I need to port the functionality of this one and only one AJAX control to MVC, but given the poor selection of MVC controls out there, I think I need to bring this legacy control into the MVC world...
I'd rather not taint my MVC project with ASP.NET controls, and welcome json/MVC alternatives you know of. (post them if you know of any)
Sample UI that I need in ASP.NET MVC
Back to porting
Although it's unfortunate that I am left to porting this control to MVC, it seems to be a widely accepted practice since Telerik has detailed instructions on how do this.
That makes me ask:
How common is it for a MVC website to use ASP.NET controls?
Again I'll mention I don't want to do this so I welcome MVC-specific alternatives. That being said, I'll proceed with trying to merge that control with my existing site. </End Disclaimer>
If you click on this hyperlink, and look at the source code at the bottom, can you tell me where I should put the following in MVC?
Code behind (My first instinct is to use a Controller but another SO question indicates I should create a create a ViewName.aspx.cs file)
How do I port the SQLDataSource to the new "Model" way of thinking. I know they are different in nature but I don't know how to present data to a ASP.NET control in a way that it will consume the information.
How do I handle the AJAX component? This control has an AJAX component using callbacks. Yes this is getting ugly, but it seems like I have to do this.
Apparently this model saves data in session or view-state. I have no idea if this even work in MVC. Guidance, an alternate control, or a life preserver is much appreciated.
I've already done research and have instructions from Telerik here and here that describes how to get started with placing a simple menu, but I need a little assistance with the more complex controls like this one.
Note: For all the commentary that has hit this question, please remember that I only want this one ASP.NET control functionality; I can't find a comparable control in MVC.
porting from asp.net webforms to MVC is a paradigm shift.
Directly porting does not work.
The Model is where you typically describe your data and do the data access
the View is for displaying the data
The controller plums the other two together
So SQLDataSource is your data access layer and would therefore go to your model
the problem with the thought pattern of SQLDataSource == Model then you get away from the point of decoupling your presentation from data access
You have to think of MVC development as a new build
I would pick a book or video series from your preferred source and learn starting with MVC3 (it has some differences that simplify build speed and reinforce the difference between webforms and mvc)
Hope this helps.
This article explains how to run web forms and mvc together
http://weblogs.asp.net/rajbk/archive/2010/05/11/running-asp-net-webforms-and-asp-net-mvc-side-by-side.aspx
This is by telerik and explains the limitiation of the grid and what is need to get it to run.
http://blogs.telerik.com/aspnetmvcteam/posts/08-11-06/asp_net_ajax_controls_in_asp_net_mvc.aspx
Add an IFrame in your MVC view that just shows the WebForms page (or just use that control on a single WebForms page).
There is nothing that says you can't have a site with both WebForms and MVC pages. You can route a single URL to a WebForm just for this control.
Why not just use the telerik MVC controls? They work quite well. Either get them via a NuGet package or visit this link http://www.telerik.com/products/aspnet-mvc.aspx
I would rather use ViewModel instead of code behind
You don't have to throw away SqlDataSource you can use result set and buld from it your model, problem may be column names in result set... tricky but can be done
Since there is no components in MVC except helpers youll need help of jQuery probably, it easy
$.ajax({
url : "/controller/action",
data: { /*json or serialized form */ },
successs: function(data){
//if you got response as html from /controller/action
$("#some_div").html(data);
}
}
Session is available in MVC but viewstate not, you can use HttpContenxt.Cache or TempData if you need something like viewstate. USe TempData to keep data between redirections, or httpcontext.cache to cache your data further more.
I can't find similar functionality in an MVC control
MVC doesn't really have a concept of controls in the same way that ASP.Net does - there are only really the plain old HTML controls (i.e. hidden input, text input, checkbox, radiobuttons, select box, text area, password and buttons).
When you need something more complicated than the plain HTML Controls you need to use some JavaScript to achieve this.
I'm not sure that you will be able to 'port' the control into MVC - you will most likely have to try and re-create it your self using an MVC controller and a partial view with a fair bit of a javascript to create the control.
