New to ASP.NET MVC, but I have been looking around for quite some time and thinking how to achieve dynamically generate views based on the model? I have spent quite number of days reading articles online but I get confused at the end of day, so decided to ask a question, please help (if possible)..
I have about 25+ maintenance tables that requires CRUD functionality, so I wouldn't want to create + maintain 25 views and controllers.
It should be managed via a single controller and view based on the model supplied from Menu itself (as generics). How best to achieve this type of functionality?
Am pretty sure some of you have already implemented this type of functionality, it would be good if you share some insights?
Thanks in advance!
Yam
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Looking for some guidance as I am struggling here.
As someone who spent many years developing ASP.NET applications - that has been out of the game for 3-4 years, I am struggling to pick up the latest approaches. Probably as a result of a decade of experience.
My ASP.NET in the past was built using stored procedure calls, and the GUI was built using hand-coded HTML and JavaScript. I used JavaScript to emulate Ajax type functionality (before it was really a well known thing), and also would at times use XSLT to separate presentation from code.
Now, I am trying to move to MVC 5. It's not intuitive to me, and the few popular tutorials out there seem to be doing things that I don't want to do. For example, they are connecting to a simple table through EF, and allowing a user to view, edit or create items.
I'm looking for some basic things:
How do I get data from a stored procedure into some form of a view (GridView, or ListView, etc) - Using a controller, a View, a stored procedure as the data source (using Entity Framework? When i try DB First, and select to include procedures, I can't find them anywhere)
I'm going to want to allow them to override the value in one column. This would be stored down in the database as a different field.
This stuff was always very simple using basic web forms, but I can't find a tutorial that allows me to do anything other than just edit an existing table using EF - which isn't what I want to do. So tempted to just go back to the old fashioned way ...
This is one tutorial that was making sense to me, until it jumped into the code first approach on the database, where it went off the path from what I was looking to do:
http://www.asp.net/mvc/overview/getting-started/introduction/getting-started
Here was another one:
http://www.asp.net/mvc/overview/getting-started/database-first-development/generating-views
But this one was also different than what I was hoping to do.
I wish I wasn't so short on time with this project.
Thanks for any guidance.
You may better wait for ASP.NET 5/vNext/MVC6 release and don't waste your time on MVC5. If your project relies on SQL and works well do not use Entity Framework at all.
I'm currently working on building a simple website.
First time working with WEB technology.
I'm interested in building a website that is quite similar to 9Gag.com.
I can't manage to figure out how they create links and pages for each and every post that they have. I've been looking for a while but I can't seem to find the answer.
I would love if you guys could give me a hint or something.
Basically I just want to create dynamic pages for each post.
Thank you for your knowledge.
It looks like every item on that site has similar page layout and a URL in the form of /gag/[id]. That's about the simplest thing in the world to create. If you're struggling with that, you need to just spend some time going through the ASP.NET MVC tutorials. The only slightly complex part is that instead of some numeric id or a guid, they're using an alphanumeric id like you typically see in short URLs. That's purely stylistic though.
Just to prefix this question, I've decided to take a look at moving our works old legacy systems (40+ programs from vb6, vba, vb.net to c#.net) into two separate systems using the same DAL (barcoding terminals and one web based system) as I spend most my day fixing crummy or non existant business logic in 15 year old vba programs. I've recently built an entity framework model complete with fluent validation and couldn't be happier with it after using it for a bit.
The small team is familiar with webforms (but not very) but the last few days I've explored MVC Razor. I was loving MVC Framework until I tried to start trying to add more functions onto the same page and then it seemed arbitrarily hard to replicate our a recent system I put in a webform. Before, I would eager load a customer and all it's child entities and then bind that to single page for the customer so they could access everything (which is what they wanted), it works okay and isn't slow. From this single page I could edit all their account details/contacts/emails/phones/jobs.
All the examples I've done and seen in MVC handle a single update, a single edit etc but surely you can't separate out every single action into a new view/page? I can pass a rich model through to the view in MVC, but then its a pain trying to update all the different child entities.
This is probably the exact design that MVC wasn't designed for maybe, which is okay, I'm willing to adapt it if MVC will be a better platform going forward, but how are you meant to handle adding this complexity in? Some methods I've seen:
Lots of partial views? passing child info to them (or the id and lazy loading it)?
I've seen methods that wrap multiple <forms> around everything and handle actions that way.
Separate pretty much every task out
If the solution is more lightweight and easier to maintain I'll go research whatever I need to I just wanted at an earlier stage to see if I'm wasting my time. Any pointers to the correct questions I should be asking would be greatly appreciated.
ASP.NET MVC is neither more or less better equipped to deal with complex pages than any other technology out there.
Certainly, MVC requires more low-level work than a Web Forms app, with no direct binding support, but in most cases this is a good thing and provides much more flexibility in how your page is rendered.
One of the whole ideas of MVC is to give you more control over things, but that control leads to requiring more knowledge and more effort on your part in most non-trivial cases. MVC provides a number of tooling functions to speed up trivial work (like creating standard table based CRUD) but when you have complex models, you will have to do much of the work yourself.
This is not that MVC is "ill suited" for it, but just that control and flexibility has a trade off with more responsibility on your part.
In your case, you simply create a view model with all the fields you want. Then, you create your form to edit those fields. In your controller, you will need to unflatten that view model and create or update the necessary records in the database. It's not difficult, but it's more work than WebForms databinding.
