Does MVCContrib support MVC4? I am trying to use it in my project. Can any one help me with an example?
Does MVCContrib support MVC4?
No.
The documentation mentions support for the script and style bundling of MVC4. Other discussions on codeplex indicate that T4MVC in MVC4 is working for people.
https://t4mvc.codeplex.com/documentation
Support for MVC's script and style bundles
Starting from MVC4, one can define "bundles" of scripts and
stylesheets which are automatically combined and minified. However,
magic strings are used to define the resource URLs. To eliminate them,
follow steps 1 to 3 below.
It appears full support for this is still being added. But the features that worked in MVC2 I know still worked in MVC3 because I used them in MVC3; but the documentation does not explicitly say it works with MVC3. I suspect that every feature in MVC4 that was part of MVC3 still works in MVC4.
Here is the reference discussion for bundling:
http://t4mvc.codeplex.com/discussions/399205
T4MVC is still better than relying on magic strings to reference controller actions and view names. In my opinion the next version of MVC just needs to include T4MVC in the base feature set. Until that happens I'll continue to use T4MVC.
Related
I've built an ASP MVC site and used bootstrap, Jquery, knockout and signalR, and inherited a mix of 3rd party MVC code integrated with controls like syncfusion. (I don't have a choice in this matter, company decision)
After coding the HTML helpers in the views,
I manually applied all the bootstrap styles took sometime and got it
to work. Now, with upgrade/changes to bootstrap (RC 3.1) I am finding
myself back to square one, hunting through the code and replacing it manually, lots of
changes. Can you please share a better way to transpile/emit/bind the
bootstrap CSS classes into the helpers (i.e. in an independent way of the
technology helper, whether its ASP HTML MVC helper, Syncfusion HTML
MVC helper, Rad or FluentBootStrap)
Please provide a solution/recommendation to apply bootstrap CSS to ASP MVC pages
That's easy to separate and maintain and CSS upgrade's Programmtically
or globally configurable/settable/applicable
I've been thinking extension classes might be a good option, but not sure how I can achieve this, if you've can show me how to get the custom bootstrap CSS bound so I can programatically apply it or globally,
Is there a transpiler or Razor Declaritve Helper (I know about the nuget package, I tried applying it, and it turned out to be more of a template, than declarative extension binding, and I couldnt use it with other libraries Syncfusion or DevExpress)
or some other way, I would greatly appreciate it.
Here is an example of what I do currently, with the Syncfusion library
#Html.Syncfusion().Menu("myMenu").AutoFormat((Skins)ViewData["Themes"]) - performance hog
or better option 2 below
http://mvc.syncfusion.com/demos/ui/tools/Menu/Appearance
#(Html.Syncfusion().Button("btnNormal")
.Text("Save")
.Width(100)
.Height(50)
.ContentType(ContentTypes.TextAndImage)
.ImageUrl(Url.Content("~/Content/Images/Button/icon_save.png"))
.CustomCSS("CustomCss_Button") )
-> I changed/upgraded manually to BootStrap RC 3.1, I changed this last part to the bootstrap
.CustomCSS("btn-default dropdown-toggle btn-primary"))
Not sure this would be helpful to you, but check out TwitterBootstrapMVC. Right now it supports v2.* of TwitterBootstrap, but the support for v3.* is being built.
Our answer is from the experience we are going through. Here is what we found,
currently, The twitter bootstrap MVC is your best option IMHO, we are moving everything to it and its free! Its probably better the broiler plate option.
The 3.0 upgrade is a big question for us as well, so this is
something Dmitry can clarify.
Also, auto creating type safe bootstrap HTML views/sections for models is another question.
In addition you will face challenges with custom controls, we have a OLAP BI client, which looks / or doesn't not have the same consistent look. Dmitry can you answer how to resolve this with twitterbootmvc
Dmitry, will the twitterbootstrap upgrade, auto upgrade to the 3.0 bootstrap or do we have do anything manually?
