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Asp.Net AdRotator control with Database Integration |
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Posted by
Moderator1
on
6/30/2007 12:11:33 PM
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Category:
Asp.Net 2.0 |
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Total Views :
11862 |
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Introduction |
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This article explains the concept of Asp.Net AdRotator control fetching ad information
from the database and rotates the ads on certain time interval. This article also
gives a tip to fetch ad information from an XML file. |
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The AdRotator Control presents ad images each time a user enters
or refreshes a webpage. When the ads are clicked, it will navigate to a new Web
location. Each time the page is loaded into the browser, an ad is randomly selected
from a predefined list. Previously the predefined list means an XML File, which
contains the information about the ads to be displayed. But in Asp.Net 2.0 we can
maintain the list in any data source. In this article, we explained the AdRotator
control to fetch ads information from both database and XML file, and display those
ads in randomly with the help of Timer control. You can say it as an AJAX AdRotator
Control.
AdRotator with XML File
Open a project as Asp.Net Ajax enabled website in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005,
drag and drop an UpdatePanel and add an AdRotator control and Timer Control into
it. Set the UpdateMode property of UpdatePanel to conditional. Set the Timer Control
Interval property to your desired time. The Interval is in milliseconds. Double
click in the Timer Control, it will create a Timer1_Tick event in your code-behind.
Add a single line of code as follows
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protected void Timer1_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
UpdatePanel1.Update();
} |
Now add an XML file into your project, name it as Ads.xml and specify the AdvertisementFile
property of the AdRotator control to point this XML file. So your AdRotator control’s
html code will like like
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<asp:AdRotator ID="AdRotator1" runat="server" AdvertisementFile="~/Ads.xml" /> |
Now we will fill the Ads.xml file with advertisement information. The AdvertisementFile must have the following attributes.
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1. ImageUrl: The location of the ad image file.
2. NavigateUrl: The Web location to navigate to when the image
ad is clicked.
3. AlternateText: The text to provide as the ALT attribute of the
image control when the ad is rendered. This can also be seen as ToolTip.
4. Keyword: Here you can specify some keyword related with the
ads image to fetch.
5. Impressions: An integer number to specify the weight of the
ad. If the number is larger, then more time the image ad will appear.
The ImageUrl is the only mandatory attribute, rest is optional. Let us have a look
on the XML Advertisement file we create for you.
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Advertisements>
<Ad>
<ImageUrl>http://www.anyserver.com/ads/859866.jpg</ImageUrl>
<NavigateUrl> http://www.anyserver.com</NavigateUrl>
<AlternateText>anyserver.com</AlternateText>
<Keyword>Servers</Keyword>
<Impressions>80</Impressions>
</Ad>
<Ad>
<ImageUrl>http://www.yourserver.com/ads/309548.gif</ImageUrl>
<NavigateUrl>http://www.yourserver.com</NavigateUrl>
<AlternateText>YourServer.com</AlternateText>
<Keyword>MyServer</Keyword>
<Impressions>80</Impressions>
</Ad>
</Advertisements>
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That’s it. Easy and save your project. View your project in browser, you can see
the rotation of ads in your webpage, at the interval you fixed in the Timer Control.
Disadvantage of AdRotator with XML File
One of the main disadvantage of AdRotator when functioning with XML file is real
time maintainance. Yes if you want to add any new ads or you want to remove any
existing ads is not an easy job when your ads is large in number. Everytime to have
to find and replace or remove the appropriate tags from the xml file and then you
have to upload to the server which is time consuming and hectic. To overcome this
difficulty, Asp.Net 2.0 introduce the concept of builing AdRotator control with
database. Let us all jump to study how it is easy to integrate an AdRotator with
database rather than an XML file.
AdRotator with Database
AdRotator control can be bind with any data source. For this article, we shall take
MS SQL Server as our data source. We need to create a Table with the following columns
in it.
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Create Table YourAdRotatorTableName
(
AlternateText VarChar(100),
ImageUrl VarChar(100),
NavigateUrl VarChar(200)
) |
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These columns in the table are already fixed with the AdRotator control’s attributes.
So we no need to specify it in the property tab of the AdRotator control. In case,
if you change the column name in the database table, then you have to specify it
property in the AlternateTextField, ImageUrlField, NavigateUrlField and KeywordFilter
attributes of the AdRotator control. But I don’t know why ImpressionField is missing
in the property tab.
To start with, add another Aspx file to your project, add a ScriptManager and an
UpdatePanel. Drag and drop an AdRotator with a Timer Control into the UpdatePanel.
Set the Interval property to your desired time, which is in milliseconds. In the
code-behind file, let us write a method to fetch ads information from the above
table. |
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private DataTable FetchAdsFromDB()
{
string sql = "select * from YourAdRotatorTableName";
SqlDataAdapter da = new SqlDataAdapter(sql,
);
DataTable dt = new DataTable();
da.Fill(dt);
return dt;
}
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The above method fetches ads information from the table and returns it as a database.
You have to mention the DataSource of the AdRotator to this method in your Page_Load
event.
AdRotator1.DataSource = FetchAdsFromDB();
AdRotator1.DataBind(); |
We should not forget the Timer Control and the AJAX functionality to be implemented
with this AdRotator. So double click on the Timer control to create an event Timer1_Tick
in your code-behind file. Just bind your FetchAdsFromDB method again to the AdRotator
control. Save the changes and run your application, you can see the Ads Rotating
in your webpage.
protected void Timer1_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
AdRotator1.DataSource = FetchAdsFromDB();
AdRotator1.DataBind();
} |
Advantages of AdRotator with Database
The main advantage of AdRotator with database is easy maintainance of ads. You can
activate or deactivate any time you want. You can manage n-number of Ads in you
application with any ads size.
Click here to view our Sample Ads |
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