ok, i know there are a lot of posts online that specify how to do iterations with MVC.
my question is slightly different. when i used to do iterations using WebForms, i was creating one thing only and finishing that one thing till the end which was including the deployment on production.
for example, i was creating a webpage and deploying it, then i create the second page and deploy it. so .dll files were added to my bin folder while the previous dlls remain untouched. at the other hand, when i was making a change latter on, there was this one file that needed to be replaced on production.
now here is the question, how can i acheive the same thing in mvc? beause it just doesn't deploy each page into an individual dll. each time that i add something i have to redeploy the application dll which is not really wise! i played around with deployment options in visual studio but no luck!
There is nothing preventing you from putting controllers and other code in separate assemblies and dropping them in an existing application. Like any ASP.NET based application an MVC application will automatically restart if you add or modify any file in the bin folder or modify web.config.
If you're using Razor you can use RazorGenerator to generate code for your views and compile them into the same assembly.
You may need to write some additional logic though to get routes, model binders etc. wired up correctly.
For a more structures approach to compose the application of separate modules, you may want to look into portable areas. This is an extension to ASP.NET MVC that allows you to package the entire module (including views, css, js etc.) into a single assembly.
First thing, you have to work on the title of the post, it does not match the content of the post.
In asp.net mvc u can choose to deploy only what changed. I.e. If you only changed the .cshtml file, then you can just replace it with the file in production. However if you change any controller class (C#/Vb code), then you will have to upload the web project dll file too so that this new changes are available in the production env
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How can I go about separating my MVC project into UI specific (JS, CSS, Images, Fonts, and maybe Views) and Controller/Model specific (Controllers, Helpers, Models, and may be Views). Since our front-end developers work mostly independent of Visual Studio, I was looking for best practices in separating projects. Any pointers or sample projects?
This is how we finally ended up doing it.
Create a separate visual studio project called SolutionName.Client (this is where all frontend js and scss files go)
Create you MVC project called SolutionName.MVC (this is the asp.net mvc project)
Using Grunt.JS write tasks that compiles all js and css files and drops them to SoltuionName.MVC/Content folder
Similarly write tasks that drops all Views (razor files) into SolutionName.MVC/Views folder.
In Project build settings, add a pre-build tasks to run grunt task.
This setup took few hours to get it working but it is now quite useful.
You can easily do this and I've done it for each of my projects in MVC as well.
One project has your Controllers, ViewModels, and in my case, any custom logic related to Dependency Resolution for MVC and custom classes related to security authentication with MVC. Basically any code that touches the MVC framework core and is not involved in rendering content.
The other one has pretty much everything that you use on the client-side, and code needed for the front end. Which in my case, code-wise, is very minimalist and included some code for Glimpse and Elmah. The rest is your Views, Styles, Scripts, static content like downloads, etc.
As for the files in App_Start, My views project has Bundles, Filters, and obviously any HtmlHelpers you may have, custom css transformationslike for LESS.
My Controller's App_Start has the RouteConfig. These aren't necessarily critical it's just the way I ended up organizing mine and really depends what aspects you need access to during the startup of those components.
I will say that to save yourself time, in your Views/web.config file, add a namespace entry for your Company.Project.ViewModels namespace so that it's done in one place and you don't have to add it to each view, as this namespace would reside in your Controllers Project.
Your project with the Views will be your startup project. Just make sure in the global.asax your calls to the FilterConfig, RouteConfig and BundleConfig all resolve correctly.
It's fairly easy to do, my recommendation is to try it yourself and split it out the way you want and if you have problems come back and ask about the difficulties rather than looking for a step by step guide.
Bottom line is, yes it's possible and yes it works,
I'm looking at this MVC WebApi starter kit (for Angular/TypeScript)
Ignoring all the client side code, I noticed the author has made a WebApi that is extremely bare bones. Has has taken out most scaffolding including _ViewStart.cshtml, _Layout.cshtml, and forgoed the convention of controllers in Controllers folder and views in View folder under subdirectory with same name of controller, etc.
He added some interesting Routing and Validation classes that I havent seen before in a Core folder and put controllers in Api folder and Views directly into Views folder with an Index.cshtml at the root.
It's very clean and barebone project structure for a standalone web api that will do nothing except serve data to a client heavy application. I kind of like it this way but before jumping ship I'm wondering what drawbacks this approach has and if I'm actually giving up any core features of the framework by doing it this way. For example, clearly MVC Areas are being given up here in favor of flexibility to create your own view folders structure and seperation of application sections (I'm okay with getting rid of MVC Areas I rarely used them anyways). Another thing is I don't think a Controller action method can return View() and it will find it in the Views folder by convention of the controller name. I'm also okay with that since I will only be serving JSON data and will use 100% client side templating.
Are there any other core features that are being abandoned that I'm missing that may make me regret going with this project structure?
When I create Web APIs that are hosted in IIS, the only files in my web application are web.config, global.asax and global.asax.cs. Everything else is not required.
Take a look at this template if you haven't already before you decide how to structure your ASP.Net MVC / Angular project:
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/5af151b2-9ed2-4809-bfe8-27566bfe7d83
You can always add components into your project later, so I wouldn't seat it too much. I like to start with a lean/mostly empty project first and add things myself so that I fully understand what I'm adding.
I've inherited an MVC3 project that has a large number of ASPX views that I would like to convert to Razor. This question => Aspx to Razor syntax converter? is similar to mine, and it helped me find a bunch of options for converting the views themselves, but I'm unclear on the steps I need to take in addition to converting the views.