I just discovered that in visual studio you can for the precompile of RAZOR into HTML.
Can you add that as an option to fluent
I recently joined a group that manages a Classic ASP web application. It has been working fine for our group's need. However, a decision was made, before I joined, to move to ASP .Net. Since we are mostly ASP developers, we write code in ASP .Net as we would in Classic ASP (for the most part). Would it be possible to introduce MVC to this application/project?
Thanks!
Yes, it is possible to use MVC in a traditional WebForms project. I migrated a large WebForms project to MVC 2 a couple of years ago, and here are my findings (I have updated them to reflect MVC 3)
Make sure you have .NET 4.0 installed, as well as the MVC 3 framework and VS extensions.
Create a new blank MVC project to use as a reference.
Look at the default web.config for the reference project. You basically want to use the reference web.config, and merge in stuff you need from your current project.
Look at the reference global.asax.cs. Similar to the above, you want to merge the changes in the reference .cs into your current application's global.asax.cs.
You will need to add the following references to your web project:
System.Web.Abstractions,
System.Web.Extensions,
System.Web.Helpers,
System.Web.Mvc,
System.Web.Routing
You can enable the VS extensions by changing the ProjectTypeGuids:
In Solution Explorer, right-click the project name and select Unload Project. Then right-click the project name again and select Edit ProjectName.csproj.
Locate the ProjectTypeGuids element and add {E53F8FEA-EAE0-44A6-8774-FFD645390401}.
Save the changes, right-click the project, and then select Reload Project.
Add the following standard folders for MVC content:
~/Views
~/Views/Shared
~/Controllers
~/Models (for your view models, optional)
~/Content (for CSS and images, optional)
~/Scripts (for JS, optional)
Additional notes:
If your existing WebForms relies on web.config settings for authorization (such as preventing unauthorized users), this won't be recognized by MVC actions, because routing works completely separately from the WebForms authorization. Use AuthorizeAttribute to require authorization, or constrain actions to certain roles or users. You can even specify global filters so you don't have to apply this attribute on every single controller or action.
There may be additional considerations for making MVC work with IIS versions prior to 7, or with application pools that use the Classic pipeline. Consider using IIS 7+ with Integrated pipeline.
My notes above mainly involve getting the baseline of MVC working, which uses ASPX views. ASPX views use the same markup as the ASPX files you are used to in WebForms. You can also use the new Razor syntax (primer), which I highly recommend. You can use both ASPX and Razor view pages at the same time. However, you cannot use an ASPX master page on a Razor view (or vice versa). Also, MVC will find and use ASPX views before Razor views, so if you upgrade a view to Razor, delete the original ASPX. You will need to do a little additional work to enable Razor views. I'm trying to find my notes for enabling Razor. I'll update when I find them. Once you do have Razor installed and working, you can use this tool by Telerik to convert ASPX to Razor.
Here is a question on SO about a problem I'd had while upgrading. I'm only providing it because it covered some of the points I mentioned above in more detail. However, I was upgrading to MVC 2 at the time, so some of this stuff is out of date.
The short answer is yes it is possible.
Scott Hanselman has written about this topic before.
Depending on the skills in your team, you may well find it difficult to get up to speed - it is possible to write clean MVC style code in Classic ASP but most people don't.
It is of course technically possible. However, it sounds like it would be a cultural shock, as MVC works quite a bit differently than Classic ASP or ASP.NET WebForms. I think it would be worthwhile to do - or just stick with ASP.NET WebForms if that seems more natural. But if you've not yet fully committed to WebForms, MVC seems just as easy to move to, IMO.
Yes. I worked on a project that began as plain ASP.NET and later added some ASP.NET MVC pages. Eventually we liked MVC so much more that we eventually migrated all of our WebForms pages to use MVC instead. But the whole time, the two systems worked very well together.
