DNN Module Development

DNN Layout Architecture

Here are the hierarchy levels of the GUI in DNN

Portal defined in Site Settings configured by an Administrator have public and private admin interfaces.

Tab within Portal
Pane within Pane are configured by skin designers with [tags] in HTML.
Module
User Controls and their Control Attributes

Additionally, Components provide services in the background.

Providers

DNN uses the "Provider" (Factory Design) design pattern for developers to change functionality without having to modify the Core DNN code base. Providers use well known interfaces and/or abstract classes to "plug-in" new behavior used by custom module(s).

• CachingProviders \BroadcastPollingCachingProvider or \FileBasedCachingProvider
• DataProviders \SqlDataProvider, AccessDataProvider (using the Microsoft Data Access Application Block)
• HtmlEditorProviders \Fck
• LoggingProviders \DBLoggingProvider or \XMLLoggingProvider
• MembershipProviders (Authentication & Role management) \AspNetMembershipProvider or \DataProvider or \DNNMembershipProvider DNN forwards requests to the ASP.NET System.Web.Security.Roles.* to managed native aspnet_roles. Changing this
• NavigationProviders ASP2MenuNavigationProvider or DNNDropDownNavigationProvider or DNNMenuNavigationProvider or DNNTreeNavigationProvider or SolpartMenuNavigationProvider
• SchedulingProviders \DNNScheduler
• SearchProviders \ModuleIndexer or \SearchDataStore

Each database supported has a concrete class which implements the database specific code to perform operations in the abstract class "contract." To support runtime determination of which concrete class to load, an Instance() method is the factory itself and relies on generic Provider class to read a value from the configuration file to determine which assembly to load using reflection. Since this reflection is very expensive in terms of application performance, the constructor of the data provider class is stored in cache.

Fields presented on screens refer to AddTable and UpdateTable methods of Business Logic Layer (BLL) classes.

Data Access Layer DataReader

To pass collections of data from the Data Access Layer ( DAL ) to the Business Logic layer ( BLL ) layer, DNN uses the DataReader data transport mechanism. The abstract IDataReader, as the base interface for all .NET compatible DataReaders, allows data to be passed between layers without specification of the data access protocol being used in the actual data provider implementation ( ie. SqlClient, OleDB, ODBC, etc… ).

This forward only and read only stream of data is the fastest performing available in ADO.NET.

Custom Modules

DNN allows for Custom Modules to be packaged as Private Assemblies (zip files) for deployment to portal installations.

A manifest file is used to deploy private assembly custom modules.

Most DNN module developers use a code generator, typically CodeSmith to generate code to access the database. This is done by analyzing the (physical) database schema (.dbml) and generating code for each table, field, and index.

The first generation of CodeSmith .cst template code from DNN Jungle were based on the NHibernate ("ORM layer") framework.

In Aug. 2008 Rodney Joyce of Smart-Thinker.com updated codesmith generation code to use "iHydratable" which improves performance by reducing reflection.

The 2008 generation makes use of Microsoft's LINQToSQL introduced with .NET Framework 3.5, which merges SQL within programmatic (C#/VB) code. plinqo.com offers several improvements on Microsoft's refence implementation with a customizable engine to enforce business rules.

Modules - Extensions - Plug-ins - Add-ons

Automatic installation of Modules occur from a binary .resource file for each module in folder Install\Module when the "Install Additional Extensions" link is clicked.

Notice that each module has its own version number.

TIP: Rename .resource to .zip and the module can be installed manually by clicking the "Install New Module" link.

Module Design Tasks

The plan -- Process Guidance.

Core Mods

Becaues DNN4 natively uses <span (in-line) marking but CSS relies on <DIV marking of text blocks, changes are necessary to change the generation of .ascx files that DNN performs.

Andy Hock of Fingerful says he is working on a tutorial about working with Microsoft's AJAX.NET and the Client API in DotNetNuke. One obstacle you have to overcome is a basic one: Microsoft uses the JSON (pronounced jayson) standard, while the ClientAPI uses XML.

Object Qualifiers?

Tuning Scheduled Tasks

Set DNN's scheduled tasks:

• Search Indexer (run on the database)
• Purge Users Online moves data from web server memory to the database.
• Event Log Buffer Purge
• Site Log Purge
• Resource Installer
• File System Synchronizer

such that they don't all occur at once.

FaceBook DNN App

First, apply for a key. Write the key obtained in the config.php file (within the footprints \ within facebook-platform folder containing the expanded tar.gz extracted within the module folder "/project/facebook_auth".

• The steps defined here and here warn about the possibility of duplicate user keys.

Facebook Connect?

Reference

This page was created to present informaton on these pages in an updated, more concise way.

How to Install DotNetNuke 4.3.x from DNN Creative magazine