I have read just about every question/answers about webforms vs MVC. But none has addressed what I am about to ask.
We are a small development team (3 ppl) and we have a legacy application similar to Crystal Reports.
We need to convert this VB6 app to a web based app. Reason? It was written in VB6 and support for VB6 will be phased out in Windows 8. This application is / will be similar to Crystal Reports / Google Docs where thousands of users will use the web app to generate complex reports from a large database. Charts and graphs will be generated dynamically based on the data queried. All reports can then be exported to PDF and other supported document file types. Possible feature is creating Word documents with this data or at least annotating the PDF reports. Document/Content Management back end also required for storage and searching.
OK - so clearly its a rather complicated web application with loads of database access/queries. The front end will also need to be rather spick (although gridviews not compulsory).
Constraints:
1. Time to market is relatively short (6months to 1 year)
Technology should last or be available for the next 10-20 years - We can't work on this application forever, having to constantly updating and re-writing it every time new technology supersedes older technology. HTML will last beyond this time, but will ASP.NET?
User end performance needs to be relatively quick. it doesn't have to be blistering quick; but it shouldn't lag so much (more than 2 seconds for response) that users begin to complain. (ie ViewState not a prob if it doesn't exceed 100Kb).
Please answer my questions:
So my question to you is: do we go with Webforms or MVC?
MVC sounds attractive but MVC is STATELESS. Do you think this application will need to keep state or can I do without it? Or is it possible to implement state in MVC (confused)?
Some users are in govt departments and have have laptops that a clamped down for security reasons (by their IT Admin) - so Javascript, for a significant number of users will be TURNED OFF. This means JQuery may not be possible technology. Is there some way to accommodate for Javascript and non Javascript browsers?
Thanks in advance.
Sam
Use Web Forms.
Here's why:
1 - Faster development time (rapid application development) - as stated in your time constraint
2 - For complex charts/reports/grids, you'd have to roll your own with ASP.NET MVC (or use a helper someone else has created). But with Web Forms you have a wealth of server controls (and products like Telerik).
So do answer your questions:
Web Forms - see above.
We can't answer that - we don't know how exactly your application will operate. MVC is not stateless per-se, it is stateless in that it doesn't use ViewState. But you can still use things like Session.
JavaScript is client-side, and has no bearing on Web Forms vs MVC. You'll have to cater for scenarios with no JavaScript (minimize AJAX work, effects, etc).
You've mentioned "speed needs to be quick". Well if ViewState is a problem, then turn it off! It annoys me people who say "I hate ViewState, it makes pages slow", when you can simply turn it off at the control or page level.
BTW - i am by no means a Web Forms advocate - i actually prefer ASP.NET MVC. But from what i've read in your question, i would go with Web Forms.
This is completely subjective; use which ever one you want. I personally prefer MVC, but use which ever you want.
HTTP is stateless, no matter what the client or server are. That said, all web frameworks have tricks to make it appear stateful. MVC is not an exception here. It just doesn't use the same trick that ASP.NET Webforms does.
Yes. Detect if they have Javascript enabled, and be sure to provide alternate, server-only ways to do the same functionality.
MVC
I think both are viable choices, but I would personally go with MVC, considering the MVC 3 release candidate is out now, and has some awesome new features. I would go with MVC because it will be extremely maintainable and scaleable once the project is complete. This sounds like it would be very helpful for you since your project does appear to be quite complex. Conversely, however, it would take longer (at least from what I have experienced and read) using MVC over WebForms, so, if you feel that your team really needs to meet that deadline you mentioned, perhaps go with WebForms.
If you wish to proceed with MVC, its stateless nature should pose no problems to your project, at least, not that I know of.
Although the fact that JS may be turned off is slightly irritating to work with, WF and MVC will have to deal with issue similarly, and should have no impact on your final decision.
go with webforms, you can always sub some of the work out to india where they have been using webforms for years, if you get speed problems then let them tackle em by playing with viewstate on component levels
though really
ultra fast asp.net by Rick Kiessig solves 99% of all speed issues with webforms, if you have that book then webforms is a no brainer
mvc was a microsoft fork because a lot of web people could not optimise the viewstate
now you can turn off viewstate per page or per component, or just email india with code and say 'speed this up, someway'.
