In this episode of Web Camps TV, James is joined by Erik Porter, PM on the ASP.NET team (and@HumanCompiler on twitter). Erik is responsible for the Helpers that go into the WebMatrix tool. You can think of Helpers as shortcuts used to build apps more quickly, and these shortcuts are broken into two different types: UI Helpers and API Helpers. As the names suggest, UI Helpers make it easier to render out bits of a website's UI, and API Helpers wrap other functionality from services you want to use in your applications. Some examples of popular WebMatrix Helpers include Facebook, Twitter, and Recaptcha, as well as some other fundamental ones like Database access, Membership, and Security.

In this episode, we look at how to build your own Helpers, making it easier for you and other developers to build websites. Erik takes us through building an IE9 Pinned App Helper, and the several approaches he discusses are all valid ways of building Helpers, including

• Using CSHTML pages
• Using CS classes
• Using @helper syntax

Building WebMatrix Helpers makes sense whether you are trying to foster a developer community or just looking to make your own job easier by having helpers for repetitive code tasks.

For more information about Helpers check out the following links:

• Download and try WebMatrix
• Erik's blog post on building the IE9 Pinned App WebMatrix Helper
• James' blog post on Getting Started with WebMatrix

If you want to learn more about WebMatrix, don't forget to register for a free Web Camp training event near you!

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