Microsoft recently released MVC 4 Beta, which has these new very nice features like Web API and SPA. And as always Microsoft's demos do not demonstrate best practices from software design prospective. For example, using DbController which is tightly coupled to EF.
It seems for me that SPA and Web API go hand-by-hand in modern ASP .NET app.
I would like to hear any suggestions about structuring MVC 4-based solution, which is going to apply these new technologies like Web API and SPA.
For example, is it a good practice to separate Web API project with it's own controllers out of base MVC4 project or not. How to deal with SPA and not to use DbController in order to keep data persistence separately? What's going to be a main role of regular MVC4 app and especially Razor views?
Any other thoughts or suggestions are highly appreciated.
On separation of MVC4 + Web API: imho (as always) it depends on your concrete project.
Regarding EF: you should definitely not return EF Entities but return your own DTOs instead.
The role of MVC razor views could be rendering partial views you dynamically load from the client. You also could do some stuff like conditional loading of CSS / JS etc. for the Index page being loaded initially.
I think it's a good idea to keep the API in a separate web site project from your SPA/web site, as you can run in to problems with greedy routes.
Definitely keep your data access separate and loosely coupled.
Related
I'm trying to understand modern web applications architecture. In ASP.NET MVC, all the business logic classes are in Model and Controller takes and guides user requests.If I am using it, is it possible to use Angular JS which itself is a MVC architecture but all the business logic is in controller and model is just POJO.
Can Angular JS be used only with Web API 2 where it gets data from a RESTful service and it does all manipulation on the client side? Which architecture is most commonly used ?
From my perspective, you're confusing two very different technologies; One is server-side (ASP.NET MVC) an one is Client Side (AngularJS).
The two can certainly be used hand-in-hand as neither are dependent on the other existing. And, IIRC, there is a scaffolding module on NuGet that helps bindings from one to the other (Create JS objects from your ASP.NET POCO objects).
With that being said, there is no reason you need to use both. You can one one or ther other, both, or bring in a different technology altogether (KnockoutJS, etc.)?
In ASP.NET MVC, all the business logic classes are in Model and Controller takes and guides user requests
This is not true. Models (a.k.a. ViewModels) should be plain ("POCO") data containers in ASP.NET MVC. Business logic should come from a layer consumed by the controllers, but in smaller applications or before refactoring, the controller is a more appropriate choice than a (View)Model.
Can Angular JS be used only with Web API 2 where it gets data from a RESTful service and it does all manipulation on the client side? Which architecture is most commonly used?
No, you can use ASP.NET MVC with Angular JS as well by returning JsonResults from controller actions. That said, WebAPI is a better / more appropriate choice. Of course you can also use Angular with many other non-Microsoft tools that return JSON over http(s) (for example node, ruby, java, etc).
To more directly answer your actual question, the main difference between the two is that one is an MVC pattern for the server, and the other is an MVC pattern for the browser. Angular actually likes to call it an "MVW" pattern, where the "W" stands for "Whatever".
Like as other design patterns (Singleton, Factory, Factory method) MVC
is also a design pattern that we can use in any technology like(Java,
.net, PHP) or to any client site scripting. there is no difference between MVC in Angular JS and MVC in ASP.NET and Spring MVc
Currently we have a new menu item to our existing asp.net web forms application.
We have decided to go with MVC for this.
Please note that we have to share the same masterpages, css and Jquery files. We are currently planning to render the view inside a div in our aspx pages.
Is there a better way to accomplish this?
What are the limitations of our approach?
Can we leverage the MVC test cases in this approach?
Thanks
MVC is a stateless, disconnected architecture, you can not access the master page or aspx controls directly in the controller as aspx.cs does, secondly it is not possible to use the classic asp.net master page with mvc.
The things you can re use from existing project are:
UI Templates (design)
JS files
CSS files
Business Logic
Database
You can't use same master pages. You can't reuse ASP.NET MVC for some parts of your webforms view and vice versa. Either your view is completely on webforms or on ASP.NET MVC. And theoretically even mix of webforms with mvc in one web application could be problematic, but practically possible (see below point 1). So generally answer to your question is no.
If you are looking to ASP.NET MVC, you should think about step-by-step migration of your project to it.
Actually there are a couple of possibilities how to migrate
Mix in one project ASP.NET web forms and ASP.NET MVC. Technically it is possible. But it is some kind of hack. Your transition will be seamless but you can't your ASP.NET views. I will not recommend it. You can find this approach here http://www.devcurry.com/2013/05/adopting-aspnet-mvc-enhancements-in.html
In one solution use different projects for your webforms and mvc projects. In fact these are 2 different web application which typically could have common authentication, and there is question with webforms state. To solve problem with authentication you need create separate web service for it, which will be used by both. To solve problems with session state, use distributed caching for both, and try to change thinking from webforms state to caching, because mvc is actually stateless. Then for particular views you can redirect between views of both portals
I used asp.net web forms before and currently thinking to switch to MVC, the issue is, my current project is against a 'real time database' - PI from OSISoft - where I don't need CRUD operations at all, its a view only application; is the MVC model still applicable here or what?
