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I have a large asp.net-mvc web site . I recently upgraded to MVC 4 but one thing i am debating is it worth it to migrate to razor engine. I see there are tools to "auto" upgrade but i am trying to figure out if its worth the migration pain. I have about 100 total view (both regular and partial). If its a code base that i will have to live with for a while, is it worth the effort?
I know this may seem a bit subjective but given the size of my project I was looking for the expected cost of this migration effort versus the expected benefits.
Unless you have a specific reason, then IMHO no. Razor is a little, tiny bit (~5% according to most sources) slower than WebForms views however this may be old information. At best, they will render exactly the same speed. I have seen nothing to suggest razor is faster at rendering than webforms(ASP.NET MVC 3 Razor performance) and offers absolutely nothing additional that you cannot do with the WebForms markup.
Basically, its a more succinct markup language and can be a quicker to write and looks better than WebForms syntax. Lastly, if you organization has a legacy of writing WebForms code from back in the day, then all of the developers are already familiar with the WebForms syntax. No learning curve.
So - should you rewrite an entire application? No - you gain nothing. Going forward, should you use Razor? Depends, most 'seem' to be moving that way, it does look nicer and keeps the views a little cleaner.
If, however, you do decide to begin to update your views to razor, remember you can do this in steps. The ViewEngine will look for both types of views when determining what view to render. This does not have to be done in one fell swoop, but could be done gradually over time.
PS - This will probably be closed as a subjective question soon.
No, not unless you have a really compelling reason to.
The only real difference is the syntax on the views is a bit neater and there is an inherent "cool" factor working with a different view engine.
When razor first came out, we implemented a bit of a mixture, and so we're currently running a site with both razor and webforms views (this was implemented before razor became the default mvc viewengine).
We have written all new views in razor, and left the older views in webforms which we're slowly migrating across. But its for our benefit, not the customers or end users. So to migrate only the views across is a costly, timely affair that serves no real purpose...
If you've layered your app properly, what I would suggest (seriously) if you were looking at undertaking this, is to leave your existing website alone and create a separate stand alone site, using the new mvc infrastructure. There are definite gains from upgrading the site from an mvc 1 or 2 app to a new mvc 5 app.
We're currently doing this at my place of work, as our models, and logic are all in standalone dll' and we have very thin controllers. We're noticing a lot of changes and updates from the new mvc5 features that are now built in. Things like bundling, twitter-bootstrap etc are all things that we can use to ensure benefits that the customer notices.
Its the same old backend, but a shiny new face and thats worth doing.
I think your question is answered in past, if your objectives match with new features you should opt for upgrade, like mobile site support and more..
Old Post
this post gives details of MVC4 Release Notes and difference b/w MVC3 and MVC4 this both answer in this post will help you decide.
The MVC 4 improve those features(main points):
Refreshed and modernized default project templates
New mobile project template
Many new features to support mobile apps
Recipes to customize code generation
Enhanced support for asynchronous methods
For more details on MVC4, you can refer to: http://www.asp.net/mvc/mvc4
Edit: as the question is View specific,
The views works in the same manner in both version without any change,
you can try removing unwanted view engines
protected void Application_Start()
{
ViewEngines.Engines.Clear();
ViewEngines.Engines.Add(new RazorViewEngine());
}
If you want rendering improvement, you must use the Partial View
<div class="news">
<h3>News</h3>
#Html.Partila("NewControl", Model.NewsItems)
</div>
Code Part:
public ActionResult News(){
NewItemViewModel vm = new NewItemViewModel();
vm.Items = repository.GetNews();
return PartialView("NewsControl",vm);
}
This will make the normal speed go increase by 10x
make sure the views are not combines and not passing any null models in view.
This should help in the performance issue.
If you'd ask me, since I've started using Razor, I'd never look back to the regular ASPX view engine. If you want to introduce fresh flavor to your application and the developers don't mind using the new Razor syntax (which is simpler and cleaner), go for it. If everyone is skeptical about that and application is doing well as it is, do not migrate. Since this question is inviting a personal comment, my opinion goes along with this, which (despite the fact Razor now seems to be negligibly slower than the equivalent ASPX) is obviously saying - migrate me, now.
I was wondering if someone could provide me with some answers. I've been asking to swap our internal apps to an MVC architecture for quite a while now. Rails was absolutely shot-down as a toy, Struts is just too huge for the apps we do, Django's name makes these old folks nervous (oil & gas industry) but finally, finally Microsoft has come out with MVC 1.0.