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I find myself on the edge of trying out ASP.NET MVC but there is still "something" holding me back. Are you still waiting to try it, and if so, why? If you finally decided to use it, what helped you get over your hesitation?
I'm not worried about it from a technical point of view; I know the pros and cons of web forms vs ASP.NET MVC. My concerns are more on the practical side.
Will Microsoft continue to support ASP.NET MVC if they don't reach some critical threshold of developers/customers using it?
Are customers willing to try ASP.NET MVC? Have you had to convince a customer to use it? How did that go?
Are there major sites using ASP.NET MVC (besides SO)? Could you provide links if you have them?
Did you try ASP.NET MVC and found yourself regretting it? If so, what do you regret?
If you have any other concerns preventing you from using ASP.NET MVC, what are they?
If you had concerns but felt they were addressed and now use ASP.NET MVC, could you list them as well?
Will Microsoft continue to support ASP.NET MVC if they don't reach some critical threshold of developers/customers using it?
They will for sure.
Are customers willing to try ASP.NET MVC? Have you had to convince a customer to use it? How did that go?
Customers care about high quality products and price. Just convince them that Mvc will help to raise quality and lower price. Shouldn't be hard.
Are there major sites using ASP.NET MVC (besides SO)? Could you provide links if you have them?
Isn't it enough with SO? :)
Did you try ASP.NET MVC and found yourself regretting it? If so, what do you regret?
I did try and didn't regret it at all. It kills me being forced to work on web forms project again.
Go for it!
I believe ASP.NET MVC has reached that critical threshold, as evident by VS 2010 tooling, ASP.NET, MS employee blog and the extensive effort Microsoft put into the framework thus far. I don't see this framework perishing in the next decade (or two).
By customers, I assume you mean people that I build websites for? The only issue I find with ASP.NET is the hosting solutions. However, this issue is becoming moot as more affordable hosting solutions are found. But usually, if I believe in the technology and that it will work for my customer, my customer trusts me and agrees on it. The customer is also usually comforted by the fact that ASP.NET-MVC is a Microsoft product. Having a big company behind a technology is always a nice thing to have, since you can rest assured it will be supported for quite awhile with frequent updates.
ASP.NET MVC is a relatively new framework, and slow adoption of new technology is expected. But this is what I found: http://weblogs.asp.net/mikebosch/archive/2008/05/05/gallery-of-live-asp-net-mvc-sites.aspx . I think you'll see a big influx of websites using ASP.NET-MVC this year when VS 2010/.NET 4 are released with built-in support for ASP.NET MVC.
I never enjoyed developing with C#/ASP.NET more than when I started using ASP.NET-MVC. To a certain extent, ASP.NET-MVC forces you to write good code more so than WebForms due to ASP.NET-MVC inherit separation of concerns and easy customization. And the ability to control HTML output is essential, a feature that was difficult with ASP.NET-WebForms (pre 4.0).
I use MVC and hate it, especially, the front end, web form are far more better in the front end... With loads of javacript on the page, that means it is hard to maintain and take a longer time to develop and debug..
To do a very complicated page, the flexibility of MVC is limited, you will end up with using a lot of javascript control, and you know what? Different controls use different version of jquery, and they have conflict..
It is actually the javascript, and lack of UI flexibility that pulls me off, especially you are NOT working on your code
and we have more issues of browser compatability, with the new browsers coming, you are going to shoot yourself with MVC
MVC front end is very fast if your web site is not too big.. The backend of MVC is very good, it is the front end that blows it over
Why not? The rest of my team doesn't want to.
I have not yet actually tried coding up some ASP.Net MVC(looked at a few examples though) but the main thing holding us back from using it is that all of our code is currently written using Webforms.
Regarding Microsoft support ASP.Net. First Scott Guthrie, the VP of Development at MS is behind it, so that's one feather in its cap. Second its open source now so even if for some strange reason MS decides not to support it going forward you can still tweak it on your own if you need to. In addtion the MVC pattern is somethign that more and more web development platforms are using. It is a great pattern for web development and as a result I can't think of any reason MS wouldn't continue to support it.
