Chris Bowen's Blog : MVC

ASP.NET MVC Resource Guide

cbowen — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:28:05 GMT

This post is inspired by the presentation that Patrick Hynds and I gave on ASP.NET MVC at StackOverflow’s DevDays conference in Boston. Whether you attended DevDays or happen on this from the web, I hope this is useful for you to learn more about ASP.NET MVC. (Let me know if you have additions or questions.)

Getting Started

ASP.NET MVC is an implementation of the Model-View-Controller pattern on ASP.NET and is freely available via:

Direct download (binary or source)
Web Platform Installer - makes installations simple

ASP.NET MVC 2 Preview 2 is also available, providing a look at the next version. Note that ASP.NET MVC 2 will also ship with Visual Studio 2010 (itself available as Beta 2).

Learning ASP.NET MVC

So, why is this useful? There’s a 3 minute overview "Why ASP.NET MVC?" for decision makers, and a 10 minute technical “ASP.NET MVC How?” video for developers.

To start learning ASP.NET MVC, go to www.asp.net/mvc/learn. There’s tutorials, videos, sample applications, etc. to get you underway.

Then, grab a cup of coffee and sit down to study the Nerd Dinner sample application. It has plenty of intermediate concepts like testing, repository, validation, and more.

I highly recommend you work through creating Nerd Dinner with the 196-page walkthrough by Scott Guthrie

Here are some other places you can turn for more:

MVC Cheat Sheets – Great compilation by Elijah Manor
ASP.NET MVC Forum
StackOverflow ASP.NET MVC Tag (which as you may know is itself based on ASP.NET MVC)

Going Deeper

These are intermediate topics we touched on in the Boston session, and pointers for learning more.

Routing

Learning the M-V-C of ASP.NET MVC is only part of the story. Routing is what takes an inbound web request and maps it to a controller action (and arguments). There are routing tutorials on the ASP.NET site and on MSDN.

You can also define custom routes, route constraints (a route that is satisfied only when constraints are met), and custom route constraints.

T4 Templates

Code generation in Visual Studio is customizable via T4 templates, and ASP.NET MVC uses these as well. Need a different view or controller created in your projects? Change them or add new ones. They can change for all projects, or you can add/override them in specific projects.

Learn more at T4 Templates: A Quick-Start Guide for ASP.NET MVC Developers.

MVC Contrib

One of the key features of ASP.NET MVC is flexibility in implementation. Head to MVC Contrib to find additional options for extending and modifying how ASP.NET MVC functions, including:

Filters
View engines
Controller factories
Model binders
Routing
Controllers
and more

Key Bloggers Covering ASP.NET MVC

Attendee Questions

We had good questions during and after the DevDays session and I wanted to share details for some of the key ones:

Model Binding

There were a few questions about taking data from a submitted page and getting it to arguments in an action method. This is well supported via model binders, which let you map posted form data to classes passed as arguments to action methods.

Learn more about model binding at:

“6 Tips for ASP.NET MVC Model Binding” – K. Scott Allen
Models and Model Binders in MVC Applications
“Splitting DateTime – Unit Testing ASP.NET MVC Custom Model Binders” – Scott Hanselman
Video - “Using ASP.NET MVC Model Binder”

ViewModel Pattern

Using the ViewData dictionary is one way to get data to a view, but you can also create classes to contain that data. Called the ViewModel pattern, these classes help to structure and identify the data needed.

You can learn about ViewModel here:

ASP.NET WebForms vs. ASP.NET MVC?

If you’re wondering whether/when to use ASP.NET WebForms or ASP.NET MVC, Rachel Appel has a good blog post and a session recording from Mix ‘09 on the topic.

It’s important to keep in mind that you can mix ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET WebForms in an application, so this isn’t necessarily an either-or proposition.

Let me know if you’ve found something else particularly helpful in learning about ASP.NET MVC. I’ll be happy to add it.

-Chris

ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Resources

cbowen — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:20:00 GMT

Thanks to everyone who attended my ASP.NET MVC session with the New England ASP.NET Professionals Group last night. Here are links and resources from the session:

Getting ASP.NET MVC 1.0

Microsoft Web Platform Installer – Makes is very easy to install web tools, frameworks, and applications

Run it, choose “Web Platform”, “Frameworks and Runtimes”, then check MVC and click Install.

ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Direct Download
ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Source code w/unit tests
MVC Contrib – Additional tools and frameworks for working with ASP.NET MVC

Learning ASP.NET MVC

ASP.NET MVC Home – Start here. Really.

Learning Resources – Tutorials, Videos, Samples

NerdDinner 1.0 – Sample MVC Application

185-page walkthrough by Scott Guthrie – I recommend taking the time to work through this

ASP.NET MVC Training Kit
ASP.NET MVC Forums
All Content Tagged “ASP.NET MVC” on Channel 9
Sessions from PDC08
Sessions from Mix

Rachel Appel on “Choosing Between ASP.NET WebForms & MVC”

Online ASP.NET MVC Documentation

Updates on ASP.NET MVC

Phil Haack’s Blog

Posts tagged aspnetmvc

Scott Guthrie’s Blog

Announcing ASP.NET MVC 2 Preview – Version 2 is in early preview, but can be downloaded for evaluation (and installs side-by-side with 1.0)

Stephen Walther’s Blog
Scott Hanselman’s Blog
List of sites using ASP.NET MVC (scroll to the bottom)

Slides and Content

I pulled some content from my MVC talk on the last Northeast MSDN Roadshow session and the materials are on our Code Gallery (as “20,000 Leagues under the MVC”. )

Boston .NET MVC Discussion – 8/26

Bob Goodearl is leading a series of discussions on ASP.NET MVC through the Boston .NET User Group, and the next one will be on Wednesday, August 26th from 6:00-7:30 at the Microsoft offices in Waltham, MA. All are welcome.

-Chris

ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 Released

cbowen — Tue, 27 May 2008 23:59:31 GMT

Great news from the team that's working on bringing Model View Controller to ASP.NET - the Preview 3 release is now available, along with the source code on CodePlex. Scott Guthrie has the details on his blog.

Some interesting new features and refinements in this release:

Controller Action method changes
Improved HTML Helper methods
URL Routing improvements

Phil Haack (Feature PM) has an updated Northwind MVC demo
Scott Hanselman has new beginner-focused Preview 3 videos

Be sure to look through the Preview 3 readme file as well - it describes what's new in the API and how to convert code from prior versions to Preview 3.

Finally, If you're in the northeastern U.S., you can learn more about ASP.NET MVC by coming to one of our Northeast Roadshow events, where I'm running a session on that very topic!

-Chris