Are shared views still around in MVC 4 RC? - asp.net-mvc

I'm brand new to MVC and I was trying to work my way through the music store tutorial:
http://www.asp.net/mvc/tutorials/mvc-music-store/mvc-music-store-part-3
I could tell right away that things looked slightly different in MVC 4 RC but one big thing I'm hitting is I don't see any Shared View being created when I add a Home View. In fact I don't see a _Layout* file anywhere within the project.
So my question is, has the shared view thing been replaced by some other mechanism or do I need to do something else to add this explicitly?
Thanks,
JT

From http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jasonz/archive/2012/05/31/announcing-the-release-candidate-rc-of-visual-studio-2012-and-net-framework-4-5.aspx:
If you’re doing web development, you’ll notice a handful of updates in
the RC. First off, we’ve updated some of the project templates. We
made the MVC4 Empty template truly empty, and renamed the original
empty template to now be called the “Basic” template. We also improved
the performance of the New Project creation time.
Essentially all of the initial templates have been cut down a lot. The Empty project doesn't come with a HomeController either - you can add anything you need back.

Apparently this is tied to how you start the project. If you select Internet Application when you create a new MVC project it will build these files for you but if you select Empty you have to create them manually.

Related

MVC project structuring

I have been looking for an solution for structuring my MVC5 project, but have not found anything yet.
What i look for is. I have an Main Website, which off-course has it's own Views, Scripts and Controllers, but what is special is that i like to have sub Website projects which add an menu point in the main page, but the sub website also contains it's own Views, scripts and Controllers( I have tried to draw a picture of what i'm talking about ).
The point of this is to have an structured in a easy way. But also to reuse the same views in a framework way.
You should be able to define an area in another project, found an article that explains in detail how it is done in MVC3, it should not be very different in later versions since areas and routing haven't changed a lot.
http://nileshhirapra.blogspot.no/2012/02/aspnet-mvc-pluggable-application.html
Update: you do not actually need to set up the project in the Areas folder, but you need to copy all content like views and scripts/css into there before being able to use it in the main application.
If you want these sites to actually be separate websites but only look similar, then that is what you'd need to set up. You'd probably want to decide on a single-sign-on scheme for that.

ASP.NET MVC EditorTemplate sub folders

I am working on, what I would consider to be, a large ASP.NET MVC website. Currently there are nearly 100 editor templates (all for 1 controller), and this number will grow.
What I want to accomplish is organize my views to make them easier to find and version. This 'version' step is what will make the views multiply as time goes on. you can think of this project as an Question/Answer application, where Exams are created, and can be pulled up later. Basically, for this particular project, the views/EditorTemplates can't really change once in production, so a new copy must be created for future use. References to the old view would still exist, making that exam look and behave the way it did a year ago. Likewise, new exams will automatically pick up the new version of the view, and use that version.
I would like to have this type of structure, but I am up for other ideas.
Views/Shared/EditorTemplates/Common
Views/Shared/EditorTemplates/Common/v2
Views/Shared/EditorTemplates/Common/v3
Views/Shared/EditorTemplates/Department
Views/Shared/EditorTemplates/Department/v2
Note: Even though I will have versioned subdirectories, which implies that I will have multiple versions of the same model and template, the new files will have a unique file name. Also, I am also attempting to use the Razor Generator to compile my views. Not sure if that can be extended to add the additional EditorTemplate search paths or not.
The framework won't look there, use local EditorTemplate folders instead, e.g. Views/Department/EditorTemplates.
Editor templates are located by the view engine, which first looks in ~/Views/{1}/{0}.cshtml and then in ~/Views/Shared/{0}.cshtml.
For example, if the controller is Department and the model is a String, the framework asks for EditorTemplates/String, and the view engine looks in ~/Views/Department/EditorTemplates/String.cshtml and ~/Views/Shared/EditorTemplates/String.cshtml.
Max's answer is a much more elegant and simple answer. If you don't want to do that AND you want a ton of work, you can write your own ViewEngine.