Since the Powers that Be are dead-set on using Microsoft technologies, I think I may be able to convince them to move our applications to an MVC pattern. Unfortunately, I can't come up with a good reason to swap to our forms-based structure to an MVC style.
Can anyone think of justification good enough to feed to my bosses? :-)
Do you have a good reason to switch? It sounds like you don't so I am wondering if you are switching for the sake of MVC itself which I would discourage you from doing.
ASP.NET MVC is helpful when you wish to have more control over the output and lifecyle of your application. Keep in mind that in many cases this means more work for you as the developer. MVC frameworks are good for sites that are not data-entry intensive - in other words if you handle a lot of form POSTs and process data out of those forms then ASP.NET MVC will actually create more work for you.
I don't mean to sound harsh but it seem strange to me that you want to switch to ASP.NET MVC but don't really know why.
There are a number of questions that address this in different ways:
Should I pursue ASP.NET WebForms or ASP.NET MVC
How to decide which is right, WebForms or MVC when doing ASP.NET
Traditional ASP .NET vs MVC
Biggest advantage to using ASP.Net MVC vs web forms
MVC Versus Web Forms
ASP.NET vs ASP.NET MVC
I think it's not a matter of "selling" MVC, but rather of understanding it's advantages.
also, you should seriously evaluate whether migrating an existing system to MVC will be cost effective.
however, MVC has many advantages - here are some from the top of my head:
separating control, data and presentation makes your application more maintainable
easier to make changes
after a relatively short learning curve, easier for other programmers to comprehend
better design means introducing new features is easier. try adding caching, form validation, etc when everything is mixed up...
an MVC system may be more testable (and therefor can be more reliable) - it's much easier to test your controllers than to test a spaghetti of data, control and presentation code.
I think that in this case the OP is looking for a pragmatic (profitable) reason to switch over to MVC, since most companies think that way.
The biggest advantage is that it is much easier to create unit tests for ASP.NET MVC applications. A good suite of unit tests can then serve as the foundation of a Continuous Integration process.
The bottomline for the powers to be is that you can create a build in a single step, simplifying deployment, creating installers, patches etc.
Rails and Django both follow the Model View Controller (MVC) pattern so sounds like you will just be creating a load of work for yourself. Why do YOU want to switch to ASP.NET MVC?
"Struts is just too huge for the apps we do"
In what way? Struts made even simple internal applications a breeze to develop in our company, once we had learned how it worked (which was quite quick). A few JSPs, a few Actions, backend database access done in JDBC via some simple DAOs, bundle it all up in a war with ant/maven and deploy. Done.
Also, fyi, keep Joel's advice in mind (Things You Should Never Do, Part I): avoid rewrite the code from scratch.
What is the most usual way to develop views in asp.net mvc? Should I be using a view engine other than the default? As far as I know, StackOverflow is the bigger site using ASP.NET MVC, so, what they use?
In the pros of using view engines, it seems like they are easier than the default. In the cons, it seems that they break the original concept of views in ASP.NET MVC (using helpers), they are not very extendable and there aren't intellisense or sintax highlight on Visual Studio IDE for them.
What would you recommend me to do?
Use the default for now, with some experience with the default you may find that it suits you just fine for what you are doing, but with this experience you can better weigh the pros and cons later on for yourself against other engines.
Plus if you are learning MVC right now (as I believe most of us are), most of the online tutorials are shown with the default engine, so you would not have to waste the time converting tutorial material into any other view engine.
Use the default WebFormsViewEngine until you come across a compelling reason not to. I wouldn't write your own. If you don't like WebForms, try Spark.
I've noticed a lot of talk about asp.net MVC lately, but I haven't come across a clear or compelling description of when, where or why I would want to use it over WebForms.
Let's say I wanted to build a small web application that allows a person to advertise some items online. The website will have 4 use cases:
Search adverts
View listings
View item
Place an advert
Let's assume:
I'm not particularly interested in unit testing my controller. The page will either render the list of items correctly, or it won't.
I am interested in more control over the HTML markup.
I'm not interested in using the latest buzz technology just for the sake of it.
I am interested in using the tool that is best suited to the job in terms of productivity, performance, maintainability & simplicity of the end solution.
I don't want to have to work around a bunch of nuances to get something simple to work.
So, my questions are thus:
What are the fundamental differences between the two models?
In which scenario is one better than the other?
What are the gotchas with asp.net MVC (I'm aware of the gotchas with WebForms)
For our sample app, what would I gain by using asp.net MVC instead of WebForms?
For our sample app, what would I lose by using asp.net MVC instead of WebForms?
Is it feasible to mix and match models within the same small application?
