General question:
If I wanted to develop a web site, say ASP.NET MVC (the only web framework I am familiar with), is it generic enough so I can use it to have later apps for iOS, Android, obviously Windows Phone?
I mean I will need to connect somehow to SQL server that is the backend of the ASP.NET MVC web site etc. What are technical difficulties & considerations I need to take into account so that app is generic enough.
Note that I am planning it to be multilingual and will use ASP.NET resources to support that.
Or should I learn completely different framework to have it generic over multiple platforms?
Thanks in advance!
ASP.Net is generic enough. You can expose REST endpoints (although WebAPI is probably better to do that, but you can run that alongside, and consume from, MVC), create full user interfaces, etc.
However, if you are planning a write-once, run-anywhere application to avoid having to develop native device apps (e.g. Android and IOS), make sure to take the time to read this excellent (but long) article.
The MVC framework can definitely be used for mobile devices (when you say apps, I am assuming you mean websites that function as apps), and MVC 4 introduced significantly more support for mobile development, including things like templates (http://www.asp.net/whitepapers/mvc4-release-notes#_Toc303253809).
MVC is a move to a less heavy handed framework than, for example, Webforms, and it should give you the flexibility to develop for any device. However, it does also open you up to coding yourself into some problems if you approach it in the wrong way, so make sure you are familiar with the framework before trying to develop some super next-gen responsive web app.
You can expose your ASP.NET MVC controllers to other platforms, like web services or Web API, so the client, IOS, Android or anything else can call your services.
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I will be starting a PhoneGap application. My skill set includes just MVC framework of .net.
Since I will be making an app for mobile, I believe I wont be able to get benefits of MVC framework for state management, etc or will I?
I guess I will have to use a WCF service for the back end. Or do I need to use something else. How is state management done on HTML5 mobile applications.
Please suggest.
We are trying to determine the best approach for adding a complex API layer to a modified version of nopCommerce. To back up a step, we're building out a custom site for a fashion/apparel manufacturer that has a lot of front-end application requirements and also needs to integrate with their cross platform apps (iOS, Android, Windows) which we're building with Xamarin. We've tentatively decided to start with nopCommerce as the base of our application to which we will add an API layer.
What we are unsure about is what is the best approach for implementing this in nopCommerce (or other similar .NET package)? The options we are considering are MVC vs WebAPI vs ServiceStack. We've been going thru many of the tutorials on PluralSight.com to get up to speed on app dev and API creation best practices, but there seem to be so many options, we're not sure where to start. We seem to be somewhat lost in a sea of implementation options for the API and how each is to be evaluated based on choice of the JS packages/frameworks used on the front-end for the web site and the tools chosen to create the apps.
If it matters, our basic requirements are:
Expand core of basic e-commerce package with some custom ERP style functionality
API layer that can work effectively with both a web front end (possibly as a SPA) and all cross platform apps built using Xamarin
Insure OAuth authentication across all interface types so we can just use social media logins consistently everywhere and can authenticate the user in any environment
Given this...
My question boils down to which of the three API methods (MVC vs WebAPI vs ServiceStack) is best for this?
In my humble opinion you should go with service stack, it´s easier to implement and a lot more flexible than web api, you can add/remove plugins for different functionalities you get a lot of infrastructure code OOB such as mechanisms to handle cache, loggers and other not just related to infrastructure such as validators and IOC container, etc.
you'll get a single mechanism for authentication including custom auth, oauth, oauth2, etc which works for linked in, facebook and google +, in that situation you´ll find yourself reusing a lot of code in across all your apps.
One other thing that I like about SS is that practically is just you and your IOC, nothig else, everything is quite simple to understand and to implement (there could be more than one hidden option or configuration you may miss in the documentation but you get a lot of support from the community in google groups or stackoverflow)
its easier to test (Unit testing) you already have abstractions for httprequest and httpresponse and a lot of more, you won´t find yourself doing wrappers for all the legacy web impl that are shipped with mvc.
SS is better than mvc web api in terms of performance, it got one of the fastest json serializers out there for .net
I´m working on a SPA app for the time beign and I have no regrets about my desition to get into the SS framework.
just my 2 cents.
I would say Web API is best option for the Services Layer
- http://www.asp.net/vnext/overview/aspnet-web-api
There are many advantages
- Web API has been in release cycle as separate component with latest features
- Security
- Versioning
- Attribute based routing
- OData integration
I am very new to IOS development.I wonder which language/framework everyone is using to create RESTFUL web services for high traffic, scalable IOS app backend.
