MVC 3 with Razor best practices - asp.net-mvc

I am looking for best practices for using Razor with MVC 3. Now what I am hoping for is some type of article, not just a list of your professed best practices, but if you have any feel free to post them.
Why is this SO worthy? It seems hard to find info on how to best use Razor with MVC views. I know about the typical MVC best practices, I am looking for Razor specific ones. Those who use Razor know that its more than a token replacer. I want to know more about how you setup the site templates using Razor.
Like I said, I am looking for a good resource on the subject.

have you ever heard of Nerddinner.com? that website has been created with ASP.NET MVC an it is open source on codeplex.
Here is the release that has razor and MVC3 version of it;
http://nerddinner.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/changes/55257
You could download the source code and play with it.
Edit :
Also have a look at below blog posts;
ASP.NET MVC 3: Layouts and Sections with Razor
ASP.NET MVC 3: Implicit and Explicit code nuggets with Razor
Deployment of ASP.Net MVC 3 RC 2 Application on a Shared Hosting Environment Without Begging The Hosting Company
ASP.NET MVC 3: Layouts with Razor
Razor Releated posts on Phil Haacked's Blog

Razor syntax is not all that you are looking for, you want the best patterns and practices with using MVC 3 as well. It is a shame there are Zero books out on MVC3, only web references with vary from small to large degree. At this point you must use stackoverflow and constantly use google and set a date range to search past month or so. Also, setup a google "alert" on mvc 3 razor etc..
I find that pluralsight examples, nerddinner, Silk (MileageStats), MvcMusicStore, ProDinner, and several others to be "useful" yet not one is (or can be) the best practices in every area. Everyone tries the "happy path" but many of the example veer from this. Many examples are doing various IOC containers. Some use Unity others Structuremap, others Ninject. Depending on skill level and existing knowledge, it can be overwhelming.
Personally I'm on a new project with vs 2010 / mvc3 with Oracle 9... Thus MOST of the examples are not terribly helpful as the database integration with EntityFramework use datacontext / IQueryable is great and all, but with Oracle EF in beta, and sprocs not even working with Oracle 9 with EF (per trying , and email responses from Oracle trainers etc..) I end up having to go old school and retrofit ADO.NET and convert to List ... and use IEnumerable. Thus many of the things stubbed out for easy use in the models/controllers/views in the demo projects are half in vain for me with my environment with Oracle.

Well... I use MVC 2 and work and MVC 3 at home and I really haven't found too many differences in terms of best practices for the Razor syntax. I generally just read ScottGu's or Phil Haack's blogs if I want to read about ways to use the features of Razor. Not sure if that helps you any but I am drawing a blank.

Please check below link for example with good presentation.
http://dotnetautor.de/blog/content/binary/Windows-Live-Writer/32ee537b2c00_E16A/MVC3.pdf

Related

how to use breezeJS in asp.net webforms

i have been lately read some articles about BreezeJS. But till now i can't get my head around it.
What exactly BreezeJS is used for in details with examples not just words?
Can i use it in asp.net WebForms(most of tutorials target MVC projects), and if so how can i use it ?
Is there any concerns i need to take in consideration before i use it ?
I'm going to break your first question into two pieces:
Do you want to build a JavaScript / Single Page Application?
If you want a cross-platform application with a more fluid user experience, or have a need for offline operation, then Single Page Applications may be a good fit for you.
Why should I use Breeze in a Single Page Application? Can you cite examples?
John Papa has a great post about this that includes a few examples:
http://www.johnpapa.net/spajs04
You can use WebForms, MVC, or any number of other technologies to build a Single Page Application. For ASP.NET, people typically use MVC4 though. Here is StackOverflow post on that topic that might help:
webforms vs asp.net mvc for single page application - which to choose?

New MVC project

I just need some guidance. I'm fairly new to MVC3 and to web development in general. I want to create my own project that will involve data storage/access (SQL server db) and user log in functionality. I'm not sure were to start, there seem to be so many ways for this and following tutorials doesn't really give the experience of setting up real life project (or its just my impression). Would you guys suggest starting from an empty MVC3 project, or perhaps use the scaffolding feature and build on top of it and use the membership provider built into it ? Some tutorials (by Scott Hanselman) actually explain how to copy and paste the membership feature into a new project. Is this approach suggested ? Any suggestions will help! Thanks!
Here are some tutorials
MVC 3 with razor
ASP.Net website
MVC Music Store
Strongly typed helpers in mvc
Brad Wilson's Blog
MVC Subdomain routing
MVC Partial Views
Some javascript for MVC
MVC Javascript frameworks
JSON and MVC
Form update using JSON in MVC
I'm just starting too, I found this very helpful, especially the videos on the left.
But what I found extremely helpful is the MVC Music Store and the Contoso University site (I recommend to download as PDF; you can see a button to do so at the top).
The NerdDinner tutorial is a great way to start with ASP.NET MVC, although the online version is slightly out of date. However, I can strongly recommend the book that this tutorial (in its updated version) is the first chapter of: Professional ASP.NET MVC 3.

What pattern to use with aspnet mvc?

