I am about to start a new project. I would like some indicators to determine if I should use ASP.NET MVC or not.
(Other than experience with ASP.NET MVC...)
What are some indicators that ASP.NET MVC model should be used when starting a project?
What are some indicators that ASP.NET MVC model should not be used when starting a project?
Hm. I thought better about that question, and I guess it would be acceptable to use WebForms if and only if:
Your team members have no idea of web standards, and they prefer to use Visual Studio for developing pages.
You don't care about TDD.
You don't care about object coupling and other "esoteric" SOLID principles.
You miss developing windows applications, and you want that web development be as close as possible of that experience.
You don't care about maximizing performance, or making session-less web applications.
You wanna make it fast and dirty.
If any of the above statements is false, I would recommend you to forget about WebForms and dive into ASP.NET MVC.
Edit:
There is also another reason for NOT using ASP.NET MVC:
You are somehow commited to WebForms (for instance, spent a lot of money on WebForms components or training).
This would invalidate any of the reasons above, unfortunately.
If you want or need testability, definitely go with MVC. That is pretty much the only area of MVC that is almost impossible in Webforms. Other than that it is totally subjective.
Both frameworks are pretty much equally applicable in most areas. In my opinion it comes down to one thing:
Do you prefer to work with a page and component-based framework (Webforms) or an action-based MVC framework (MVC obviously).
In my view Webforms are getting much more bad press than it deserves, and honestly it seems that it is simply come il faut these days to hate Webforms, and love MVC.
Both are simply a tool to reach your target, choose what you like the most. That's it.
I'd generally run with MVC these days. But webforms isn't that bad, and the 4.0 tweaks brings things much more in line with modern web standards and tools. One place they can really shine is intranet apps -- the disadvantages like poor SEO and viewstate either don't matter or become advantages. Drag-n-drop ajax is nice, many developers still do better using the ajax control toolkit over jquery.
On the testability side, I will agree that MVC is a bit more testable in the UI layer, but the meat of your application should be below that waterline. Moreover, there is a fair bit of black magic and voodoo in MVC (DefaultModelBinder anybody?) too. What you really need in both cases is true UI integration tests and they generally don't care either way.
So do what you know and love.
UI COMPLEXITY
The main limitation of the mvc architecture is the absence of viewstate, it don't provide any integrated solution to manage the state of components of UI.
The asp net webfom provide a integrated solution to manage it.
So if you plan to realize UI with many widgets inside, the webform has a builtin solution to archive the problem (at the cost of a more complexity).
Related
I am trying to explain why it's important to use MVC views over Form views within an MVC application. Some of the developers "expedite" work completion by adding form.aspx to the MVC project, technically using MVC but completely avoiding it. I think this is wrong because there isn't a way I know of to do the following things:
Have a route target an older aspx form
Have a controller assemble a model and send it to an older aspx form
Is it wrong to expect the same productivity rate from MVC over older aspx forms?
I would think that a developer that knows both ways of development very well, that the time to create the same solution would be the same (or better) with Asp.net MVC.
Background: We develop website applications used by corporate entities to maintain weekly published data, which could be "yet another customer control panel" to add or change software features about once a month (for each customer, lots of customers, lots of applications, extremely similar patterns).
The time to create an MVC site correctly is in my opinion and experience always going to exceed the time it takes to create one incorrectly. The time advantage to using MVC correctly (or any design pattern for that matter) is not always seen in the initial implementation, it's in the maintainability of the project, whether by the original developer or those who follow. Following good programming practices will result in long term time savings.
In terms of whether a pure MVC project is faster then a pure ASP.net project in terms of time to implement, it seems to me that the expectation could go either way, based on the developers experience, and on the applicability of the project itself to that framework.
I have personally found that for a sizable application that needs much of the 'plumbing' that an MVC app will demand anyway, I am at least as productive with MVC than WebForms.
But there is a learning curve, and a temptation for some 'simple page' to want to just 'throw up' a quick WebForm and be done with it.
I think the biggest gain with MVC, though, is in maintaining the application over time. It should be obvious how much easier it will be to do so with a strict MVC app, than a WebForms one. And adding WebForms into a 'mix' like that just, IMO, makes things even more difficult.
Once you are familiar with the MVC way of development, Its really very useful, scalable & lightweight.
Only initially it takes more time for development compared to Web Forms.
