On Day 3, my sickness had finally caught up to me. I had started feeling sick on the Saturday before the conference, the same day I was at CMAP Code Camp in Maryland. I had flown to New Orleans on Sunday, and have been at TechEd for the past few days, while coughing throughout the day.

I was completely burned out by Wed morning, so I had to sleep in, and miss the morning sessions. No worries, because I needed the rest and made up for it later that day. Dayquil and cough drops were my new best friends.

I started the day late, and wrote up Day 2’s blog post in the Alumni Lounge… or what I *thought* was the Alumni Lounge. It turns out that the sign posted around the chairs and tables was just the seating area *outside* the lounge. Beyond the doors behind the scene, there was an oasis full of never-ending snacks and drinks, charging stations and an enclosed area to sit with other alumni.

I had met other attendees from Virginia and the DC Metro area (Kevin Griffin, Van Van Lowe, and Brian Noyes) who had given me instructions on how to sign up as an INETA speaker. So, I took a few minutes to sign up and register. I was immediately able to browse for my own profile by using search criteria that fit my interests:
http://ineta.org/Speakers/SearchCommunitySpeakers.aspx?SpeakerId=08dc02c5-42cb-43d1-a322-9e366c6b9a95

After lunch, it was off to an exciting session about OData. Okay, so OData itself may not be that exciting. But the topic was specifically about “Building OData Services with ASP.NET Web API”, and the speaker (Daniel Roth) made it interesting. He spoke about setting up the config/routing, setting up controllers, and the ability to consume OData using Knockout binding, etc.

Beyond the usual HTTP verbs (GET, POST, etc), he showed us how to use PATCH to update only the revised portion of an entity instead of updating the entire entity for one small change. He had started off with IE’s Developer Tools to show us the request/response, but hit a limitation with the PATCH verb, which was not recognized in IE’s debugging tools. So, he quickly switched to Chrome to continue the demo.

The crowd erupted in laughter. 😀

Finally, he illustrated how the data can be consumed by a JavaScript clent, a WCF Data Services Client or even an Excel spreadsheet with Power Pivot!

Here are some useful resources online:

Dan Roth on the new ASP.NET Web API | Web Camps TV | Channel 9
http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Web+Camps+TV/Dan-Roth-on-the-new-ASPNET-Web-API

OData : The Official Microsoft ASP.NET Site
http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/odata-support-in-aspnet-web-api

Getting started with ASP.NET Web API OData in 3 simple steps
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdev/archive/2013/01/29/getting-started-with-asp-net-webapi-odata-in-3-simple-steps.aspx

Finally, it was time for John Papa’s updated presentation on “Single Page Applications with Microsoft ASP.NET”. I have previously viewed his Pluralsight presentations on SPA and Knockout. I have even worked on a recent project using Knockout, which inspired my own blog post on the topic.

This new presentation covered the classic material, with new additions. He talked about Durandal, a robust JavaScript framework for building SPAs. He also discussed Hot Towel, his own SPA template. Also, you can’t have a SPA without Hot Towels. 🙂

Now, Durandal can be used for your routing, navigation, application lifecycle, and even data-binding using Knockout. Other JS libraries in his packages included Moment, Breeze, and toastr.

He described the use of Breeze in detail, which can be used for client caching and LINQ-like queries on the client. It works well with Knockout and allows async calls with promises.

For more information:

* http://Jpapa.me/SPAJSPS
* http://Johnpapa.net/SPA

And last but not least, here’s a pic of me with John Papa that I tweeted, to which he also responded! 🙂

This is one of a series of posts about TechEd. You can see the index page at:
http://WakeupAndCode.com/teched-2013/