Thanks to anyone who spends the time to contribute an answer.
What are the fundamental differences between the two models?
WebForms try to mimic WinForms development by allowing you to reuse lots of pre-made controls, and by faking web application state via the hidden _VIEWSTATE mechanism.
MVC is a pattern designed to help you separate your data (Model), business logic (Controller) and presentation (View). It adheres more to the true nature of the web : RESTful URLs, stateless.
In which scenario is one better than the other?
In my opinion, for an intranet application making heavy usage of controls, WebForms can be useful at reducing development time, because thanks to the designer you can create your UI very quickly and let the framework manage the app's state automatically.
For any other project, especially a public website, even a small one, I think MVC is the way to go.
What are the gotchas with asp.net MVC (I'm aware of the gotchas with
WebForms)
I'd say there is some learning curve to fully understand the MVC pattern and its power. Also, since the framework is still in BETA you can expect the API to experience some minor changes before release.
Since JavaScript is not hidden from you in MVC, it would also require some time to learn if you're not familiar with it. jQuery greatly simplifies this though.
For our sample app, what would I gain by using asp.net MVC instead of
WebForms?
You'd gain better control over HTML markup and Javascript behavior, a cleaner separation of concerns and some easily testable codebase (even if you don't seem interested in unit testing it).
For our sample app, what would I lose by using asp.net MVC instead of
WebForms?
You'd lose the 'drag and drop' quick way of building your pages and the application state management.
Is it feasible to mix and match models within the same small
application?
In some ways, yes it seems.
I'd recommend watching this talk by Phil Haack, who gives a good overview of the framework and invites Jeff Atwood to talk about how he built StackOverflow with it.
He explains how SO is using some WebForms controls for CAPTCHAs which render themselves into the view.
The primary difference is that MVC is more like "regular" web development that the rest of the programming world uses, whereas standard ASP.NET was designed to make it brain-dead easy for Windows developers to become web developers. I learned web programming by learning Ruby on Rails, and MVC seems like it is becoming the .NET version of Rails.
MVC is much more oriented around standards compliance, unobtrusive javascript, and separation of concerns than regular ASP.NET. You'll need to understand how HTML and CSS work together. You'll learn a LOT more javascript as you master MVC. One of the biggest advantages of MVC to me is that you can use jQuery to do some amazing AJAX stuff easier and BETTER than you can in regular ASP.NET.
If you're just now learning web development then I strongly encourage you to learn MVC. You'll be able to transfer at least some of your new skills to other frameworks in the future.
If you're looking for which to learn to quickly get a web development job, then I'll have to strongly suggest ASP.NET.
Once MVC is RTM'd I think we will see a slow and steady adoption curve and as it matures MVC may become the primary framework for creating websites with ASP.NET. I hope so at least!
The biggest difference between ASPNET MVC and is WebForms is the lifecycle of an page, no difficult(unnecessary) postbacks, clean coding, enz.
There are no rules for that
???
REST-full website, Separation of logic
Design-time support, can't use third-party webcontrols
Please don't mix it together. If you really want to use the WebForms model you could use the MVP pattern, Billy McCafferty wrote exellent articles on that design pattern
I'm redesigning some of my applications from the MVP-pattern to MVC-pattern, not because MVC is better but I would like to use the newest techniques offered by MS(pattern itself is quite old).
I just listened to the StackOverflow team's 17th podcast, and they talked so highly of ASP.NET MVC that I decided to check it out.
But first, I want to be sure it's worth it. I already created a base web application (for other developers to build on) for a project that's starting in a few days and wanted to know, based on your experience, if I should take the time to learn the basics of MVC and re-create the base web application with this model.
Are there really big pros that'd make it worthwhile?
EDIT: It's not an existing project, it's a project about to start, so if I'm going to do it it should be now...
I just found this
It does not, however, use the existing post-back model for interactions back to the server. Instead, you'll route all end-user interactions to a Controller class instead - which helps ensure clean separation of concerns and testability (it also means no viewstate or page lifecycle with MVC based views).
How would that work? No viewstate? No events?
If you are quite happy with WebForms today, then maybe ASP.NET MVC isn't for you.
I have been frustrated with WebForms for a really long time. I'm definitely not alone here. The smart-client, stateful abstraction over the web breaks down severely in complex scenarios. I happen to love HTML, Javascript, and CSS. WebForms tries to hide that from me. It also has some really complex solutions to problems that are really not that complex. Webforms is also inherently difficult to test, and while you can use MVP, it's not a great solution for a web environment...(compared to MVC).
MVC will appeal to you if...
