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Anything similar to ASP.NET?

Nermal

Nermal

Moderator
Original poster
Staff member
Dec 7, 2002
21,441
5,320
New Zealand
Hi guys

I'm currently doing web development in ASP.NET using VMware, however I would like to reduce my reliance on Windows. I understand that there are no .NET IDEs for OS X, so I'm prepared to sit down and at least try to learn something else. What technologies are out there that are similar to ASP.NET but can be easily developed/maintained on a Mac?

I've heard of JSP but haven't investigated it yet. Is this is best choice or should I put my energies into something else?

My other question is about hosting. I will of course need somewhere to put my apps, so it'd be best if I end up using a technology that it's easy to find hosts for.

Thanks :)
 
I've been doing stuff in PHP with mySQL databases, but I really don't like it either. I've not found any Mac visual tools and it has been a pain doing stuff in terminal. I write my PHP code in Dreamweaver as I'm building web pages, but this all seems so cludgey. I also don't like the VB/ASP because of the reliance on the Microsoft Monopoly Machine. That's one of the reasons I chose the PHP route. There's the linux/unbutu stuff, but that seems just as bad. There's ruby on rails and Perl stuff. Adobe Flash/actionscript/Flex seems promising in the future. I'm an old Director shockwave guy, so I would love to see commerce added to the upcoming shockwave stuff.

I guess we really need an iWeb server/commerce/database expansion from Apple.

-T
 
I've taken a look at PHP in the past, but I found it nothing like ASP.NET. It seemed to use a "put everything in a .php file" mentality instead of componentising everything (.aspx, .cs, .ascx, etc.)
 
Nermal said:
I've taken a look at PHP in the past, but I found it nothing like ASP.NET. It seemed to use a "put everything in a .php file" mentality instead of componentising everything (.aspx, .cs, .ascx, etc.)
Click to expand...

With PHP it's basically up to you to decide how you separate and split the code. It doesn't force you to modularise your code and files, but it certainly doesn't stop you either. Most PHP developers will either adopt or develop a standard structure for sites with all the relevant components separated into different files. Mine goes something like: (obviously depends on the site, but this is fairly normal)

/index.php
/php/common.inc.php
/php/classes/example.cla.php
/php/includes/error_msgs.inc.php
/php/includes/some_other_data.inc.php
/php/templates/index.tpl
/data/ (all data that is created/changed for the site)
/data/logs/php_errors.log
/data/logs/db_queries.log

etc.

There are IDEs for PHP but I've never really looked at them so couldn't recommend one.
 
Nermal said:
Hi guys

I'm currently doing web development in ASP.NET using VMware, however I would like to reduce my reliance on Windows. I understand that there are no .NET IDEs for OS X, so I'm prepared to sit down and at least try to learn something else. What technologies are out there that are similar to ASP.NET but can be easily developed/maintained on a Mac?

I've heard of JSP but haven't investigated it yet. Is this is best choice or should I put my energies into something else?

My other question is about hosting. I will of course need somewhere to put my apps, so it'd be best if I end up using a technology that it's easy to find hosts for.

Thanks :)
Click to expand...

Ruby on Rails or Django is the way to go as far as frameworks go. If you actually like asp.net, spend some time learning ruby and how to develop the rails way, and you will quickly start to hate .NET. Mono is not the way to go. Getting away from microsoft web technologies is the best thing you can do (especially when developing on a mac).
 
tominated said:
definitely go with mono. I read on there web site (http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page) that allows ASP .Net to run on other platforms apart from winblows! BTW: it's open source too!
Click to expand...

As mentioned by radiant, Mono doesn't help at all as it's still .Net!

I'll take a look at Rails, I've heard that it's interesting. I tried to look at JSP today but got overwhelmed before even starting: Do I want NetBeans, Eclipse, or something else? :eek:
 
Nermal said:
As mentioned by radiant, Mono doesn't help at all as it's still .Net!

I'll take a look at Rails, I've heard that it's interesting. I tried to look at JSP today but got overwhelmed before even starting: Do I want NetBeans, Eclipse, or something else? :eek:
Click to expand...

I'd stay away from JSP. It's sooo slow. If you need to do basic server-side scripting, php is the way to go. If you like working with frameworks, Ruby or Django will be your best bet.
 
Okay here's an unique one, Revolution. (http://www.runrev.com/)

It's basically cross-platform Hypercard with all the new features you would expect. It says it expands to an enterprise solution with mysql or even Oracle support, and a bunch of other server side stuff. I looked at the basic Hypecard part and it really did support the old Hypertalk language and worked almost exactly like Hypercard from years ago. Hypercard was such a good product because of it's total ease of use.

Has anyone messed with the mysql or server stuff?

-T
 
Nermal said:
I've taken a look at PHP in the past, but I found it nothing like ASP.NET. It seemed to use a "put everything in a .php file" mentality instead of componentising everything (.aspx, .cs, .ascx, etc.)
Click to expand...

It depends on how you use it. I have a web application and this is the code for the index.

