Sample .net web applications

Hi guys,

Just getting my hands dirty with .net over at www.asp.net and learning lots.

I may be asking the impossible here, but can anyone recommend some great sample sites you can download that encapsulate and represent best practices when it comes to building asp.net websites.

My ideal application would include:

  • Excellent demonstration of how n-tier applications are built applications using either c# or vb.net
  • sample application will also be built using a well defined software development methodology such as XP or Test driven development
  • the sample application will also provide reference to where additional third party tools have been used or should be used for unit testing etc. etc.

As I said, I may be asking the impossible but any steers in the right direction or even highly recommended books or tutorials would be great.

Many thanks in advance!

They offer starter kits to show you how to go about it.

^^^^ I agree. I’m not sure how much you can track the methodologies in the final product, but on the other two counts the starter kits are good “show off” examples. They incorporate more advanced functionality where it makes sense to take advantage of 3rd party design and implementing that in a web form rather than reinventing the wheel. They also clearly lay out n-tier design, so you can see what’s coded in XHTML, what’s coded in server controls, what’s coded in .NET framework classes, and what’s coded in raw C#. Anything that you don’t understand as you look through it is a perfect opportunity for a side project by looking the topic up in the MSDN library and building additional practice web forms.

thanks for the replies guys. I was already checking out the starter kits so i’ll keep on that road so!

I don’t think you should really be worrying about “development techniques” as most of the sample/starter kit sized things are really too small to gain much benefit from anything save TDD.

As for full-on application examples, I would check out SubText as a more interesting example of how to construct an asp.net application. Especially as it is evolving from a very old-school, asp.net 1.1 app (nee .TEXT) to a very cool .NET 2.0 app.