Here's the only real gotcha that I can remember running into: WebForms works by having the entire page encased in a big <form> tag. Since HTML doesn't allow you to have nested <form> tags, you typically can't use MVC forms inside of a WebForms page. Either keep your WebForms pages separate from your MVC content, avoid using HTML forms in MVC content that may appear on a WebForms page, or use popup dialogs for your forms that get created outside of the WebForms DOM area.
Here is what I want to achieve, I want to separate AREAs of ASP.NET MVC as pure single DLL.
Blog.DLL
Forums.DLL
FAQ.DLL
Each of them are individual ASP.NET MVC Area, with its own default CSHTML or ASPX pages. Installing, migrating and maintaining lots of pages including resources, javascripts and so on are real pain for long run. As most of these will hardly change.
My final website will be like this.
\MvcApplication
\bin
\MvcApplication.bin
\Blog.dll
\Forums.dll
\Controllers
\..
\Models
\..
\Views
\..
\Global.asax
\Web.config
Without adding any thing, just dropping Blog.dll, my application should support /blog and all its pages. If I want to customize something, than I can add area, and add only cshtml pages..
\MvcApplication
\bin
\MvcApplication.bin
\Blog.dll
\Forums.dll
\Areas
\Blog
\Views
\Shared
\BlogLayout.cshtml <-- this will override the look
\Controllers
\..
\Models
\..
\Views
\..
\Global.asax
\Web.config
This will help in reusing ASP.NET Area Plugins, by simply dropping the dll in bin folder. However web.config may require some changes, but most likely we will save configure values in database and only thing needed will be "Entity Framework connection string" in web.config.
My challenges (Questions)
Is it possible? It sure looks to me, but will there be any reflection/permission issues?
How do I include cshtml/aspx views within one DLL? Probably compiled versions? I have seen couple of text template based View Engines on codeplex but I am little confused on how to actually use them.
And how do I get ViewEngine to first check if physical directory file exists or not and then look into cshtml/aspx within the dll itself as resource file?
You may take a look at the following article which illustrates how a custom VirtualPathProvider could be used in order to retrieve Razor views that are embedded into separate assemblies as resources.
Maybe worth looking at portable areas from mvccontrib. I haven't used them since MVC 2, but found the following SO question by someone having some problems using them with MVC 3, with some possible solutions: ASP.NET MVC 3, Razor Views, and Portable Areas
MvcCodeRouting supports what you want, plus many other cool stuff. Check out this post about ASP.NET MVC Plugins.
What options do we have for scaffolding controllers in ASP.NET MVC (v2 and v3 RC)? I know about the code templates folder and T4 but it only allows creating one .tt file and thus, replacing the default controller template with your own but what I would need is different types of templates for various types of controllers.
I've heard that Rails has huge support for this. I'm also aware of the MvcScaffold package in MVC 3 (via NuGet) as described and developed by Scott Hanselman which supports ControllerWithContext and ControllerWithRepository but I would like to take this further and since the source code hasn't been published (at least I'm not aware of it) there isn't much I can do to customize it.
What do you guys use or do?
There is the Generic Controller (Controller<T>) technique. Big fan.
I have an Umbraco website that I want to extend. I feel that ASP.Net MVC is the way to go for the extension I'm writing - I particularly like the idea of a Portable Area from MVCContrib. What I'm wondering is, how straightforward would it be to incorporate the Portable Area into Umbraco without recompiling the source?
More generally, is it possible to wire a portable area into an existing application just by modifying web.config? I'm thinking along the lines of creating a HttpModule and including that in web.config.
No, portable areas require a VirtualPathProvider to be set. VirtualPathProviders must be configured via code.
You could try some hacktastic approach using the App_Code folder. It may work.
The current version of Umbraco (4.x) is based on the web-forms model so it won't be easy incorporating MVC into it (though I believe Umbraco 5 - still in planning - will be MVC based).
Generally you either user XSLT or web-form User Controls to add functionality to an Umbraco site. However, I'm not clear what the "extension" you are writing actually does? Perhaps you could expand upon what it is designed to achieve?