Code generation: Custom controller templates

To start off, I'm using Asp.Net MVC 4, and I've modified my solution to contain the CodeTemplates folder by following this tutorial. (I think my issue might be MVC related?)
I've replaced the code in the Ajax grid template with a with my own JQgrid-template, which was fine for getting my project started. But I'm having trouble creating completely new controller templates (well the having them show up in the create new controller menu)
any ideas?
Update
I've taken a few stabs at using the scaffolding feature, but it's not exactly what i had in mind (although it does work like expected. I watched a video by steve sanderson on the topic that was quite informative), any way to get my custom views/controllers inside the add controller gui?
As far as my understanding of your problem goes, you cannot manage two controllers within one .ps1 file, which corresponds to your "AddController" directory.
You have to use the Package Manager and issue a command like
Scaffold CustomScaffolder <choose-name>
This will generate another subfolder below CodeTemplates with the name . From there, you open and edit t4 files like you did with your existing one.
More info here

After updating to MVC3 RC, why don't my View Data classes show up in the Add View dialog

Background:
I just updated to the RC of MVC3, and when I went to add a Stongly-Typed View, the list of classes didn't contain the class I wanted, which has been built in my project.
Now, I did compile my project, and already have several views that work correct, but their model also doesn't show up in this list.
Since the change to this dialog in RC, what is the new criteria that makes a class show up, considering none of them in my project showed up.
They altered the way that they're displayed in MVC 3 RC. For example previously you would just scroll to:
Project.Data.Models.User
Now it's organized in reverse
User (Project.Data.Models)
This is most likely your problem. What would be nice is if they had a filter to show only local objects rather than all referenced assemblies
Had the same problem. Clean solution and build and my view models started showing up...

ASP.NET MVC RC - Creating a MVC User Control with a codebehind

Trying to create a MVC User Control in the Release Candidate and I can't see to make one with a codebehind file. The same is true for MVC View pages.
Creating Views in the Beta would produce codebehinds...am I missing something?
Code behind kind of defeats the purpose of the MVC Framework. Functionality should be kept separate from the view, the MVC team felt that code behind pages went against this ideology and therefore removed them.
Your can create a custom helper method to create your control. Also I'm not sure if MVC has view components (Monorail/Castle) but that could be an option as well.
From ScottGu's Blog post:
*Views without Code-Behind Files
Based on feedback we’ve changed view-templates to not have a code-behind file by default. This change helps reinforce the purpose of views in a MVC application (which are intended to be purely about rendering and to not contain any non-rendering related code), and for most people eliminates unused files in the project.
The RC build now adds C# and VB syntax support for inheriting view templates from base classes that use generics. For example, below we are using this with the Edit.aspx view template – whose “inherits” attribute derives from the ViewPage type:
One nice benefit of not using a code-behind file is that you'll now get immediate intellisense within view template files when you add them to the project. With previous builds you had to do a build/compile immediately after creating a view in order to get code intellisense within it. The RC makes the workflow of adding and immediately editing a view compile-free and much more seamless.
Important: If you are upgrading a ASP.NET MVC project that was created with an earlier build make sure to follow the steps in the release notes – the web.config file under the \Views directory needs to be updated with some settings in order for the above generics based syntax to work.*
I answered this question here:
How to add a Code-behind page to a Partial View
Seems this wasn't particularly tricky, and is quite do-able
This answer worked for a Partial 'ViewUserControl' but the same should apply
Ok.
First: Add a Class file with the convention of .cs (i.e. view.ascx.cs)
Second: Add "using System.Web.Mvc;" to the class
Third: Change the Class to Inherit from "ViewUserControl<>"
Fourth: Add the following to the View's header:
CodeBehind="View.ascx.cs" Inherits="Project.Views.Shared.View"
Fifthly: Copy the files out of the solution and drag back in to reassociate the two together
Note: For this to work with a Normal MVC View you just need to inherit the class from "ViewPage"
The whole idea for ASP.Net-mvc was to get rid of the codebehind files...thats why asp web controls didnt matter that most didn't work.But with the changes of getting rid of the code behind comes with a different programming style..The idea is codebehind files are EVIL:
http://stevesmithblog.com/blog/codebehind-files-in-asp-net-mvc-are-evil/
the whole idea is to make sure people remember they are using asp.Net-mvc and not asp.et web pages. take alook at this link ,it explains it a little better:
http://blog.lozanotek.com/archive/2008/10/20/Visual_Studio_Templates_for_MVC_Views_without_Codebehind_Files.aspx
I think this tutorial is what you are asking.. but not really sure what you want..

Resources