OK - I'm heading home after this post. It's been a long night but I'm learning and that is what this is all about.

In the Future

I think I'll start with a blog post of what I plan on doing for the night and then end with a second one and talk about what I actually accomplished. I'd like to see what my expectations are over time and if I'm meeting them or if they are just too far fetched. I know tonight I was planning on having a chapter showing on my page with <<Prev Next>> links and I'm not even close. I'm still working on drop downs and wondering how to wire these selections up... It's all about learning and I know I have a long way to go.

Lessons Learned

I'd like to use this blog as a way to log my progress on this project. I'll try to write a little bit each night after I work on the site.

Fun with Dropdowns

In my ViewModel I'm storing my collections as IEnumerable<SelectListItem> so I can use code like the following in my View: <%= Html.DropDownList("Translation", ViewData.Model.Translations) %>. Is this the proper way of doing things? I don't know yet, but I'm trying to follow the MVC Best Practices #4 by keeping the presentation logic out of it. I'm using a Mapper class to build the ViewModel. I'm thinking this is probably called a service of some type by most. Not sure on convention here.

NHibernate Struggles

I'm finding it hard to do semi-simple things in NHibernate that I can do in SQL. I'll give you an example. I want to do this SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT Chapter) FROM Verses WHERE BookId = 18 using the Criteria and I'm finding it hard.