How to seperate MVC project to several smaller MVC projects - asp.net-mvc

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.

Related

having multiple mvc projects under same url

I was wondering if it's possible to create an mvc project with layers inside or even multiple projects using the same web address.
Like if I have a website called mysite.com which have a website project doing sine stuff.
But then I have a webproject which I'm doing some experimentational code on which I whould like to find via the url "mysite.com/test". This whold be a dufferent mvc project. Is that even possible?
It is possible, what you actually need to is create a new project and define it inside a virtual directory.
MVC is based on global.asax and web.config configurations and you can't have 2 separate projects inside the same application. In the scenario you described, it sounds like you need to create a "Virtual Directory" in IIS for the second application instead of making just a "Sub Folder".
The Virtual Directory will allow you to declare a new web.config and global.asax where you set the new routings and configurations method for your second application and this will also give you the freedom for independent updates without affecting your main project.
For a full walkthrough on how you can perform this please refer to this site:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/bb763173(v=vs.100).aspx

following iterative and agile in asp.net MVC

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

Add controller/view on other folders

Initial sidenote: I'm working on a hybrid WebForms+MVC application that started as a WebForms application hence I've added project GUIDs that converted it to MVC. This means that I'm getting context menus directly on Controllers and Views folder in application root. That works.
I was wondering whether it's possible to convince Visual Studio (and Asp.net MVC tooling) to add Add controller... and Add View... context menu items to other folders not just those default ones that are on the project root?
The reason is that I'm working on an Asp.net WebForms application that is now a hybrid with MVC. And since it already has quite a few folders in root I would rather separate the new MVC part and contain it altogether within mvc folder, so all MVC related files would be inside that particular folder.
But right clicking on mvc\Controllers doesn't give me the wizard, nor does the mvc\Views... Also navigation from controller code to views isn't working...
Is there any way to customize this in Visual Studio? Do Asp.net MVC tools for VS have some sort of configuration file where this can be configured? Or in registry maybe?
If you wish to separate the MVC stuff from the rest of the application you might want to put it in a separate Area.
You'd have the context menu and separation from the existing mess.

Can we deploy an asp.net MVC application by copying the source codes (without compiling) like we can do when deploying a WebForm website proj?

Can we deploy an asp.net MVC application by copying the source codes only (without compiling them first) like we can do when deploying WebForm website project?
No - MVC apps need compilation, like ASP.NET Web Application Projects.
Wait... if what you mean is copying the *.aspx and *.ascx files, yes you can, but you have to include the *.dll in the bin folder too.
Copying the *.cs files is useless.
Start by building your application, then select the project (not the solution) that is your StartUp project (the one with the aspx files), then, in the main menu, do Build > Publish Selection and follow the wizard.
I'm afraid the answer that has been marked as correct is incorrect.
You can have your controllers inside your App_Code folder. You should follow the naming conventions for your views' folders (~\Views{ControllerName}{ViewName}.cshtml), and simply ensure that your route map correctly wires up the controller. If you do create your controller using the default App_Code behavior, it will not be placed inside a namespace. You should either wrap it in a default namespace ({SiteName}.Controllers) or explicitly set the namespaces: argument to include an empty string for the namespace.
Only if the code you are talking about reside in the aspx/ascx files. Most of your code should reside in your middle tier/controller/data tier - so having too much code in the views is usually considered as a bad practice in logic/concern separation.

ASP.NET MVC - Missing "Convert to Web Application" option

I created a new MVC project and added some webforms pages to it in an effort to start adding new pages to my app using MVC and eventually port the old pages over as well. Everything is building and working correctly but I did notice that I don't have the "Convert to Web Application" option when right clicking an aspx file. And I think its not regenerating my designer files when I change the controls on a page.
My guess is that the ProjectTypeGuid is wrong or in the wrong order. Can someone confirm?
Old (Webforms) project file
<ProjectGuid>{4F95C3D9-228E-4BD5-9840-46224BA3EBA7}</ProjectGuid>
<ProjectTypeGuids>{349c5851-65df-11da-9384-00065b846f21};{fae04ec0-301f-11d3-bf4b-00c04f79efbc}</ProjectTypeGuids>
New (MVC) project file
<ProjectGuid>{A4690D3F-695B-4BF4-93B7-EA5B17793051}</ProjectGuid>
<ProjectTypeGuids>{603c0e0b-db56-11dc-be95-000d561079b0};{349c5851-65df-11da-9384-00065b846f21};{fae04ec0-301f-11d3-bf4b-00c04f79efbc}</ProjectTypeGuids>
This is so wrong on so many levels but I am going to answer you anyways in the hopes I might get an uptick or something. You have two routes with this. First route which I use all the time is put your mvc applications in their own projects. When your deploying the site drop the webforms application first, and then make a folder in that webforms application and put your mvc application into that folder. That should work like a charm for you. If you insit on having webforms and MVC Framework in the same project, then don't drop your webforms into the view folder. Create its own folder because you can not directly access your aspx pages from the views folder without making modifications to the web.config. Hope this helps.
MVC is available as a Web Project only. The VS2005 style Web Site is not supported.

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