I recently started going through the Wrox book Professional DotNetNuke 4, with the aim of teaching myself how to design and code modules. I'm already experienced with ASP.NET 2.0 and SQL Server (MCSD), but new to DNN.

I've installed DNN 4.8.2 and am attempting to follow the book through chapter 12 (Beginning Module Development) and 13 (Developing Modules: The Database Layer) which goes through the events module code as an example. Trouble is, its inevitably somewhat out of date.

I have downloaded the source-code for the Events module (3.3.8) from the DNN site and loaded this into VS2005 Pro.

However, the book starts off talking about the AddEvent stored proc, which no longer seems to exist, looking at my database; and the corresponding AddEvent method in the SQLDataProvider class, which also no longer seems to be there. Instead I find a lot of stored procs with names like EventsDelete, EventsGet, etc (good naming convention), but this makes it confusing if trying to follow the book.

I presume some major changes have occured in the Events module since the book was put together?

1. What is the best source of up-to-date developer material for module development, wirth examples?

2. Are the changes to the source and internal design of the Events module documented somewhere?

3. Is the Wrox book still useful for module development?

Many thanks,

Steve Taylor

Ok, thanks.

I havn't actually had a problem obtaining the source code. Are you suggesting that going through the source-code is really the best (or only) way of learning how to write modules, especially if using the latest version of DNN?

Most tutorials that I've found do seem a bit dated, or maybe its just the furious pace of DNN development that makes them seem so.

There does seem to be a lack of coherent and comprehensive documentation covering the latest version/s of DNN - so maybe I'll just have to go through the code to figure out how it all works. Is this what most people do, in practice?

Thanks for reminding me about Michael Washington's site. I had come across it earlier in my DNN wanderings - before the Wrox book turned up - and found it useful, if somewhat eccentrically laid out in parts - I managed to avoid tripping over a wedding dress on the way in and then almost went sprawling when I bashed my shin on an enormous MVP badge that someone had left lying around near the bottom of the homepage (I admit it, I'm envious) .

Joking apart, its good to see he's using some C# in the module tutorials - if I was granted a single wish the one thing I'd change about DNN is to have it re-written from VB into C# having arrived at this point via C, C++ and Java.

Have you come across the other Wrox books on DNN - there's one on skinning and another on module development, I believe - are they worth buying?