Have a look at the JQuery UI Autosomplete plugin - you could probably use this to acheive something similar
Related
I have a CMS website written in aspx 2.0 that allows users to build up pages by dropping controls on a page and setting properties (reflection on the server side) and events (client side js). The render engine knows what property to call on each control to find out what to save into the database. I went through all the pitfalls of control re-hydration and lack of proper ids on the controls and really struggled to make the solution SEO friendly which currently is partial at best. Also suffer from viewstate getting huge so I have started to look at MVC as a better way forwards for the next version. The final design of the page is only set when the user decides to promote it live, and may make many changes per day.
A typical page may have many textbox controls, radio button groups, checkbox groups, dropdownlists and images. Also we have a few of our own controls that we reflect at runtime into the solution.
From my initial research into MVC, this looks to have been written to avoid these types of issues and not try to hide the html which looks very promising as well as giving final markup that is much more cross browser friendly.
Now the question - since the requirements are to generate dynamic pages with dynamic html controls, is this a step too far for MVC and I should stick with ASPX, or is there a way to generate the dynamic content which would be suitable for a non technical person to be able to do?
Really appreciate any guidance before I jump in with both feet :)
Thanks
Mark
I'm assuming by aspx 2.0 you mean WebForms? It's really not a question of if MVC is capable of doing what you need - it is capable, and in
my opinion it's more capable. However There are some major differences between WebForms and MVC check out this post for more on that topic: MVC versus WebForms.
I hope this helps. Without more information on exactly what you're trying to accomplish, there's not much more I can say. Consider asking more specific questions with some code examples.
Some of the main advantages of MVC: Clean HTML, No ViewState written on the page, easier to support html5 and thus SEO as well.
For me, since I used MVC 3 years ago I don't even want to touch WebForms thesedays.
Btw, if you want CMS + MVC, why not use Orchard rather than building yourself?
http://paulmason.biz/?p=118
using data source we can show the data in web page. but i want that there is radio button with all rows and after accessing the radio button the given functionality works?
how to do it please explain?
you need to be more clear with your question - if you already have some code then post it and then ask the how your code needs to do something specific
since the comment was amended
in ItemDataBound event
do something like (e.FindControl("controlname") as RadioButton).SelectedValue
im not quite sure if its c# or vb that you are writing in so cant be more specific at this time
Based on your comment in the other answer I understand that you're actually using WebForms server controls with Asp.net MVC application.
Avoid mixing an matching Asp.net MVC with WebForms
Unless you're skilled in both platforms I suggest you avoid this. It will only bring you headaches in the long run. Displaying and consuming checkboxes/radiobuttons (or any List<T>) should be done differently in MVC. Check this questions (and answer) out that will help you out and show you how this can be done in pure MVC way.
It also explains what things to take care when you dynamically add these items on the client side using Javascript.
I don't want to make this into a "which is better... MVC or WebForms" type of question. Im sure that has been asked a bunch of times here already.
My Question: If I am building a MVC web project, why should I not use an ASP.NET datagrid control on one of my "Views" .aspx pages?
The control relies on Viewstate which isn't available in MVC. In addition, all the behavior is predicated on the WebForms event and postback model which you'd have to recreate in MVC to get them to work. You could search for alternate, MVC-friendly grids (perhaps jQuery-based). I know that Telerik has released a set of MVC controls under open source that might be helpful to you.
you can't use web forms controls in MVC because they depend on view state. Use the data grid of the Mvc Controls toolkit instead. It has paging, insert delete and update capabilities and it is completely templated (you can shap it as you like). Look at it here
The datagrid control depends on postback events which does not fit into the MVC way of thinking (the postback goes to the page code behind rather than the controller). You could use one without any postback features, i believe, but you may as well craft something directly.
Because the ASP.NET DataGrid / GridView has too much responsibility to fit into the MVC pattern. You'll have to add some code-behind to your view to databind the grid - code that belongs in the controller.
Anything that uses postback won't work with MVC, so the DataGrids paging and sorting won't be any good to you. So there really isn't any benefit to using it.
If you're looking for a flexible grid 'control' (MVC prefers the term HTML Helper), the MvcContrib grid is pretty good.
What is the recommended replacement of ASP.Net server controls in the bright new world of ASP.Net MVC?