But advantages out number the Web Forms.
Just one of its example:
Its best suited for high traffic sites. In web forms control retains there states, we have view state and all.. During the page post back the whole data is sent back and results retrieved (High load on server). Whereas in Asp.Net MVC the controls are stateless. While posting back the Load on server is less.
like this has many more advantages..
And as it is based on Design Pattern its always good for starters. Who does not have much experience in Developing Applications previously.
With WebForms you can get away with using pre-canned solutions for a lot of things (grids, etc.). With MVC you have to roll your own or use a pre-canned javascript solution which can end up taking more time when compared to WebForms.
So to answer your question: it depends
Since asp.net mvc did away with many controls that were in webforms, does this make rapid application development equal with other environments now? For example, if I have an mvc framework in php, j2ee, etc., and I have asp.net mvc, and the coder knows the given platform, isn't the development advantage gone in visual studio?
If I am wrong about controls being missing please let me know, it was my impression they were (and I couldn't use them when I tried it last.)
I ask because where I work some like Microsoft - a lot, some can live with it, but the ones that like it point to Visual Studio for rapid development. I thought much of that was gone with asp.net mvc 1.0.
EDIT: I guess I am thinking that dragging and dropping controls means Rapid Application Development (again, assuming the coder knows what they are doing everywhere else.)
Rapid application development is just a buzzword. It exists if you develop an application rapidly, not due to any particular tool or technology.
ASP.NET MVC is just a different approach. Some people can work faster when they are closer to the HTML. For me, this means I don't have to deal with the (IMHO) touchy databinding model of WebForms. Instead, I pass my Model directly to my View for rendering. That lets me develop rapidly. You can still develop your own UserControls (or download many of the ones that are available through open source projects), but you can't use anything that has events or ViewState intrinsic to it.
EDIT: RAD is also a subjective term. Is it rapid application development if you can churn out the first iteration in two weeks, but have to push the schedule back two months for the second iteration because the code was not maintainable?
If you are talking about the ability to drag controls onto a page, click them, set some properties, and have a code generated for you, and a working application by basically dragging controls and tools around, yes, MVC removes the ability to do RAD.
MVC exists to solve a different problem. It is for people that want separation of concerns to support unit testing and extensibility. Things that were nearly impossible to get with classically developed asp.net applications.
Web forms was an attempt to be more RAD if you will. However, the emergence of things like MVC, and Dynamic Data and things like Linq and Linq2SQL are pretty darn good evidence that Web Forms alone were not the panacea RAD platform.
From a personal standpoint, one may be faster at Web forms just by experience. That doesn't mean the platform or it's competitors are better or worse at RAD.
A lot of people found that Web Forms took so much control away and had such large event models that it ended up being less RAD than hoped.
I'd say that Rapid Development and ASP.NET MVC are not mutually exclusive per se. however since MVC has the intent of segregation of responsibility to (amongst others) allow testability, it might not be the best choice for Rapid Development-
On the otherside are ASP.NET Webforms where you can do ALOT "visually"/using drag-n-drop (i.e. no code), which to some extent does a very good job of for example preventing testability. But developing is a "no-brainer" - meant in the most positive way :)
Well, I've never considered Visual Studio as a RAD platform. Faster than PHP, sure. Comparable to Netbeans/Eclipse. Not even close to a true RAD platform though (oh Delphi, how I miss thee!).
Simple as it is :
Why to move to Asp.NET MVC & why not to move ( if there is any reason ) ?
Added
Is it a necessity to move ?
Can we say the future belongs to asp.net mvc ?
How many years do you think it can stays on top ?
MVC is much more well constructed, allowes for much better code seperation and control over markup, and is much lighter on the server, that IMHO the only reason not to move is if you have a legacy .NET application (or other) that is working flawlessly, and you're not expected to perform serious adjustments / fixes on it in the near future.
If you do decide to move, you should know that you'll be able to reuse very little of your webforms GUI and user controls, since MVS is built a bit differently. You class libraries you could reuse, if they're written well. In any case, writing stuff in MVC is much faster than in WebForms, even if done from scratch.
also looking at moving at the moment.
the main bonus for me is the complete control over layout. i'm also looking into implementing a restful API which the MVC model works very nicely with because of the path structure.
Josh
If we move for MVC we can add or edit any module so easyly.
