I am new to ASP.NET MVC4.
I must build a number of utilities (~40-50) that are going to be used by 4 groups of users in our internal windows domain.
I have made a controller named SupportController and i plan to include in there the 40 actions i want.
Some of them are special to each group and some are common.
I want to create a frontpage by accessing HomeController -> Index action. This frontpage will include a global menu.
I want to have urls like:
www.mydomain.com/bg/nullfix
www.mydomain.com/bg/invoicecorrection
www.mydomain.com/ro/updatecurrency
www.mydomain.com/ro/deletecosting
www.mydomain.com/common/fixaddressbook
e.t.c
From what i have read i do this url structure by altering the route configuration, For example (covers the above example #1 url):
routes.MapRoute(
name: "BgNullifiedInvoice",
url: "bg/nullfix",
defaults: new { controller = "Support", action = "BgNullifiedInvoicesFix"}
);
Since this will be my entry level mvc project, it will grow over time...
So is it proper to get into using the Areas functionality of ASP.NET MVC or get by using just routing?
Personally I would suggest using areas in such a project. They exist to separate your software's functionality into modular, organised and easily maintainable groups each with their own set of routes - which is exactly what it sounds like you need.
One thing that's certain about software is change, and areas help ease that change.
Related
We have a large web application that is a mix of WebForms and MVC. The URLs we work with look as such www.something.com/Secure/Module/SomeAction. When we used to work with Webforms Module was a folder, as we had as many ASPXs as we needed under that folder. With MVC we're taking a similar approach, where Module translates to a controller, containing all the action. The problem that we're running into is that if the Module has something like 20 - 30 actions it's getting really messy. For example if we have a PersonReport, that usually translates to several actions dedicated to serving that report alone (to facilitate ajax calls etc). Our actions are fairly thin, they populate the model (usually calling WCF services) and that's about it. Nevertheless it can easily creep up to 1500 lines of codes, and we start utilizing regions to organize sections of the controller. Creating a new controller (by default) will obviously stray away from our URL pattern. Any suggestions on how to better organize this mess?
You can use attribute routing if you plan to use MVC 5. This will allow you to specify custom routes for each Action method with attribute
The previous versions allow you to override the default routes through RouteConfig.cs file. Example would be
routes.MapRoute(
name: “ProductPage”,
url: “{productId}/{productTitle}”,
defaults: new { controller = “Products”, action = “Show” },
constraints: new { productId = “\\d+” }
);
See this link for more info.
Hope this helps.
I'm new to Sitecore MVC and currently with web forms I have all the sites organized under:
\Website\Sites\Site1\css|js|Layouts|Sublayouts|etc.
\Website\Sites\Site{n}\css|js|Layouts|Sublayouts|etc.
I'm able to add an MVC site to my solution and works fine alongside the web forms sites; however, adding a second MVC site that happen to have the same controller/view names generates a conflict.
For example, if I create a controller for Site1
Controllers/Site1/FooController (has index and hello)
Then the views are:
Views/Foo/Index
Views/Foo/Hello
But if Site2 also has a controller with the same name then it's a conflict:
Controllers/Site2/FooController (has index and hello)
Then the views are:
Views/Foo/Index
Views/Foo/Hello
But they're used by Site1.
The question is how to setup two (or more) MVC sites that happen to have the same controller/view names. Is there a recommended way to structure the sites in the solution or do I have to override pipelines/processors?
Thanks
Update:
Thanks everyone. Areas solved my problem but introduced two new problems:
The conflict in the controller names which solved by putting the namespace, class and dll names in the controller name in Sitecore - reference: http://blog.xcentium.com/2014/03/sitecore-mvc-and-duplicate-controller-names/
When the controller returns a view, I have to put the full path of the view; otherwise, I get an error where the view is not found.
For example: return View("~/Areas/Site1/Views/Home/Index.cshtml");
I'm looking into a fix provided from a developer from Sitecore's forum:
http://www.chrisvandesteeg.nl/2014/06/13/sitecore-mvc-in-a-multisite-environment-areas/
I'll try it out and report back.
you need to use namespaces in routes.MapRoute, look at the below posts which have already discussed:
Is it possible, in MVC3, to have the same controller name in different areas?
Multiple MVC projects in a single solution
and below is the post by John west post which relates your situation:
http://www.sitecore.net/Community/Technical-Blogs/John-West-Sitecore-Blog/Posts/2012/06/Using-Web-Forms-and-MVC-in-a-Single-Solution-with-the-Sitecore-ASPNET-CMS.aspx
We had the similar problem and answer was to separate out every site with MVC areas and they works perfectly. Though we ran into issue of controller name duplication but that can be resolved by adding the namespace during the area route registration.