In my opinion, one of the best features of ASP.Net is the ability to write server controls (although, admittedly, the event model is horrendous to deal with). If these controls are self-populating, then they can be shared between different projects with the minimum of fuss - you simply reference the assembly where the server control lives, and drop it on to the aspx. The control does the rest. This fits very nicely in the World of Widgets and provides efficient code reuse. How is one meant to achieve the same thing in MVC?
I am most interested in self-populating controls that do not post back, as I appreciate that the postback model definitely does not fit with MVC. Can they still be encapsulated in a class that can be shared between a number of different MVC web projects? Or does this require a whole different mindset where controls shouldn't populate themselves, and one should use partial views? Is there a way of sharing partial views between projects?
Finally, can I use my old (non-postback) server controls, in an MVC projects?
You can mimic the behavior of non-post back controls with Html helper extension methods. Just like Html.TextBox(), etc, you can write your own and encapsulate them in their own project if you like.
If you've written controls that just output HTML, it shouldn't be that hard to convert them to Html helpers.
The closest Asp.Net MVC comes to server controls is partial requests. In a partial request an MVC action method is called, and its output is appended to the current view. Unfortunately, the official support for this (Html.RenderAction) is in the futures assembly at the moment.
If using the futures assembly is not possible for you, a blogger named Steve Sanderson has written an article on implementing similar functionality:
http://blog.codeville.net/2008/10/14/partial-requests-in-aspnet-mvc/
Like many others on this site I am considering a move to ASP.NET MVC for future projects. Currently my sites are running the traditional ASP.NET 2.0 Web Forms, and it works OK for us, so my other option is just to stick with what I know and make the move to ASP.NET 3.5 with the integrated AJAX stuff.
I'm wondering about how user controls work in ASP.NET MVC. We have tons of .ASCX controls, and a few composite controls. When I work with web designers it is very easy to get them to use ASCX controls effectively, even without any programming knowledge, so that's a definite plus. But then of course the downsides are the page life cycle, which can be maddening, and the fact that ASCX controls are hard to share between different projects. Composite controls are share-able, but basically a black box to a designer.
What's the model in ASP.NET MVC? Is there a way to create controls that solves the problems we've dealt with using ASCX and composite controls? Allowing easy access for web designers without having to worry about code being broken is an important consideration.
To implement a user control you do the following call:
<% Html.RenderPartial("~/Views/Shared/MyControl.ascx", {data model object}) %>
You may also see the older syntax which as of PR5 is not valid anymore
<%= Html.RenderUserControl("~/Views/Shared/MyControl.ascx", {data model object}) %>
You will always have to worry about code breaking when moving from Web Forms to MVC, however the ASP.NET MVC team has done a great job to minimize the problems.
As Nick suggested, you will indeed be able to render your user controls, but obviously the page-cycle, pagestate and postback from traditional ASP Webforms won't work anymore, thus making your controls most likely useless.
I think you'll have to rewrite most of your complex controls to port your website to MVC, while simple controls which, for instance, provide only formatting and have no postback status, should simply work.
The code provided by Nick will simply work in this case.
And about sharing between more projects: I think controls will be more like "reusable HTML-rendering components" that can be shared across a website, rather than "reusable code components" with logic (like WebForms controls). Your web logic will/should be in the pages controllers and not in the HTML controls. Therefore sharing controls across more projects won't be so useful as in the WebForms case.
MVC has different page life cycle compare to your user control.
You may consider this to re-write.
The aspx is the view. You still need a re-write, the syntax is different.
JavaScript will work. But I hardly find the WebControls will work. Because MVC does not have viewstate and postback anymore.
For the code behind (aspx.cs) you need to convert that to be a Controller class.
Page_Load method will no longer works. You probable leave it to Index() method.
Model is simply the entity classes that your code behind consume.
Conclusion, it's a total rewrite. Cheers. Happy coding.
Yeah, you can do RenderPartial. That's a good start. But eventually these guys will need logic and other controller type stuff. Be on the lookout for a subcontroller implementation from the framework team. There should also be something in MvcContrib soon. Or roll your own.
Edit: I just posted about this here: http://mhinze.com/subcontrollers-in-aspnet-mvc/