What this book covers
Chapter 1, Working with Component-Based Architecture, introduces the architectural design of Blazor and explains the concept of a component. It also covers components parameterization, reusability and dynamic customization.
Chapter 2, Synchronous and Asynchronous Data Binding, is a comprehensive guide on advanced data binding techniques – application interactivity cornerstone. It explores two-way binding patterns and showcases practical case studies for asynchronous binding and input throttling, essential for efficient data exchange with external sources.
Chapter 3, Taking Control of Event Handling, covers everything there is to know about event handling in Blazor. It guides through working with event delegates, lambda expressions, capturing event arguments and leveraging Blazor-native EventCallback. It demonstrates techniques to control default event behaviors and propagation and building fully customized events. It also covers UX/UI tips for maintaining user awareness and interface responsiveness when handling long-running events.
Chapter 4, Enhancing Data Display with Grids, demonstrates how to enhance data representation with grids and attach actions to rows, columns, or individual cells. It also contains an example of infinite-scroll implementation and strategies for handling big datasets effectively with pagination and virtualization.
Chapter 5, Managing Application State, explores all corners of state management, from REST-like route patterns to support bookmarkable state, through in-memory and injectable state containers and to persisting state in the browser to prevent loss in higher latency scenarios. It also covers a practical implementation of globally injected state and components dynamically responding to the state changes.
Chapter 6, Building Interactive Forms, focuses on form handling by utilizing Blazor’s built-in components and the importance of securing forms, particularly in public-facing applications, by implementing antiforgery tokens and preventing cross-site request forgery attacks.
Chapter 7, Validating User Input Forms, showcases the form validation strategies. It covers implementing both in-memory and client-side validation for simple and complex object types and guides through integrating asynchronous server-side validation for robust data integrity. Moreover, it contains UI/UX tips, enabling conditional form submission based on validation states and enhancing user experience with toast notifications for validation messages.
Chapter 8, Keeping the Application Secure, highlights techniques for handling authentication and authorization, starting with JWT token support, through role-based authorization, and implementing custom policies for fine-grained control. It also covers creating a custom authentication provider to manage unique identity scenarios and building tenant-specific authorization logic.
Chapter 9, Exploring Navigation and Routing, guides through navigation and routing intricacies from supporting routes from external assemblies and securing routes with type constraints to centralizing the routing to enhance deep linking across the application. It’s also a practical guide to leveraging navigation events to cancel long-running requests to preserve memory and preventing accidental navigation to safeguard unsaved user inputs.
Chapter 10, Integrating with OpenAI, explores the integration of the Azure OpenAI service into a Blazor app and leveraging the possibilities of AI models. It showcases how to setup and manage the AI services and guides through creating a smart support ticket creator, leveraging smart pasting and smart input area. It also contains a walkthrough of adding an AI-powered chat bot to the application.