- you want more control over your HTML
- want a seamless ajax experience like every other platform has
- want testability through-and-through
- want meaningful URLs
- HATE dealing with postback & viewstate issues
And as for the framework being Preview 5, it is quite stable, the design is mostly there, and upgrading is not difficult. I started an app on Preview 1 and have upgraded within a few hours of the newest preview being available.
It's important to keep in mind that MVC and WebForms are not competing, and one is not better than the other. They are simply different tools. Most people seem to approach MVC vs WebForms as "one must be a better hammer than the other". That is wrong. One is a hammer, the other is a screwdriver. Both are used in the process of putting things together, but have different strengths and weaknesses.
If one left you with a bad taste, you were probably trying to use a screwdriver to pound a nail. Certain problems are cumbersome with WebForms that become elegant and simple with MVC, and vice-versa.
I have used ASP.NET MVC (I even wrote a HTTPModule that lets you define the routes in web.config), and I still get a bitter taste in my mouth about it.
It seems like a giant step backwards in organization and productivity. Maybe its not for some, but I've got webforms figured out, and they present no challenge to me as far as making them maintainable.
That, and I don't endorse the current "TEST EVERYTHING" fad...
ASP.NET MVC basically allows you to separate the responsibility of different sections of the code. This enable you to test your application. You can test your Views, Routes etc. It also does speed up the application since now there is no ViewState or Postback.
BUT, there are also disadvantages. Since, you are no using WebForms you cannot use any ASP.NET control. It means if you want to create a GridView you will be running a for loop and create the table manually. If you want to use the ASP.NET Wizard in MVC then you will have to create on your own.
It is a nice framework if you are sick and tired of ASP.NET webform and want to perform everything on your own. But you need to keep in mind that would you benefit from creating all the stuff again or not?
In general I prefer Webforms framework due to the rich suite of controls and the automatic plumbing.
I would create a test site first, and see what the team thinks, but for me I wouldn't go back to WebForms after using MVC.
Some people don't like code mixed with HTML, and I can understand that, but I far prefer the flexibility over things like Page Lifecycle, rendering HTML and biggy for me - no viewstate cruft embedded in the page source.
Some people prefer MVC for better testibility, but personally most of my code is in the middle layer and easily tested anyway...
#Juan Manuel Did you ever work in classic ASP? When you had to program all of your own events and "viewstatish" items (like a dropdown recalling its selected value after form submission)?
If so, then ASP.NET MVC will not feel that awkward off the bat. I would check out Rob Conery's Awesome Series "MVC Storefront" where he has been walking through the framework and building each expected component for a storefront site. It's really impressive and easy to follow along (catching up is tough because Rob has been reall active and posted A LOT in that series).
Personally, and quite contrary to Jeff Atwood's feelings on the topic, I rather liked the webform model. It was totally different than the vbscript/classic ASP days for sure but keeping viewstate in check and writing your own CSS friendly controls was enjoyable, actually.
Then again, note that I said "liked". ASP.NET MVC is really awesome and more alike other web technologies out there. It certainly is easier to shift from ASP.NET MVC to RAILS if you like to or need to work on multiple platforms. And while, yes, it is very stable obviously (this very site), if your company disallows "beta" software of any color; implementing it into production at the this time might be an issue.
#Jonathan Holland I saw that you were voted down, but that is a VERY VALID point. I have been reading some posts around the intertubes where people seem to be confusing ASP.NET MVC the framework and MVC the pattern.
MVC in of itself is a DESIGN PATTERN. If all you are looking for is a "separation of concerns" then you can certainly achieve that with webforms. Personally, I am a big fan of the MVP pattern in a standard n-tier environment.
If you really want TOTAL control of your mark-up in the ASP.NET world, then MVC the ramework is for you.
If you are a professional ASP.NET developer, and have some time to spare on learning new stuff, I would certainly recommend that you spend some time trying out ASP.NET MVC. It may not be the solution to all your problems, and there are lots of projects that may benefit more from a traditional webform implementation, but while trying to figure out MVC you will certainly learn a lot, and it might bring up lots of ideas that you can apply on your job.
One good thing that I noticed while going through many blog posts and video tutorials while trying to develop a MVC pet-project is that most of them follow the current best practices (TDD, IoC, Dependency Injection, and to a lower extent POCO), plus a lot of JQuery to make the experience more interesting for the user, and that is stuff that I can apply on my current webform apps, and that I wasn't exposed in such depth before.
The ASP.NET MVC way of doing things is so different from webforms that it will shake up a bit your mind, and that for a developer is very good!