The first known limitation of Telerik's razor-converter is "The tool only works with views and does not deal with the project structure and master pages". This tool claims to be able to convert master pages as well, but it doesn't look like anybody beyond the developer has ever used it.
I think these are the steps I need to take:
Use a utility to convert the views
Convert the master pages manually (how do I do this?)
Modify the project structure (what needs to be modified?)
Delete the ASPX files
Test the application (any specific gotchas I should look out for?)
Are these the right steps? Can you help me with my questions on steps 2 and 3?
I have only tried this on one solution and the actual conversion did a fairly good job. I downloaded the Telerik converter project, compiled it, and then converted my projects using these command lines:
aspx2razor C:\Development\MyProject\MyWebProject\*.ascx C:\Development\MyProject\MyWebProject -r
aspx2razor C:\Development\MyProject\MyWebProject\*.aspx C:\Development\MyProject\MyWebProject -r
aspx2razor C:\Development\MyProject\MyWebProject\*.master C:\Development\MyProject\MyWebProject -r
I only needed to go back to add an #include for a namespace here and there, and to add a few parenthesis to force the Razor view engine to recognize my inline code properly. This was also a fairly simple solution, so YMMV. But even if it converted 80-90% of your views successfully, it's that much less manual work which you would have to perform yourself. From here, you could also create a _ViewStart.cshtml file and make a few minor adjustments to take advantage of Razor-specific layout features. (Check out Scott Gu's post on it here: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/10/22/asp-net-mvc-3-layouts.aspx)
The big issue I had was trying to reconcile the file changes with source control. Since the classic MVC view engine uses .aspx, .ascx, and .master extensions, I had to manually add the .cshtml files to my MVC web project and source control then remove the old versions. It wasn't difficult, just time-consuming.
In addition, you may need to add all of the necessary web.config entries to support the Razor view engine as well if your project was created using MVC 1 or 2. Projects created with MVC 3 should already have these entries in place, even if it was not originally created as a Razor site.
I have an MVC 3 app that has some core functionality (most important is autorisation) but mainly serves as a portal to different areas or modules. I want to organize thit to different modules that with minor changes also can be deployed as their own website.
The project consists of a Forum, Blog engine, Messaging between users + 4-5 upcoming modules.
I looked at ScottGu's blog about MVC 2 and found something that seemed perfect:
Depending og what the customer need I want to only give them the exact modules they can use. It is also easier from a maintainence view to be able to work and update referencd assemblies in each project and just do a full update for the customers that have that spesific module on their server.
But in MVC 3 there is no apparent way to use Areas this way, do you know how?
Status
I will try to add MVCContrib Portable areas to my existing solution and convert my areas ower and will post back the results. If it works I will mark it as the accepted solution.
MVCContrib has portable areas.
http://mvccontrib.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Creating%20a%20Portable%20Area&referringTitle=Documentation
This is possible in MVC3:
From:
http://bob.archer.net/content/aspnet-mvc3-areas-separate-projects
Right click on the shell project and "Add Area...". Type in the area name. This will create an Areas folder with your area in it. (This is not 100% needed but you do need the "Areas" folder and you can steal the XXXXAreaRegistration class for your application.)
Create a new MVC3 empty project in your solution to match your area. Move the XXXXAreaRegistration.cs file from the shell mvc project to the new project and adjust the namespace as applicable. (Or you can manually create an area registration class, it's a pretty simple class. Just use the Add area template generated one as an example.)
Edit the routes in the AreaRegistration folder as needed.
Delete the folder under the areas folder that the template wizard added.
Modify the web.config of the new project and take out the connection strings and the authentication, membership, profile, rolemanger sections. You will not need to deploy this web.config but the razor intellisense doesn't work without it during dev time.
Delete the global.asax file from the area's project or you will get extra default routes.
Create a virtual directory in the "Areas" folder of the shell project with the name of your area as the alias and point it to your "area" project. You will need to use IIS or IIS Express for this. I use IIS. For IIS Express you can use the appcmd.exe in the IIS Express folder or you can edit the applciationhost.config file.
I am considering using .NET MVC for my next web app but one of the requirements is that there should be minimum work involved from the clients side (who will be maintaining the site).
They are used to simple HTML sites where all they have to do in order to make a minor change is to modify an html in notepad and upload it.
What parts of an .NET web app needs to be compiled? Is it only the .cs parts of it? Can all the rest be updated freely by modifying files with e.g. notepad?
Also, in an MVC environment, is more of the view related code in compiled files?
How is this kind of maintenance usually done in such cases where the client will take over the site on delivery (and are not interested in needing VS installed and needing to compile!)?
If you really need a web application, then in order to make changes to the 'application' part, they're going to need to be able to recompile.
If they're going to make visual changes, then your best bet is to provide a method for them to edit the HTML of the site. You can make changes to the views (.aspx files) in ASP.NET MVC without having to recompile. If you make changes to your controllers or your Model, then you'll have to recompile.
If this is a major requirement for your client, you can build the site using ASP.Net Web Forms instead of ASP.NET MVC in which case changes to the .cs files will be compiled on the fly when the page is first accessed. Note that this only applies to the .cs files in your Web Forms project. Any .cs files in referenced assemblies will need to be pre-compiled.
That said, I suspect your client is primarily interested in modifying the look/feel/content of a page, so they would probably be satisfied modifying the .aspx files in either a Web Forms or MVC app.
If they have the budget for it, sounds like the best solution is to build a Content Management System, so they don't have to edit files ever again.