PHP to ASP.NET Migration Whitepapers

This series of articles is intended to help the Web developer migrate a PHP-based site to one using Microsoft ASP.NET technology using the PHP to ASP.NET Migration Assistant.

The PHP to ASP.NET Migration assistant attempts to convert PHP language components to their C# equivalents (including custom classes, types, variables, and so on). It also converts calls to many popular PHP modules to their ASP.NET analogs. The tool flags possible problem areas and creates a comprehensive migration report to help the developer address any issues that could not be automatically handled.

While the functionality of an existing Web application can be replicated using the migration assistant, the resulting application will not make use of the most advanced features of ASP.NET: for example, a validating HTML form will have its PHP converted to C#, but will not automatically be rewritten using Web controls, Validation Controls, or Viewstate.

These migration articles are intended not only to aid the PHP developer in the migration of existing Web applications to ASP.NET, but also to introduce some of the exciting features that are available with ASP.NET. In particular:

• Cookies: The Cookies paper describes the ubiquitous user session tracking mechanism, and how it is used in both PHP and ASP.NET.
• ViewState: An article on ViewState describes the automatic mechanism in ASP.NET for maintaining the state of form controls over postback, which in PHP must be done manually.
• Validation: Validation covers the handling of fields in HTML forms, which PHP Web developers must code manually, and how to use the rich set of Validation Controls in ASP.NET to drastically speed up this phase of development.
• Error Handling: The Error Handling paper discusses the many options for catching run-time exceptions in Web applications in ASP.NET, contrasting these to the tools available to PHP developers.
• Cross-Browser Compatibility: The article on Cross-Browser Compatibility describes the how PHP developers manually handle different client browsers, and how Web Controls automate this process for the ASP.NET developer.
• ADO.NET: ADO.NET helps the PHP developer migrate to a new database access layer, and gives an overview of the extensive database access tools available to ASP.NET programmers.
• XML: The article on XML contrasts PHPs basic SAX parser with the full suite of XML processing options available to the ASP.NET developer.
• Debugging: Finally, a paper on Debugging introduces Microsoft Visual Studio to the PHP developer, and compares the C# programming language to PHP.