You could look into more advanced tools (commercial) for MVC, such as Telerik's tools, which have developed more of a databinding like interface, but MVC is not a drag-n-drop technology, and requires you to hook things up and write the various logic for what is done.
If you need drag-n-drop, databound functionality, then no.. MVC is not the correct technology. But then WebForms requires you to accept many compromises as well, and ties your hands in many ways.
You could use partial views, however I seldom use them. I prefer to instead use Editor/DisplayTemplates as these take care of naming your form fields correctly, even for collections and complex objects. PartialViews tend to have lots of gotchas if you aren't careful. I pretty much only use them as fancy includes, or when using Ajax.
I'm not sure what you meay by "wrap multiple <forms> around everything`. You cannot nest forms in HTML, it's not legal. If you mean place a form around each row of a table, that isn't valid html either in most cases (it's not legal to put a form in a between the table and the tr).
It would help if you had a specific problem that you could ask about, vague objections don't help us solve your issue.
You can accomplish anything in MVC that you can in WebForms. The difference is MVC will usually require you to write more code as it doesn't really offer you any "controls" to drop on your page.
In WebForms, it's easy to create a master/detail view with a GridView, FormView and then wrap everything in an UpdatePanel for automagical AJAX support.
In MVC, while you do have helpers like the WebGrid and AjaxHelpers extension methods, creating views and/or pages requires more understanding of how things work to get the desired functionality. When I start a new MVC project, here's what I include:
Backbone.js - client-side "ORM" that performs CRUD operations
against RESTful* APIs
Knockout.js - client-side view models and
real-time data-binding for your views
Knockback.js - wraps
Backbone models in Knockout view models
Using these three frameworks, you can quickly create powerful single-page apps using MVC and WebAPI.
I am not actually asking a question but rather an suggestion(or recommendation) on how to write code to fit nicely into Rails MVC pattern. Hope rails veteran or anyone familiar with MVC can give me some feedbacks.
I have an web app that talks to a RESTful api app via ActiveResource. It can fetch and update contents using API calls. It works perfectly. However, the web app does not have any models. The way it works is when user triggers an action(index,view,edit etc), the controller will directly call the REST api to fetch/update data.
My question is: Is it a good practice to do it this way or should I create models and populate data in there instead of directly calling the api? I was wondering if it is just a pragmatic compromise to MVC. I have just started working with Rails(and MVC) so I am open to any ideas, comments or recommendations on this
It's a bit of a catch-22 question. (I did wrote a huge answer but then deleted because it will be too tedious to read)
If you mean, can you implement the MVC pattern without a model, then the answer is no. The M means Model.
If they mean, can you use the MVC without using a model, then the answer is "yes", but it is no longer MVC, you have obliterated the the M i.e. Model.
I would recommend you to read MVC pattern in detail and then try to understand what your application actually trying to do.
http://c2.com/ is a very good place if you want to understand the design patterns.
A model is an object representing data or even activity, e.g. a
database table or even some plant-floor production-machine process.
A view is some form of visualization of the state of the model.
A controller offers facilities to change the state of the model.
Now in your case (it seems): you do have a data coming through via api so I would suggest populate the model properties and propagate it across.
Also Considering Pragmatic Compromise in MVC Dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations. Omitting the use of Model in MVC do-not sound like a good idea, and it no longer remains MVC.
Having said that It seems from your point of view you are trying to say that Rails isn't necessarily strictly MVC hence why not use the way you want to :) but I will suggest to keep the integrity of MVC (and follow the purist approach).
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ModelViewController
Good read: jeff Atwoods: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/05/understanding-model-view-controller.html (Feel free to skip the asp.net part)
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1242908/in-english-what-really-is-model-view-controller
sums it all :) source is mentioned above.
"The model consists of application data and business rules" (wikipedia)
A model is essentially a table in your database locally.
If you're not storing any data, not validating any data, then you don't need a model.
If you want to clean up your code, maybe put some functions in a helper or in /lib
I'm building a website using MVC3, EF, and Razor and I currently have the front-end of the site mostly working. It's a "store" of sorts with products, users, etc and in the front end you can browse for products, see ratings by users, and purchase the products.
Now, I am thinking about the back-end and from what I have so far, it seems like hte back-end will be redundant in a lot of ways. I would like to have an entire back-end area to manage all the products, users, sales, etc (preferably /Admin/Controller/Action, but if I want a page in the back-end that lists all of the products, this is going to be identical (at least from the controller standpoint) to the front-end controller that lists all of the products.
My question is, what are some good ways to go about this, am i completely wrong so far, or am I on the right track and just need some tweaking. I have also read about Areas, but have been unable to find any good documentation to use with MVC3. Should i duplicate functionality in the back end or is there a better way? Thanks for the help!
I believe you're going about this in a good way, but I think you're dead on when you were thinking about putting your Admin in an Area. I tried googling for something from Scott Gu for areas, but surprisingly couldn't find anything dedicated to it, but there is this MSDN article:
Organizing an Application using Areas
I know you're worried about having controllers with similar actions (and maybe similar models) with the admin as well as the frontend, but it's still probably optimal to separate the logic. Don't over-think or over-architect it, because at some point, you may have to modify the admin controller, but not the front-end controller. Models are typically the point that can be commonized between controllers.