OTOH for a total beginner to web development I think MVC is definitely a better start because it offers a good design pattern out of the box and is closer to the way that the web really works (HTML is stateless, after all). On MVC you decide on every byte that goes back and forth on the wire (at least while you don't go crazy on html helpers). Once the guy gets that, he or she will be better equipped to move to the "artificial" facilities provided by ASP.NET webforms and server controls.
If you like to use server controls which do a lot of work for you, you will NOT like MVC because you will need to do a lot of hand coding in MVC. If you like the GridView, expect to write one yourself or use someone else's.
MVC is not for everyone, specially if you're not into unit testing the GUI part. If you're comfortable with web forms, stay with it. Web Forms 4.0 will fix some of the current shortcomings like the ID's which are automatically assigned by ASP.NET. You will have control of these in the next version.
Unless the developers you are working with are familiar with MVC pattern I wouldn't. At a minimum I'd talk with them first before making such a big change.
I'm trying to make that same decision about ASP.NET MVC, Juan Manuel. I'm now waiting for the right bite-sized project to come along with which I can experiment. If the experiment goes well--my gut says it will--then I'm going to architect my new large projects around the framework.
With ASP.NET MVC you lose the viewstate/postback model of ASP.NET Web Forms. Without that abstraction, you work much more closely with the HTML and the HTTP POST and GET commands. I believe the UI programming is somewhat in the direction of classic ASP.
With that inconvenience, comes a greater degree of control. I've very often found myself fighting the psuedo-session garbage of ASP.NET and the prospect of regaining complete control of the output HTML seems very refreshing.
It's perhaps either the best--or the worst--of both worlds.
5 Reasons You Should Take a Closer Look at ASP.NET MVC
I dont´t know ASP.NET MVC, but I am very familiar with MVC pattern. I don´t see another way to build professional applications without MVC. And it has to be MVC model 2, like Spring or Struts. By the way, how you people were building web applications without MVC? When you have a situation that some kind of validation is necessary on every request, as validating if user is authenticated, what is your solution? Some kind of include(validate.aspx) in every page?
Have you never heard of N-Tier development?
Ajax, RAD (webforms with ajax are anti-RAD very often), COMPLETE CONTROL (without developing whole bunch of code and cycles). webforms are good only to bind some grid and such and not for anything else, and one more really important thing - performance. when u get stuck into the web forms hell u will switch on MVC sooner or later.
I wouldn't recommend just making the switch on an existing project. Perhaps start a small "demo" project that the team can use to experiment with the technology and (if necessary) learn what they need to and demonstrate to management that it is worthwhile to make the switch. In the end, even the dev team might realize they aren't ready or it's not worth it.
Whatever you do, be sure to document it. Perhaps if you use a demo project, write a postmortem for future reference.
I dont´t know ASP.NET MVC, but I am very familiar with MVC pattern. I don´t see another way to build professional applications without MVC. And it has to be MVC model 2, like Spring or Struts. By the way, how you people were building web applications without MVC? When you have a situation that some kind of validation is necessary on every request, as validating if user is authenticated, what is your solution? Some kind of include(validate.aspx) in every page?
No, you shouldn't. Feel free to try it out on a new project, but a lot of people familiar with ASP.NET webforms aren't loving it yet, due to having to muck around with raw HTML + lots of different concepts + pretty slim pickings on documentation/tutorials.
Is the fact that ASP.net MVC is only in 'Preview 5' be a cause for concern when looking into it?
I know that StackOverflow was created using it, but is there a chance that Microsoft could implement significant changes to the framework before it is officially out of beta/alpha/preview release?
If you are dead set on using an MVC framework, then I would rather set out to use Castle project's one...
When that's said I personally think WebControls have a lot of advantages, like for instance being able to create event driven applications which have a stateful client and so on. Most of the arguments against WebControls are constructed because of lack of understanding the WebControl model etc. And not because they actually are truly bad...
MVC is not a Silver Bullet, especially not Microsoft MVC...
I have seen some implementation of MVC framework where for the sake of testability, someone rendered the whole HTML in code. In this case the view is also a testable code. But I said, my friend, putting HTML in code is a maintenance nightmare and he said well I like everything compiled and tested. I didn't argue, but later found that he did put this HTML into resource files and the craziness continued...
Little did he realized that the whole idea of separating View also solved the maintenance part. It outweighs the testability in some applications. We do not need to test the HTML design if we are using WYSWYG tool. WebForms are good for that reason.
I have often seen people abusing postback and viewstate and blaming it on the ASP .NET model.
Remember the best webpages are still the .HTMLs and that's where is the Power of ASP .NET MVC.