FirstContact - Part 1

jonathangreensted — Mon, 15 Nov 2004 05:10:00 GMT

Untitled Page This blog is the first in a series where I will explorer the best way to write a very simple piece of business logic using the current crop Microsoft technologies starting with C# and ASP.net.

The business process I have selected is what I call "First Contact". This is the point of initial interaction between a prospect and a business.

I will be looking at various flavours of "First Contact" in this series starting with a simple "Contact Us" web page.

The rest of this blog demonstrates the most simples and most flawed use of ASP.net to provide an example how badly things can go wrong!

The example consists of the following elements (source files included at the end):

contactus.htm - a web page containing the contact form to be completed.
addcontact.aspx - an aspx web page which handles adding the contact details to the Contact database and notifies the customer service department about the enquiry.

This example implements the required business logic and hence is perfectly valid in that regard however if your business is running code like this you should be very, very worried. The challenge is to know if you are running good code or bad code like this.

In the next blog in this series I will highlight the issues I see with this example and refactor it to illustrate how it can be improved.

What issues can you see in this example? Please add them to the comments for this blog.

contactus.htm

<html>
<body>
   
					<formmethod=getaction="addcontact.aspx">
       
					<imgsrc="generiCoLogo.gif">
       
					<br>
       
					<table>
           
					<tr>
            
					<td>
            
					        Name
            
					</td>
            
					<td>
            
					<inputname="name"type="text">
            
					</td>
            
					</tr>
           
					<tr>
            
					<td>
            
					        Email
            
					</td>
            
					<td>
            
					<inputname="email"type="text">
            
					</td>
           
					</tr>
           
					<tr>
            
					<td>
            
					        Phone
            
					</td>
            
					<td>
            
					<inputname="phone"type="text">
            
					</td>
            
					</tr>
           
					<tr>
            
					<td>
            
					        Message
            
					</td>
            
					<td>
            
					<textareaname="message"></textarea>
            
					</td>
           
					</tr>
       
					</table>
       
					<inputid="Send"type="submit"value="Send">
   
					</form>
</body>
</html>

addcontact.aspx

<%@ Page Language="C#" %>
<html>
<body>
<% 
    if (Request["name"] == "" ||
        Request["email"] == "" ||
        Request["phone"] == "" ||
        Request["message"] == "")
    {
        Response.Write("<h1>Oops!</h1>Please enter name, email, phone and message.<br><br>Click <a href=\"contactus.htm\">here</a> to go back.");
    }
    else
    {
        string message = string.Format("Name: {0}\nEmail: {1}\nPhone: {2}\nMessage: {3}",
            Request["name"], Request["email"], Request["phone"], Request["message"]);
 
        System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail.Send("nobody@sentient.co.uk","customerservice@sentient.co.uk","FirstContact", message);
 
        string sql = string.Format("INSERT INTO Contacts(name, email, phone, message) VALUES ('{0}','{1}','{2}','{3}')",
            Request["name"], Request["email"], Request["phone"], Request["message"]);
 
        System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection connection = new System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection("Server=localhost;Database=FirstContact;User ID=sa;Password=");
        System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand command = new System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand(sql, connection);
 
        command.Connection.Open();
 
        if (command.ExecuteNonQuery() > 0)
        {
            Response.Write("<h1>Thank-you</h1>One of our customer service representatives will be in touch with you shortly.");
        }
        else
        {
            Response.Write("<h1>Sorry!</h1>There was a problem please <a href=\"contactus.htm\">try again</a>.");
        }
 
        connection.Close();
    }    
%>
</body>
</html>

Sentient thoughts about .NET : FirstContact

FirstContact - Part 1