18 July 2006

Over the past few years the community around my CSLA .NET framework has become very large and very active. Recently the online forum for CSLA .NET, which is the center of the community in many ways, moved to a new home: http://forums.lhotka.net. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” />

Just this week another community effort has become reality: CSLAcontrib. CSLAcontrib is a “project of projects” into which the community can contribute tools, templates and add-ons for CSLA .NET. I assume no ownership over anything on CSLAcontrib - this is a pure community effort.

This community effort has my full support, and the people involved have my gratitude. I find the community efforts around CSLA .NET to be both humbling and inspiring, and I appreciate each and every person who takes the time to get involved! Thank you!

CSLAcontrib is hosted on Microsoft’s CodePlex site: http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=CSLAcontrib, and operates under an open-source license.

The goal of CSLAcontrib is to provide a clear, powerful and friendly home for all the wonderful community contributions around CSLA .NET. There are many existing contributions out there, some of which can benefit by having a more visible home. Others were hosted on gotdotnet, and CodePlex offers a far superior environment in terms of performance, stability and ease of use.

But I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. CSLA .NET 2.0 has some interesting extensibility points, including common validation rule methods, data portal channels, and sub-classes of the six core base classes. I think it would be very interesting and useful to see more advanced and powerful validation rule methods in particular. And a colleague of mine had, at one point, suggested building a data portal channel that ran over an IM protocol :-)

So if you are looking for a way to contribute your cool tool, template or add-on, CSLAcontrib is a great option. If you are looking to use some great tools, templates or add-ons for CSLA .NET, CSLAcontrib should become the go-to place.