But a clean way to implement this is to let Sitecore know about the MVC areas and initialize your controller/action with area and namespace. This process has been blogged by Kevin and he has a package as well. It expect you to define the area name in controller rendering.
http://webcmd.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/sitecore-mvc-area-controller-rendering-type/
To avoid the hard coded path of view(s) you can always extend controller rendering template to add view path and create an action filter to add the view path after action is executed. Add the below code in action filter and register the filter in sitecore action filter registration pipeline.
public void OnActionExecuted(ActionExecutedContext filterContext)
{
ViewResult result= filterContext.Result as ViewResult;
if(result == null) return;
Rendering redering = RenderingContext.CurrentOrNull.With(x=>x.Rendering).Return(x=>x,null);
string viewName= rendering.Return(r=> r.GetFieldValue(CustomMvcSettings.ViewPathField), string.Empty);
if(String.IsnullOrEmpty(viewName)) return;
result.ViewName = viewName;
}
The best thing you can do is split your websites up in different projects in the same solution.
Building two websites in the same project can become unstructured and messy.
After that you can route the controllers with the same name using the different namespaces.
Sitecore mvc duplicate controller
Just to keep this topic in sync with the SDN forum,
I recommend using a sitecore specific constraint, as described at
http://www.chrisvandesteeg.nl/2014/06/13/sitecore-mvc-in-a-multisite-environment-areas/
This solution allows you to set the attribute mvcArea on your configuration node
I have to make vanity urls for an already existing site. The requirements are:
The existing controllers are a kind of hierarchical structure and can't go away or be overridden in any way. Examples: domain.com/Dog/vanity and domain.com/Cat/vanity.
Keep existing actions. Any existing actions must take priority so that the page for that action is not stomped on by the vanity url.
take future pages and actions into account so that the above requirement is met (a new vanity url is ignored and the action/view executed instead)
To date, I have tried various solutions with routing that allow me to have domain.com/vanity which is nice but the marketing guys don't like because of the different departments within the company. I've tried routing which will override the existing actions and treats them all as vanities (also not feasible). I've a solution in place that programmatically deals with the url that was requested and redirects to a page that actually exists but this is not scalable in any way.
So far, I know that the vanity portion can be treated as a parameter to the action so that I can fire off the default page in the route (Index) but this is, so far, doesn't preserve the structure.
TL;DR: I need to have a solution that allows for domain/controller/vanity structure while also allowing domain/controller/action
Using AttributeRouting for MVC4 you can accomplish a working solution until you ramp up the replacement project. It'll allow you to keep existing routes while adding new, custom ones with little impact.
[Route("my-vanity/is-cool/post/{id}")]
public ActionResult Index(int id)
{
}
The important part is to remember priority, so you write routes that don't overwrite/are overwritten by existing routes. You can steer this to some degree with properties on the attribute. Below is just an example that will put the added route last in priority for the entire site.
[Route("my-vanity/is-cool", SitePrecedence = -1)]
public ActionResult Index()
{
}
ASP.NET WebApi2 have built in support for attribute routing. With it you can define URL's in whatever way you like (instead of following the /controller/action pattern)
http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/web-api-routing-and-actions/attribute-routing-in-web-api-2
I am still learning ASP.NET MVC. With webforms, I would create a new folder let's call it admin. In there I might have many pages for create_product, edit_product, etc. So the URL might look like http://somesite.com/admin/create_product.aspx.
But with MVC it is a little different. I am trying to see what would be the best way to do this.
Would doing http://somesite.com/admin/product/create be right? Or should it just be http://somesite.com/product/create? If I do it as the first way, do I put everything in the "admin" controller or should it be separated into a "product" controller?
I know this is probably subjective or personal choice, but I would like to get some advise.
Thanks.
Part of the benefit of ASP.NET MVC (and more generally, the URL Routing Engine common to all of ASP.NET in .NET 3.5 SP1) is that the URLs can be flexibly configured to map to any folder / file structure you prefer. That means it's much easier than it was in the days of WebForms to modify your URLs after you've started building your project.
To your specific questions:
One Admin Controller vs. Product Controller - In general, the guidance is to keep controllers focused so that they are easier to test and maintain. For that reason, I would suggest using a single controller per object type (like Product) with your CRUD actions. Examples in your case:
/admin/product/create
/admin/product/edit/34 or /admin/product/edit/red-shoes (if name is unique)
In either case, the Create, Edit, Deatils actions will all be in the ProductController. You may just have custom routes for the "admin actions" (like Create and Edit) that limit their usage (and add the "admin" text to the URL), and then the Details action would be usable by all visitors to your site.