If by customers you mean end users, honestly they shouldn't care how you implement the site. If by customers you mean consulting clients, if you can develop faster and they have the servers that can host it, I would think they would be open to it. On top of that youre MVC sites should use less bandwidth than a typical Web Forms web site (IMHO) mainly because there is a lot of additional stuff put into a Web Forms page (for example extra attributes in the HTML htat are tailored for web forms, ViewState) so that should be seen as a positive by them. Now if by customers you mean people integrating with you, then its also a plus since MVC makes it very easy to implement REST based web services (not that WFC doesn't but MVC works very nicely as well).
Hmm major sites using MVC, so far I've found a list here I also know of a number of apps at different companies where large scale MVC apps are in development. I wish I could give more detail, but unfortuantely I can't at the moment.
When I first started out with ASP.Net MVC I thought I was going to hate it. I wasn't a huge fan of Web Forms either, but MVC just felt like a step back to ASP development back before .Net came out. Then I started really getting into it and really finding the pattern is clean, concise, extensible, maintainable, and easy to pick up. Honestly I don't want to ever go back to Web Forms, and anytime I find myself doing a .Net web app I make a point of making it an MVC project.
You need to choose what's more appropriate to your product. Webforms has a few things to recommend it over mvc in some situations.
The big one is a developer working on in-house tools at small to medium shops. In these circumstances:
Large viewstates are not likely to be a problem, because your users typically have 100Mbit upload to your web server rather than a measly 128Kbit or less.
Javascript is likley to be supported by everyone
Development time matters more than widespread cross-browser compatibility or even nice design.
You're likely stuck working with inherited devs who used to do desktop/forms style development, or have a lot of churn among junior devs who don't really know web development.
All of those things together mean that webforms is still a very good fit. And let's be honest: a lot more programmers work at these small to medium in-house shops than do public internet work. So webforms isn't going anywhere.
That said, one of the big things coming up among these small shops is likely to be taking their internal tools and making them available offsite for telecommuters. In that situation, you need to start worrying more about WAN performance odd browser issues where MVC might be a better fit.
Dell is hiring masses of ASP.NET MVC developers in Texas and India for major work on many of their websites.
According to The Gu, ASP.NET MVC will have it's own product and development cycle. It is now 100% detached from ASP.NET WebForms and it's not going away.
Did you try ASP.NET MVC and found yourself regretting it? If so, what do you regret?
I do not regret trying out MVC in fact I love it. When I started it out I hated it I kept looking for the code behind file and was unsure at first how to get values out textboxes and stuff without going textbox1.Text;
Now I cringe every time I go back to webforms and wish I could write it in ASP.NET MVC because I just love how your working with html instead of using drag and drop controls that usually make your life alot harder if you got to customize them to much. I love how ASP.NET MVC likes to focus on good code like design patterns such as the Repository pattern and how to do unit test using TDD.
I have not picked up a book yet in MVC where they talked about how to make good code. I am not saying you can't write good code in Webforms but in the books and classes that I seen teach ASP.NET this never seems to be a main focus.
Like for instance I hate the datasource controls I am tutoring some people in WebForms and they love to drag a datasource in and then write their SQL statements in that datasource. Then in the code behind they use these datasorces to insert their records.
So every time they need to make a new SQL query a new datsource is dragged on and made. So now you all your logic is all mixed together. It makes it so much harder to find out whats going on, switch to different things if needed then of course it is limiting.
Something that revolves around the name "controller" can only mean problems.
I tried following the Nerddinner http://www.asp.net/mVC/ tutorial this morning. I'm comfortable in webforms, but nothing in that nerddinner tutorial made sense, just an outdated, hardcoded recipe from mvc1.0 that dosent even compile with the current mvc2.0, probably Wrox made this tutorial, only they can come up with only formating and no content.
I didn't see anything in there that was good; a bunch of hardcoded conventions I didn't need.
I certainly didn't see anything in there that would make me say I'd want to move from webforms, although this seems to be all the propaganda I read.
They put this tutorial based around wizards, on http://www.asp.net/mVC/ main page, while claiming the model is lean, all of it is generated code they don't explain, the default mvc template project has something like 15 references.
This 2 page website managed to be slow to build and to load.
Was 30 minutes in it until I realized my data model didn't match the one from the tutorial and many things that had been generated using the create controller and create view wizards were now failing.
