri="/Login" User="{Binding User, Source={StaticResource Shell}}" 
                                  IsAuthenticating="{Binding IsAuthenticating, Source={StaticResource Shell}}" 

   Notice that we bound the User property to the UXShell. This is made as simple just for a sample, but actually quite sufficient for common business applications that used single authentication.
   
   So, if you have more complex apps that used multiple authentication, you can bind the User to another authentication provider. The same goes true for the UXPage level.
   
   Customers.xaml:
   
   

   <Intersoft:UXPage 
   	xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
   	xmlns:Intersoft="http://intersoft.clientui.com/schemas"
   	x:Class="Intersoft.Silverlight.CSharp.BusinessApps.Customers" 
   	Title="Customers Page"
           RequiresAuthentication="True">

   UXPage can be thought as the consumer of all this authentication architecture. The RequiresAuthentication and RequiresRole are two key properties that determine how it should work along with the authentication.
   

   
   Hopefully this short explanation gives you clear insights of how the authentication process is chained. In fact, we've designed this to be as simple as possible, so that developers only need to set what are needed, and avoid unnecessary bridging and lot of codes.
    
   
3. The LoginStatus and Logout doesn't seem necessary to have view model because they simply bind to a single DisplayName. If you have more complex information or interaction in the LoginStatus, it might make sense to have a view model. The Logout is currently as simple as performing logout (done in OnNavigatedTo method) thus doesn't seem to need view model.
   

Full samples and documentations will be available in RTM release which is expected to ship in few weeks.

At the meantime, please post your questions and feedback in this forum, we'll try our best to provide solutions and answer.

Regards,
Jimmy.

In the example above, you mention:

// Bind WebContext's User to the Shell, so we can enable single sign-on login feature// and many other integrated features to easily query the authenticated user. 

shell.CreateBinding(UXShell.UserProperty, "User", webContext);

When creating a project from one of the DevForce Business application templates, can you advise how this line should read? Specifically, what is the correct item that should be used in place of webContext

Thanks

Hi ,

Try my totaly freestyle sample. It's combination of examples Intersoft and DevForce base on:

- navigation framework

- NorthwindIB database 

- authentication via EntityManager

- registration user  with RPC (it could be POCO also)

It should be cleaned, refactored and probably contains errors, but may be useful.

Any way it's working.

It would be nice to see more perfect sample from Intersoft :-)

Kind regards

Andrzej

Hi,

These are my first steps into Silverlight technology and I think would be highly desirable to clean up this example by your team.

I suppose it will be very helpful for me and other users.

Kind regards

Andrzej