Sorry for the newbie question.
ASP.NET MVC and Web Forms are web application frameworks. They don't define any constraints on data access. With a little refactoring you should be able to use same data access code (C# or VB) in an MVC application.
Funny, I just created a dashboard for a PI server. Used ASP.Net MVC and Web API to surface the information, it worked a treat.
Note MVC doesn't actually have anything to do with data persistence. It is simply a well-conceived UI design pattern.
I'd like to use for my next project Ext js and ASP.NET MVC.
I'm wondering what would be the best way of using this two framework together. So far I did some project using ASP.NET MVC, where every action method returned a view and reloaded the page. The Ext js mvc application uses a single page approach.
As I'm pretty new to ext js so I'm wondering if someone could share some experiences of building real world application using this two frameworks.
You can use extjs as you think is better for you. You can use its components as simple widgets or create a full javascript (extjs) client. However, which are the real requirements? a single page client or a traditional client?
In our current project we started using ASP.Net MVC Framework with extjs widgets, it was ok for a while but the customer wanted more and more sophisticated UI and a better user experince (among other thing) then, we changed the app, we left MVC models and controllers (views were removed) and we created a full javascript client with extjs 4.1.
After that we realized we were using an ASP M_C framework (with no views) and that was a nonsense so, we took the ASP MVC project away and replaced it by a WCF Rest service (it also could be done with an ASP.Net Web Api).
We feel proud of our decision and the resulting design. If you can, if you know extjs (learning it is rather hard) and javascript and, if you have support to your decision then, keep your application splitted in two:
a server-side service/api and,
a full javascript application.
Good luck!
I'm not sure I'd agree with the answer by #lontivero, I'm currently working on a project using ASP.NET MVC as the backend and ExtJS as the front.
You do, as pointed out, loose the V from the ASP.NET MVC stack and you end up needing to duplicate you C# view models in you ExtJS Models on the client side but I've found using MVC as a backend (effectively as a rest based collection of Json end points) absolutely fine.
You can utilise the model binding, model validation in MVC whilst leveraging the full client side js app in Ext.
I'm curious as to the points you didn't get on with using this structure (I'm not saying it's perfect, but it does seem to work)
We used Ext.NET (versions 0.x-1.x) in our previous projects. Even after a comprehensive effort to upgrade our projects to the (now current) version, we had to drop Ext.Net 2.x out.
If it fits you, it can help.
The main problems with Ext.Net were (several) incompatibilities with ASP.NET and a lack of trust. They used to keep their schedule, it's far from it for last 2 years or so. And they are behind ExtJS.
I aim to try use DevExpress web server controls (which are awesome) in an ASP.NET MVC project (some articles I read on 'net seems to indicate the two can work well together).
I'm eager to start a new project using ASP.NET MVC, and I have been reading up a lot on ASP.NET MVC lately, but I'm not sure if I should invest a project in it. My concern is that it may turn out to be like LINQ to SQL, which is essentially been killed off since MS will not be providing updates.
Is ASP.NET MVC a viable solution to invest in my case?
Yes definitely ASP.NET MVC or any other MVC framework is worth learning. MVC pattern is all about seperation of concerns and helps you to keep your code clean.
If you like Devexpress control too much you could be disappointed because there is no server side control in ASP.NET MVC. But if you want to learn Web's underlying mechanism,HTML, Javascript , clean code, TDD ASP.NET MVC is a good way to go.
Learn first, experiment later
Asp.net MVC is a great development platform for building web applications, so it's definitely worth your time to learn it through and through.
But I suggest you first learn MVC framework and build at least one semi complex app with it and then start experimenting with mixing MVC with web forms controls. It is possible but as much you think you will gain you'll probably loose more. So I would be a bit reluctant and advise you not to match these. At least not on a Greenfield project.
In other words: presumably knowing Asp.net web forms would you suggest someone to heavy use dynamicly created user controls in their web pages if they're just about to learn the technology of Asp.net web forms? Probably not. Or mixing web forms with ASP pages on a greenfield project...
Instead try finding great either MVC-friendly server extensions or client-side libraries that will help you create rich web apps like ExtJS (I don't work for ExtJS llc, but I used the lib on a project in the past and liked it a lot). Using something like this you won't loose stuff from MVC and gain great user experience and rich functionality.
Seeing how you're asking the question on this site, I'd say YES!
DevExpress has a bunch of MVC specialized controls, that use Ajax to get data from the server via callbacks. You can see demos of the controls here:
http://mvc.devexpress.com.
I am not sure if you can use the web forms controls, my understanding is that you can't.
Also, regarding LinqToSql, you don't have to use that. I am using NHibernate for the data layer and it works very nice with MVC.
I worked with asp.net and web forms for more than 5 years and at least 1 year with the DevExpress controls for asp.net, but now I love MVC so much that I think I don't want to go back to the web forms anytime soon.
Hope this helped.