With what I was provided in the rushed tutorial, I wasn't able to recover the project. I'll just pass until I find better documentation.
I'm frustrated recently by all of the choices that Microsoft offers to develop a web form. There is Sharepoint, Infopath without Sharepoint, ASP.NET Web Forms (with different controls for each runtime), ASP.NET without Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC framework, Silverlight, and WCF. Rendering and databinding technologies aside, there are a handful of different ways to pass data to and from the database (DataSets, LINQ, SqlDataControls, and many more) And those are only the ones that I can name in a minute or so - I'm sure I'm missing some very old technologies (did FoxPro ever get a web front end) or very new things in the process of rolling out of Microsoft Labs.
If I want to move away from using ASP.NET Web Forms and DataSets, what's the best way to move right now for data driven forms? What have you worked with that delivered good value for your programming time? I'm tempted to try working with LINQ to Entities and the new MVC framework, but I don't know enough about all these new technologies to choose where the value lies.
It's been said many times before - there is no "what's best". If any of these tools were best, than the rest wouldn't exist. "Data driven forms" is a pretty broad requirements statement.
They all have advantages and disadvantages in other areas, but all of them are capable of "data driven forms". MVC is lower-level forms - you will have to put in all the HTML and form processing yourself, however, it is much closer to dealing directly with HTTP, so lots of people find it much lighter-weight and easier to work with.
Silverlight has drawbacks in that it uses a diminished set of the .Net libraries, and requires the users to install browser plugins.
WCF would provide the data behind your forms, and would be very suitable if you're planning on opening up a public API or consuming the data in other ways.
You may find it beneficial to research each technology for even an hour each, and you would have a better understanding of which might fit your needs.
If you're using ASP.NET (which, when trying to code a regular website, feels a little "shoehorned"), then I thoroughly recommend trying Microsoft's MVC framework. It's a real breath of fresh air!
From a value per working-hour POV, it really depends on what you're doing. I can't say I've tried many web-frameworks, so I may not be the best metric, but using MVC everything fell into place naturally and I'm happy to stick with it for now.
I don't think ASP.Net Forms is something you need to "get away from".
MVC certainly has it's usefulness and when appropriate certainly makes a lot of stuff simpler.
But a well designed ASP.Net Forms app can be just as or even more useful in certain situations.
Myself I use MVC for public facing sites and Forms for internal/administrative stuff.
For a data-heavy page, I think web forms is a perfectly adequate solution. MVC introduces separation of layers which may make it harder for you to develop, since it forces you to separate the gathering of the data and routing it.
I'd say MVC is nice for having an interactive web page (Web 2.0-ish) but if you are simply showing a bunch of reports, or making users fill out forms - there's not much for you to take advantage of, IMHO.
As an alternative, try writing less code with built-in controls like Repeaters or DataGrids or even DataSets. Getting down to the core of your data flow allows you to be more productive by writing smarter code - not necessarily by writing less code.
In the end, I've found that I put together my own "framework" that does exactly what I need. I get HTML directly from a custom control. These controls simply format the data being fed by procedure calls to my custom Database access class. And yes, these are all served up with web forms or http handlers (ASHX) and a little bit of jQuery.
So while it's not glamourous, it gets the job done faster and better - by developing code that is fine-tuned to my business, not to some abstract software design pattern.
It seems to me that, for structured development with both depth and breadth of capability, ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight have the potential to make a nice powerful framework with superior UI granularity and reduced AJAX exposure. Have any of you tried building such a stack with future durability in mind?
ASP.NET MVC and silverlight?
In some ways, it is an either-or choice - your data is displayed either in html/css/js generated by ASP.NET, or in Silverlight. Why mix them? I'm sure that ASP.NET MVC is a good way to deliver Silverlight, but that doesn't necessarily make it part of the same UI.
It's generally about reach vs. richness. A web UI with no Silverlight or Flash can reach more users, but one with Silverlight can have a richer UI. Silverlight is good fun to code in, and I have seen some wonderful apps using Silverlight's streaming video features, but if e.g. you are doing data entry and display, and you don't need the richness of Silverlight, then why not keep the reach and stay in Asp.Net?