So we can add any new module just like a plugin
I patrially disagree with the accepted answer. I have built large applications in both WebForms and MVC and here is my opinion:
ASP.Net Web Forms and ASP.Net MVC are both great frameworks that allow the C#/VB Net developer to build enterprise level applications. Choosing which one to use for your app depends on a few factors. The MVC model has been around for many years, it is well suited if you need more fine-tuned control over the page cycle process and it is also superior when it comes to unit testing etc, because it supports true separation of business logic and presentation layers.
However, do not dismiss Web Forms, the reality is you can continue to use the web forms framework and still have tight control over your page elements be simply moving away from pre-built server controls and integrating HTML5 standard controls. You can take advantage of new JavaScript frameworks like jQuery, you can improve search engine friendliness by using techniques like URL Re-Write, and you can reduce or eliminate post-backs by taking advantage of asynchronous frameworks like jQuery AJAX and SignalR.
The main reason I disagree with the accepted answer is the statement "writing stuff in MVC is much faster than in WebForms" is completely inaccurate. As any developer who has actually built MVC apps will tell you, it's actually much fast to build WebForms apps. The reason is not just learning curve, but the fact that while MVC gives you the benefit of "under-the-hood" access to the page cycle and more direct access to HTML output, is also the reason it takes longer to build MVC apps. Trust me, you will find yourself doing much more "plumbing" work than you ever did with "drag-and-drop" WebForms development.
The fact is, there was a lot of hype when ASP.Net MVC first came out and too many developers assumed it was a replacement for Web Forms. It hasn't. As I stated in the beginningm both frameworks are great, they both have their pros and cons. I would guess that 90% of developers are still building new apps in WebForms.
That's my 2c.
Just a random question. I've been in internship and then working as a software designer for almost a year now, mainly with SQL Server 2005 / 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 with ASP.Net VB / C#, web software development. We recently started a project with ASP.Net MVC, and I just don't get this stuff.
The concept of Views, Controllers, Models etc is clear. I'm still a bit confused with some of the syntax, but it doesn't seem impossible to get. My problem however, is with all the basic controls and functions you had with basic ASP.Net. Want a dropdownlist? Go browse through 15 tutorials one of which may actually work. How about a gridview with editable rows? Manually build the tables or helper classes with loads and loads of code also built from several different tutorials. What about panels or multiview indexes to easily control the visible user-interface on a page? Well, go learn another tutorial about how to do it all from scratch. Etc..
I do not argue the idea that MVC is worth it. It has to be, with so many people smarter and more experienced than I am saying so. But I've now fought with this beast for over a month and am getting increasingly frustrated at having to use hours to days of time to do the most basic tasks that were easy even when I was barely beginning with the whole programming thing almost a year ago.
So my question. Are there others out there like me? Are there perhaps nice blogs or articles opening all this up to people like myself? Is ASP.Net MVC just something that is so hardcore advanced that you NEED to have extensive experience and talent to actually master it?
Thanks for your time.
It's not for advanced developers. It is for good developers.
Most ASP.NET WebForms developers have made it somehow through years without having a slightest idea of HTML, CSS, JavaScript or HTTP. Drag and drop some control, set up some properties and here you go. It is not the way of a professional. You need to know the basics. It is only a matter of time until some situation arrives where a standard control cannot help and you need to work around the postback mechanism, viewstate etc.
I agree that it is definitely more work trying to implement an editable data grid, add persistance for controls, add some nice Ajax effects instead of relying on UpdatePanels, yes. But you really need to know this stuff if you wish to be working as web developer.
What you are experiencing is being overwhelmed at once by all those things you should have learned already but have managed to postpone thanks to very well done abstraction mechanism of WebForms. The best course of action is to start learning these things now, step by step. It will likely take you at least 6 months of intensive studies to feel more or less confident with doing stuff manually. But when you have done this, you will be looking back at your start and feeling glad you did it.
I was trying to work out what the problem was with MVC until I grasped the essential difference between the person asking the question and me - it would be this, I first laid hands to keyboard in 1979 whereas Zan has been "working as a software designer for almost a year now".
