C# – ASP.NET Templating

algorithmasp.netccachingtemplates

We're building a text templating engine out of a custom HttpModule that replaces tags in our HTML with whole sections of text from an XML file.

Currently the XML file is loaded into memory as a string/string Dictionary so that the lookup/replace done by the HttpModule can be performed very quickly using a regex.

We're looking to expand the use of this though to incorperate larger and larger sections of replaced text and I'm concerned over keeping more verbose text in memory at one time as part of the Dictionary, especially as we use ASP.NET caching for many uses as well.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a more efficient and scalable data structure/management strategy that we could use?

UPDATE: In response to Corbin March's great suggestion below, I don't think this is a case of us going down a 'dark road' (although I appreciate the concern). Our application is designed to be reskinned completely for different clients, right down to text anywhere on the page – including the ability to have multiple languages. The technique I've described has proven to be the most flexible way to handle this.

Best Answer

The amount of memory you are using is going to be roughly the same as the size of the file. The XML will have some overhead in the tags that the Dictionary will not, so it's a safe estimate of the memory requirements. So are you talking about 10-50 MB or 100-500 MB? I wouldn't necessarily worry about 10 to 50 MB.

If you are concerned, then you need to think about if you really need to do the replacements everytime the page is loaded. Can you take the hit of going to a database or the XML file once per page and then caching the output of the ASP.NET page and hold it for an hour? If so, consider using Page Caching.

Related Solutions

Asp.net-mvc – Compile Views in ASP.NET MVC

From the readme word doc for RC1 (not indexed by google)

ASP.NET Compiler Post-Build Step

Currently, errors within a view file are not detected until run time. To let you detect these errors at compile time, ASP.NET MVC projects now include an MvcBuildViews property, which is disabled by default. To enable this property, open the project file and set the MvcBuildViews property to true, as shown in the following example:

<Project ToolsVersion="3.5" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews>
  </PropertyGroup>

Note Enabling this feature adds some overhead to the build time.

You can update projects that were created with previous releases of MVC to include build-time validation of views by performing the following steps:

Open the project file in a text editor.
Add the following element under the top-most <PropertyGroup> element: <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews>
At the end of the project file, uncomment the <Target Name="AfterBuild"> element and modify it to match the following:

<Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(MvcBuildViews)'=='true'">
    <AspNetCompiler VirtualPath="temp" PhysicalPath="$(ProjectDir)\..\$(ProjectName)" />
</Target>

C# – How to create a dropdownlist from an enum in ASP.NET MVC

For MVC v5.1 use Html.EnumDropDownListFor

@Html.EnumDropDownListFor(
    x => x.YourEnumField,
    "Select My Type", 
    new { @class = "form-control" })

For MVC v5 use EnumHelper

@Html.DropDownList("MyType", 
   EnumHelper.GetSelectList(typeof(MyType)) , 
   "Select My Type", 
   new { @class = "form-control" })

For MVC 5 and lower

I rolled Rune's answer into an extension method:

namespace MyApp.Common
{
    public static class MyExtensions{
        public static SelectList ToSelectList<TEnum>(this TEnum enumObj)
            where TEnum : struct, IComparable, IFormattable, IConvertible
        {
            var values = from TEnum e in Enum.GetValues(typeof(TEnum))
                select new { Id = e, Name = e.ToString() };
            return new SelectList(values, "Id", "Name", enumObj);
        }
    }
}

This allows you to write:

ViewData["taskStatus"] = task.Status.ToSelectList();

by using MyApp.Common