If you are going to do the UI in silverlight it makes sense to do all of it in Silverlight. I have had good experiences with all the ViewModel-view-controller page flow happening inside the Silverlight app, rather than transitioning to another html page and loading a different silverlight app. It's faster and you can do fancy transition or fade-in effects in Silverlight's XAML markup.
Why is "reduced AJAX exposure" a desirable goal? Sites like e.g. Stackoverflow here use AJAX techniques to very good effect.
Stephen Walther's talk at MIX09 shows four pillars of ASP.Net as it currently stands - Forms, MVC, AJAX and Dynamic data. A lot of people are Seeing it as "moving from forms to MVC" but there are other approaches also being developed in the mix.
I've built a little test app with SL and MVC. It didn't work that well but I don't think I was doing right. I've tried using SL in views but its slow to switch pages since its loading new SL instances all the time. I've tried a single SL app which meant it contained all the control code as well but that relegates the server to data access which only needs some WCF/Web service code no need for MVC there.
It may work better if we dispense with the idea of there being many view pages. In my next iteration I shall be using controllers to respond with XML or JSON directly to requests from a Silverlight app which contains the views. However this approach would still leave some questions unanswered, for example, how does the controller get to have a say in what view is actually displayed?
To be honest, I'm getting the feeling that SL to ASP.NET-MVC are yet shaping up as a good match. Some web apps may benefit from some SL elements (charting for example) yet the app remain firmly in HTML. On the other hand, an app whose UI is purely in SL (whilst internally using some similar View/Controller concept) doesn't really need MVC on the server-side.
Its early days, it will take while for us early adopters to see what really works and what doesn't. There being a beta for version 3 with more coming from MS in the way SL can access serverside data may change things further.
I asked a similar question here: Does Silverlight 3 Change the MVC vs. Silverlight question. This was in response to SL2 vs. MVC where folks all agreed that they were complimentary technologies. I'm still not convinced. My experience has been similar to AnthonyWJones. Per the previous posts, I tried to mingle them without a lot of success. Could be my own ignorance, though. Right now I'm building a Silverlight only application using SL3 beta. I seem to be a lot closer to my intended effect. That being, an application with a few database features. So it didn't make sense to build a completely stand alone app (since the data is central), but I really wanted some Silverlight goodness to render the end result and allow the user to interact.
So where in the hell am I going with all of this? Based on my experience, this still seems like a YMMV type question. It really depends on what you're trying to build. Since I'm light on database, heavy on interaction, I'm biting the bullet with Silverlight 3 and .NET RIA Services for the little database stuff. If I were writing Stackoverflow, I'd probably do ASP.NET MVC and AJAX.
We are currently using ASP.NET MVC as an alternative to WCF to expose data to Silverlight where our Silverlight app makes RESTFUL calls to urls in our Mvc application and the controller returns a JsonResult which works well for us. It's by no means necessarily the text book way but we found this way the two technologies compliment each other. Now if we ever need an HTML implementation we've already done the Model-Controller work which can be re-used.
I've read all the marketing speak about how mvc and webforms are complementary etc...
However it seems that all the blogs talk about is mvc and the only news coming out is about mvc.
Is Microsoft going to continue to IMPROVE webforms as a first class citizen or will it just be a supported technology as they move all their real efforts, developers and resources to mvc over time?
Is there any real evidence of any new exciting improvements coming to webforms in the near future?
You could do worse than take a look at Phil Haak's post from November:
The Future of WebForms and ASP.NET MVC
He points out 5 key things anounced under ASP.NET at PDC last year:
Core Infrastructure including scale and performance
Web Forms including issues with Client IDs, ViewState, CSS use, etc
AJAX
Data and Dynamic Data
MVC
Coupled with that, there are things that have been built as part of ASP.NET MVC that have already been released for webforms like the Routing module which is going to be great help in some of my projects, even without using MVC.
On top of those, there are also a number of changes coming in VS2010 that should help web developers using either WebForms or MVC, which would be good.
Bloggers tend to talk about what is shiny and "new", that's the way things go - you're bound to see a lot of words written about it because of that, although MVC is hardly a new design pattern - it goes back at least 30 years.
The same could be said of WPF/Silverlight - are they WinForms/WebForms killers? No. They are alternative offerings, with some benefits over the earlier way of doing things, but also with some differences/drawbacks.