I always used asp.net webforms with the MVP pattern, it works great for what I need, I basically create a project where all my business rules reside, validation etc... and I then implement my views in the webforms project.
Now we're starting to use asp.net MVC and using the MVP patter doesn't make much sense, right? So what could be a good approach to create a scalable and testable project using MVC that won't make me create my data objects and do validation on the controllers. I don' want to have the same code in different places...
If a web user wants to update his/her profile on the site, there would be some validation rules for when a submit button is pushed, like email address cannot be empty, must be valid and must not exist in the database.
These same rules should be applied if I try to update his profile using the internal admin section without having to duplicate the code there...
If you can point me to a good sample project that deals with this would be great!
Thanks in advance!
You should use the MVC pattern with ASP.Net MVC.
The NerdDinner tutorial is a pretty detailed example for MVC, you can also get a book that includes the tutorial (you might want to wait for the version that covers ASP.Net MVC 3). There are plenty of resources on Microsoft's ASP.Net site.
You can always consult Google.
ASP .NET MVC was built with the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern in mind. That would be the pattern you'd want to use.
In addition to the resources magnifico provided, I know others have recommended the some other tutorials. I don't know if these have been updated to the latest version of the framework, but they should still serve as decent beginners.
MVC Storefront series
MVC Music Store
Also the Microsoft Patterns & Practices group recently released Project Silk which gets into more advanced techniques involving a lot of AJAX management of the UI. There's interesting stuff there.

What enterprise sites are using ASP.NET MVC / MVC 2? Need justification for management for moving to MVC

I've tried a few google searches and stack over flow searches, but this is proving hard to find than I thought. I need to provide justification to management for our shop to move to ASP.NET MVC 2. The biggest help would be any enterprise level sites or major web development shops that are using ASP.NET MVC 1/2.
Does anyone have a list or link?
I know Stackoverflow uses it, but some stats such as daily views would help too. I found the Jwaala case study here: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/case_study_detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000006675 . Aside from that, I'm having some issues finding some professional examples.
Thanks in advance!
Just found a few more case studies:
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Search_Results.aspx?Type=1&Keywords=mvc&LangID=46#top
Could still use more links.
If your management requires a "...but THEY're doing it!!!" justification then you have larger problems.
If you're using the "...but THEY're doing it!!!" justification then you'll likely need much better reasons.
Hate to troll, but just saying that you'll want objective and project-specific reasoning. And if by "management" you mean business-management, then they need to understand that engineering details are best left up to engineering. The Art of War by Sun Tzu is full of advice along these lines.
...and to qualify this, I'm a web-developer working on a partial rewrite of a WebForms app. I'd love to be using MVC for this project, but the actual benefit of doing so doesn't match the cost--business is business after all, and the business-case must be considered.
If you do get stuck with WebForms then you can whip it into shape (what we're doing). With ASP.NET 4.0 (or a little inheritance trickery) you can get rid of the ID renaming; by building ViewModels, domain-objects, and clean Repositories you can avoid a lot of the cruft of WebForms--we have tight, explicit control over what WebForms generates. We've shrunk the actual content of our ASPX pages and their codebehinds by at least an order of magnitude by applying best practices.
Just remember, the tools won't make you a better developer, and unless you know what you're doing or what you're working with then you won't reap the benefits.
Dell is rebuilding its page from ASP.NET Webforms into ASP.NET MVC as Phil Haack is mentioned this on his blog ;)
I can not say if they use MVC 1 or MVC 2.
It seems that MarketWatch use ASP.NET MVC with Spark View Engine as listed here :
http://sparkviewengine.com/spark-in-the-field
http://www.marketwatch.com/
also an e-commerce webiste :
http://www.fancydressoutfitters.co.uk/
Check our sites www.reifen.com and www.bonspneus.fr. They handle pretty big traffic in germany and france.
We have used ASP.NET MVC 1 on these sites and still use (and enjoy) ASP.NET on other sites. Like others said: don't just go with ASP.NET MVC because it is in some way better. It is not. There is allways a situation where I would prefer one or the other.
Additional "live" ASP.NET MVC sites (some broken links)
http://weblogs.asp.net/mikebosch/archive/2008/05/05/gallery-of-live-asp-net-mvc-sites.aspx

Is there an official ASP.NET MVC reference/example app?

I'm struggling to find a good reference application for ASP.NET MVC. By "reference", I specifically mean an application that flexes all of the framework's features in the Microsoft-sanctioned manner, such as:
Master pages
Partial views
Strongly-typed models
Authentication
Custom routes
etc...
The open source examples that are out there (CodeCampServer, SutekiShop) either add significantly to the base framework or don't use all of the baked-in features.
Have you seen Rob Connery's MVC Storefront Webcast Series?
http://www.asp.net/learn/mvc-videos/#MVCStorefrontStarterKit
Source Code:
http://www.codeplex.com/mvcsamples/
I asked more or less the same question here: What are some projects which are examples of best practices for ASP.NET MVC?
As for official, the closest would be Rob Connery's which was mentioned.
This isn't official but you could check out Kigg:
http://www.codeplex.com/Kigg
It's a sizable Asp.net MVC Digg-clone with some decent code in it. Used on dotnetshoutout.com
I would consider the Nerd Dinner MVC reference app: http://nerddinner.codeplex.com/ for people just starting
While this might be a little late to the show, I believe that the ASP.net team would like people to start using the MVC Music Store as the official mvc reference example. The Music Store application is using the Razor view engine with Entity Framework's code first approach (also demonstrates database first) along with examples of dependency injection, test driven development, jQuery integration and getting and using NuGet packages.
A second reference example seems to be more on the cutting edge of things and is provided by the Patterns and Practices people. This is called the Silk Project and takes advantage of the latest web standards like HTML5, CSS3 and ECMAScript 5 along with modern web technologies such as jQuery, Internet Explorer 9, and ASP.NET MVC3.
These together would probably show you the newest in ASP.net MVC development along with some pretty neat ideas and examples.

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