The solution requires:
1. Secure Login
2. Restful web services (JSON)
3. High traffic
4. File upload/download
5. Quick search result from large volume database
I am from .NET and MSSQL background. I heard people are using PHP, Java, Python, RoR with IOS webservice development. I understand every language can have pros and cons, just want to know what is prefered in today's trend.
And for database, is NoSQL database a prefered choice than RDBMS for scalable large volume databse? I am checking MongoDB.
Apologies if I am asking wrong questions. I am investigating the technologies for this new project, and any input will be greatly appreciated!
Thanks
I have worked in three major projects that all of them have desktop clients, web clients, and mobile clients (Android, iOS). The 3 have completed different server side approach, and all of them make me and the users happy:
Project 1:
Server: Delphi + RemObjects
Clients: Delphi desktop apps, PHP Web apps, Java applets, Android apps, iOS apps
Why Delphi? Because the existent project was already a Delphi multi-tier app, the development team have domain of Delphi platform, ans was easy with RemObjects (or even with the standard DataSnap) to return JSON, SOAP or XML-RPC to be invoked by the clients;
Project 2:
Server: PHP
Clients: ExtJS Web apps, Android apps, iOS apps
Why PHP? The development team was experienced with PHP, the projects was originally a PHP web app with some classes well defined and not coupled with the UI. Some new classes in the server that reused the existing code base, just converting to/from JSON were enough to allow the clients to talk to the server, with minimum effort.
Project 3 (initial development):
Server: C# ASP.NET
Clients: ASP.NET apps, Android apps, iOS apps
Why C#? Again: the development team was experienced with C# and ASP.NET, the projects was originally an ASP.NET app. We are refactoring some app logic into web services that will be consumed for both the ASP.NET app and the clients.
As you see, there is no need to make the team learn something completely new on the server side.
I'd suggest you to keep your development in .NET with MSSQL, taking advantage of your current skills.
If the application traffic grows you can move the server app to an IaaS server (like Amazon AWS EC2) that supports SQLServer, or even better to a PaaS server, which in this case Windows Azure will probably be your best friend.
These are all loaded questions that can't be answered without more information about what you're making, etc. I use a combination of Ruby with Sinatra and DataMapper (and SQLite/PostgreSQL) for most of my projects, but that's my personal preference and probably won't be of much help to you.
Rather than choosing a technology stack based on trends, why don't you just pick something with a good user base for help and go from there?
I am going to develop one HRMS application which maitains companies account,marketing,hr and network department information it's functional implementation. Does silverlight is preferable to use with this kind of ERP application.
Silverlight would definitely be a possibility but it would require all users to install the Silverlight plugin.
Since you want to target corporate users, I would probably stick to ASP.NET (WebForms or MVC) if you want a web client and WPF if you want a desktop application.
Silverlight would work; however this sounds like an application more suited for WPF.
not really cause silverlight has not good connection to a back end Database like SQL , its a plugin like flash , you have to make a web services as a work arround for the lack of database connection support
I have a winform application that controls some transmitters and sound cards. There is a requirement to be able to provide a web interface for controlling those devices.
Currently I use WCF to communicate from the controllers in my asp.net MVC site to the winform app. That works well, but there is now a desire to move the hardware to another machine when needed and that means that IIS has to be installed and set-up on that machine.
I know it isn't that hard, but I won't be the one actually doing the moving. It will be the users. If I could host the site from the winform app them it would basically be portable besides the hardware drivers need for a usb to serial converter we use.
Can you use a windows service? The whole winforms app as a service doesn't seem right to me. It assumes that the app is always running. I would create a windows service and expose WCF endpoints from that.
You will need to install IIS or Cassini to host the MVC web site. There's no way around that.
Huh, I would go with Greg's answers.
Also, making your app IIS dependant is not that bad. Or Cassini dependant. You don't want to end up writing your own webserver, which could easily happen when you continue to add features to the app.
I don't know about you but it just feels you are taking all the load on yourself, you are going to spend possibly dozens of hours to implement it to spare an hour or two for someone who doesn't want to install real webserver.
if you want to host MVC under winforms then i would look into the upcoming .netcore 3 version which should allow this combination.
though you'll have to wait until 2019 Q1
https://github.com/dotnet/core/blob/master/roadmap.md
otherwise i've mostly hosted simper stuff using nhttp library if i want it in a winform app.
(NHTTP is a library that gives you very simple crude http request functionality so no mvc sadly but it works for simnpler stuff)