I was at a conference (Remix 08) and Scott Gu said they will definatly be continuing to support both methods and that MVC was not appropriate for every application. Scott said there were a number of coming improvements for web forms model (although didnt say what they were).
The web forms model will not disapear because:
Web forms model is better for some types of applications, e.g. small apps, those requiring long processes that make use of view state useful
Many applications are using it
Many third party components developed for it
ASP.net implementation is not mature yet (although does seem pretty good so far)
Microsoft will probably announce a number of new features in PDC in a few weeks time.
Microsoft is finally coming to terms to one basic fact of development. You can't provide the ultimate solution to any problem. This is why MVC is being developed, and Scott Guthrie is clearly stating that MVC is meant for larger, more enterprise-y sites. Web forms will continue to exist and be developed as a simple, RAD-based approach to web development.
If you take a step back and review all recent improvements and additions to the Microsoft stack, you can quite easily categorize them between these two classes. For example:
Data access: LINQ-to-SQL vs EntityFramework
Remoting: WCF vs WebServices
LiveID: LiveID (web) authentication vs RPS authentication
...
I only hope that Microsoft will make this distinction clearer with time, because there seems to be a lot of confusion among developers as to what tool should be chosen for which task.
In conclusion, I think that Microsoft will keep on developing both because they cater to different developer profiles. Microsoft has obviously a lot of interest in growing its developer base as much as possible and to make the .NET stack as useful as possible.
I am going to go out on a limb here and disagree with the general idea that MVC is the "enterprise" framework here or is somehow the better of the two.
MVC is great! But just look at the name. It stands for "Model, View, Controller"... see the "view" in there?
Now look at the competition, "Web Forms"... see the "forms" in that one?
MVC does a great job in "view" type situations. For sites that publish content ("views" of information) MVC probably has an edge, especially for larger systems that need a lot of testing and very a formal design to support intelligent view switching.
For applications that interact heavily with the user via forms (data collection and data entry heavy apps) web forms has an edge due to the inherent use of form posts as a primary mechanism.
While you can do views with web forms and you can do forms with MVC, each has trade-offs. In the current state of MVC, I find that writing heavy data entry "views" is much more difficult and painful than with web forms... and I don't mean a little bit.
In the future I do expect to see MVC get better with dealing with data entry scenarios, but these scenarios will likely come at a pretty high price compared to doing those with web forms.
Neither is more "enterprise" level than the other as far as I can tell... what I'm most interested in going forward are hybrid applications that use MVC for the display and publishing end of the business while web forms are used more naturally for heavy data entry end... all in the same web project... I sure hope we see something like that.
Before word of the MVC framework started spreading, we spent a good deal of time at my company developing our own .NET MVC framework.
This was because we didn't want to be constrained by the limitations of the WebForms abstraction - we wanted to avoid the 'clunky' feel and user interface compromises that WebForms seems to impose on all by the most heavily customised applications. Also, we wanted friendly URIs and we wanted a better separation of front-end and back-end development than that offered by WebForms (we settled on an XML / XSLT architecture).
In my opinion, WebForms in fact offer a much poorer method of interacting with the user specifically due to the use of ViewState, PostBacks, etc etc that abstract the actual mechanics of HTTP from the developer - this gives them less latitude in how they allow users to interact with the system. The classic example is that because WebForms pages are almost always the result of a POST, if the user attempts to refresh the page, the user gets a nasty warning message from the browser. The pattern in the traditional web development world for dealing with this has always been to include a 302 Redirect directive in the HTTP Response, thus sticking to the original HTTP paradigm of GETs being for retrieving data, and POSTs being for sending data. Other, similar problems exist such as the inability to have two forms on a page (for example a login form to a website on a different server).
That said, for RAD, WebForms are brilliant. I'm currently developing the admin application for a webapp we've developed using our custom MVC framework, and I'm flying through since all I need is to display the contents of a load of database tables, and in some cases allow the user to edit them, in various different ways.
I think that if we need to convince ourselves that MS are going to continue to support WebForms - just think of all the ex-Windows developers. These are the people that WebForms was originally developed for, and they're not going away. Corporate developers will be your saviour if you're a WebForms fan.
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.