Code: 
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
<title>Final Faculty Load Report</title>
</head>
<?php
$showfirstpage=TRUE; //so we can display section1.php
if(isset($_POST['lastgo']))
	{
		include("./submit.php");
		echo 'sucessfully got to submit page';
		unset($_POST['firstgo']);
		$showfirstpage=FALSE; //make sure that we don't redisplay section1.php
	}
if(isset($_POST['firstgo']))
	{
		if($direct_instruction !=NULL)
			{
				include("./include/section2.php");
			}
		
		if($dissertation_advising !=NULL)
			{
				include("./include/section3.php");
				include("./include/section4.php");
			}
		if($student_supervision !=NULL)
			{
				include("./include/section5.php");
			}
		if($externally_funded_research !=NULL)
			{
				include("./include/section7.php");
			}
		if($non_funded_research !=NULL)
			{
				include("./include/section6.php");
			}
		if($administration !=NULL)
			{
				include("./include/section8.php");
			}
		if($university_college_department !=NULL || $public_and_professional !=NULL)
			{
				include("./include/section9.php");
			}
		$showfirstpage=FALSE; //make sure that we don't redisplay section1.php
		?>
		<form method="post" >
		<input name="lastgo" type="submit" value="I'm finished filling in the form, please submit">
		</form>
		<?php
	
		}	
?>
<body>
<?php
if($showfirstpage==TRUE) //displays section1.php in the initial run
{
	include("./include/section1.php");
}
?>

</body>
</html>

By using the include function you can break up your code into very small and easy to use segments.
 
OK, two things.

1. First of all, sorry about abandoning this thread, life got in the way and I haven't had a chance to look at ASP.NET recently, let alone PHP!

2. I've been looking through PHP documentation and I can't figure out how to do something as simple as handle an event. Let's say I have a button called myButton, how on earth do I attach code to its Click event?

ie. What is the PHP equivalent of "Private Sub ... blah blah ... Handles myButton.Click"?
 
To the OP, this is highly opinionated but here it goes anyway.

PHP is nice and all, but if you are used to ASP.NET you will have a much easier time using JSF.

JSF, or JavaServer Faces, is basically Sun's answer to the simple development model of ASP.NET (by that I mean simple compared to JSP and Servlets).

For IDE check out the Netbeans 6.0 Preview: http://www.netbeans.org/community/releases/60/index.html
which has support for JSF.

JSF is pretty much close to ASP.NET as you can read in this comparison: http://www.javalobby.org/articles/jsf-asp/.
 
Nermal said:
OK, two things.

1. First of all, sorry about abandoning this thread, life got in the way and I haven't had a chance to look at ASP.NET recently, let alone PHP!

2. I've been looking through PHP documentation and I can't figure out how to do something as simple as handle an event. Let's say I have a button called myButton, how on earth do I attach code to its Click event?

ie. What is the PHP equivalent of "Private Sub ... blah blah ... Handles myButton.Click"?
Click to expand...

To code button click, you have to let html handle it, php will generate javascript + html which will handle all the events, which in turn the event will call php if needed. Using frameworks on top of php will help you ease off this part.
 
radiantm3 said:
I'd stay away from JSP. It's sooo slow. If you need to do basic server-side scripting, php is the way to go. If you like working with frameworks, Ruby or Django will be your best bet.
Click to expand...

I'm very confused by this. JSP is compiled into Java byte-code the first time the page is loaded and subsequent page loads are all basically running raw Java code, which in general is pretty blazingly fast.

PHP, on the other hand, is an interpreted script, is it not? I can't see how PHP can be any faster than JSP for doing the same thing (except for perhaps the very first initial page load when you modify the source for a page).

I was under the impression that JSP/Java is a very enterprise-level technology and probably the primary competitor to .NET in that arena.

Perhaps you're thinking of Javascript, not JSP?
 
DaBooch said:
I'm very confused by this. JSP is compiled into Java byte-code the first time the page is loaded and subsequent page loads are all basically running raw Java code, which in general is pretty blazingly fast.

PHP, on the other hand, is an interpreted script, is it not? I can't see how PHP can be any faster than JSP for doing the same thing (except for perhaps the very first initial page load when you modify the source for a page).

I was under the impression that JSP/Java is a very enterprise-level technology and probably the primary competitor to .NET in that arena.

Perhaps you're thinking of Javascript, not JSP?
Click to expand...

You are correct. He must be thinking about JavaScript.

J2EE (i.e. JSP, Servlets, EJB3, and JFS) is the enterprise framework. The new EJB3 that was released last year is quite cool and very, very different from the infinitely complex EJB of the past.

Although PHP is good for small to some midsized sites it is not even close to J2EE in the enterprise level.
 
I'm not thinking about javascript. I've worked 6 years in a jsp environment and between 2 different companies, it has always been a slow and painful environment. I don't know how things are these days as the company I work for now develops completely in Ruby (rails), but I have a bad after taste from Java.
 
MacRohde said:
JSF, or JavaServer Faces, is basically Sun's answer to the simple development model of ASP.NET (by that I mean simple compared to JSP and Servlets).

For IDE check out the Netbeans 6.0 Preview: http://www.netbeans.org/community/releases/60/index.html
which has support for JSF.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that, I've installed NetBeans but I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed because it supports so many different development types. Are you aware of any good "newbie" guides to JSF using NetBeans?
 
I develop in ASP.net (lightly, I mostly design, but occasionally have to meet the .net developers further down the line then I'd like) and my understanding is that Ruby on Rails is most likely to fit your needs.

I used to develop in php, and frankly just don't like it. I enjoy there being a right way to do things as it makes it easier to collaborate with others, IMHO.

I recommend taking a serious look at Ruby on Rails, as it's much more similar to ASP.net.

We use Microsoft technologies because of the name (it's comforting to our political clients) but I would likely be using RoR otherwise.
 
Aha! You're right, Creator is quite similar to Visual Studio and I've successfully made a "hello world" web app in it :)

Thanks for all your help, I have something to play around with now :)
 
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