Securing Admin Views - One important fact to remember with MVC: all requests go directly to controllers, not views. That means the old "secure a directory with web.config" does not apply (usually) to MVC for securing your Admin. Instead, you should now apply security directly to the controllers. This can easily be achieved by using attributes to Controller classes like:
[Authorize] - Just checks that the user is logged-in
[Authorize(Roles = "Admin")] - Limit to specific user roles
[Authorize(Users = "Joe")] - Limit to specific users
You can even create a custom route for "Admin" views in your site and limit access to those views by enforcing your authorization check in the URL routing, like this:
routes.MapRoute(
"Admin",
"Admin/{controller}/{action}",
new { controller = "Product", action = "Index" },
new { authenticated= new AuthenticatedConstraint()}
);
Where AuthenticatedConstraint looks something like:
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Routing;
public class AuthenticatedConstraint : IRouteConstraint
{
public bool Match(HttpContextBase httpContext, Route route, string parameterName, RouteValueDictionary values, RouteDirection routeDirection)
{
return httpContext.Request.IsAuthenticated;
}
}
Good details on Stephen Walther's blog:
ASP.NET MVC Tip #30 – Create Custom Route Constraints
For admin stuff, just mark with [Authorize] attribute. To ensure only admins can use it, do something like [Authorize(Roles = "Admin")]. Check out this question
Also, /product/create is most common, I think :)
I3Dx definitely has the right guidance for the Authorize attribute, this is essential for keeping controller secure, you can apply to a controller or individual actions.
As far as the URL depth, I would not worry about the depth, I would be more concerned that the route made logical sense for example:
domain.com/admin/products/edit/1
domain.com/admin/groups/edit/1
domain.com/products/view/1
domain.com/groups/view/1
This way you know what is happening with each route. it is obvious that one is an admin and one is an end user.
The easyest way to check is to get someone to read your URL and ask them what they would expect to see.
Hope this helps.
OH and one last thing, for client side routes we often use "slugs" rather than ids so that it is more readable. So when someone creates a product we slugify the name so it can be used in the route such as:
domain.com/products/view/big-red-bucket
rather than
domain.com/products/view/1
I want to implemented URL like :
www.domain.com/Business/Manufacturing/Category/Product1
This will give the details of specific product(such as specifications).
Since the list of Categories & Products in each Category are limited, I thought it is not worth to use database for products.
So I want to implement it using the HTML or ASPX files. Also I want the URL to be without the files extention(i.e. URL's should not have .html or .aspx extension)
How can I implement it with ASP.NET MVC? Should I use nested folder structure with HTML/ASPX files in it, so that it corresponds to URL? Then how to avoid extensions in URL?
I am confused with these thoughts
Asp.net Mvc uses the routing library from Microsoft. So it is very easy to get this kind of structure without thinking about the folder structure or the file extensions. With asp.new mvc you do not point a request at a specific file. Instead you point at a action that handles the request and use the parameters to determine what to render and send to the client. To implement your example you can do something like this:
_routes.MapRoute(
"Product",
"Business/Manufacturing/Category/Product{id}",
new {controller = "Product", action = "Details", id = ""}
);
This route will match the url you described and execute the action named "Details" on a controller named "ProductController" (if you are using the default settings). That action can look something like this:
public ActionResult Details(int id) {
return View(string.Format("Product{0}", id);
}
This action will then render views depending on what id the product have (the number after "Product" in the end of your example url). This view should be located in the Views/Product folder if you use the default settings. Then if you add a view named "Product1.aspx" in that folder, that is the view that will be rendered when you visit the url in your example.
All tough it is very possible to do it that way I would strongly recommend against it. You will have to do a lot of duplicated work even if you only have a few products and use partial views in a good way to minimize the ui duplications. I would recommend you use a database or some other kind of storage for you products and use a single view as template to render the product. You can use the same route for that. You just edit your action a little bit. It can look something like this:
public ActionResult Details(int id) {
var product = //get product by id from database or something else
return View(product);
}
This way you can strongly type your view to a product object and you will not have that much duplication.
The routing engine is very flexible, and when you have played around with it and learned how it works you will be able to change your url in just about any way you want without changing any other code or moving any files.
If you're not ready to dive into ASP.Net MVC, you can still get the nice URLs by using URL Rewriting for ASP.Net. That'd be simpler if you're already familiar with ASP.Net WebForms. The MSDN article on URL Rewriting should be a good start:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972974.aspx
I'd be really sure you won't eventually have more products before deciding not to use a database. Both MVC and WebForms would allow you to make one page that dyamically shows a product and still have a nice URL- plus you might save yourself development time down the road. Something to think about.