When I started one more or less had to do everything (at least in terms of presenting a UI) from scratch - or at least using far more limited toolkits than is the case today. The notion of constructing a drop down list by running a loop to create the options is in some respects considerably less alien to me than binding a datasource to a control and having the result appear as if by magic (notwithstanding 9 years of VB.OLD and over 6 years of .NET and C#)
And that is the core difference between Forms and MVC as it currently stands - the way you produce the presentation code and consequently the fact that you need to understand HTML and do seemingly more work to achieve similar results (and this is one of the reasons that people keep emphasising, quite rightly, that MVC is NOT an appropriate solution for every project). In terms of the structure of an application - MVC encourages a better (more testable) style but its not the only means to achieve that end - the majority of the techniques are as applicable using forms and alternative patterns.
And again this raises the challenge of contemporary frameworks and tools - they do a huge amount of work for you (go look at Dynamic Data for example) but they also hide so much from you that we lose track of the fundamentals and of an understanding of the basic building blocks from which our complex applications are constructed. In this case the problem sounds like one I've had which is learning about the nuts and bolts how a web page is actually constructed (HTML, CSS, Javascript) and how it interacts with the server as opposed to just having the whole client experience automagically generated for you.
MVC is no more a tool for "good developers" than Forms is - rather its a good tool for developers that wish to achieve a particular result albeit one that comes with a price just as forms is also a good tool but with different outcomes because you're accepting a different set of compromises.
A good developer is one that can adapt - can learn the new techniques necessary to work on a different platform, to target new environments, to use appropriate solutions for a particular task and ultimately that can apply solid patterns and methodologies to their work in so far as is possible whatever the dev environment...
i also spend one year on mvc what i learn till now is u can rely on client side as much as u can but in classic asp.net most of time u used server side controls like gridview. In asp.net mvc u can replace it with jquery controls like jQgrid and jquery datatable. you must have to spend some time to learn asp.net mvc the it might looks u better then asp.net classic.
for reference read asp.net mvc pro book
MVC is not a new concept; in fact other languages have this kind of framework long before Microsoft got it. Think about Ruby On Rails, Zend Framework, Symfony etc.
If you say that MVC is for the hardcore and the alpha geeks, then by your logic other language developers are much more advanced than .Net developers. I don't think this is true.
Your problem with MVC stems from your webform background; ASP.Net and ASP.NET MVC greatly differ in terms of concepts and approach. So some unfamiliarity is expected for those who are moving from one framework into another. Me, on the other hand, who has no webform experience ( although I do have winform experience), don't find MVC hard to grasp.
And I don't think I am smarter than anyone else.
All i can suggest is that you need to do more of it! The more you practise, the more it will become clear. That's how it was for me. I was fundamentally stumped by the MVC concept to start with but after much frustration i just decided i would need to force myself to start using it or i'd never get it.
I'd recommend actually completing one or two of the tutorials found on the asp.net/mvc site from start to finish. I can personally recommend the NerdDinner (and the book from which this example was birthed - Pro ASP.NET MVC 1.0) and Storefront tutorials.
ASP.NET MVC is built on top of bunch of old concepts - HTTP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript. And so on. The whole point is to bring their power directly to your hands. If you can't handle this power - for example, you're not familiar with HTTP statelesness, or how to build rich pages with HTML/CSS/JS - you can't do much with ASP.NET MVC.
If you say that you're in programming for only one year then you're most probably not familiar with those concepts and that's the problem, not in the MVC itself.
Maybe you take ASP.NET MVC as a refinement of ASP.NET. That's wrong. They're VERY different. Imagine yourself doing web development with only HTML, CSS, and jQuery [1]... can you? If you can't then you will have troubles doing MVC.
I personally worked with ASP.NET for couple of years, and ASP.NET MVC was a breath of fresh air. It's just so much simpler and cleaner.
[1] This can be done, for example with data fed via web services.
MVC is great but the argument that it makes you happy by finally giving you the power of HTML, CSS and Javascript is real crap. The same logic would say: code in pure SQL and forget nHibernate or Linq. Why is abstraction bad? I like MVC but please don't use such arguments. MVC needs something to be able to build complex rich user interfaces (which are browser compatible).
Finally, on HTML, CSS and Javascript. The fact that MVC forces you to go back to the basics does in now way mean that the developers do it right. Whether you use web forms or MVC, a bad JS developer stays a bad JS developer (and same for HTML or CSS).
Sometimes it is better to not give too much power to the weaker developers in a team.
Before I get pointed to one of those 'VS.' questions like below...
ASP.NET webforms + ASP.NET Ajax versus ASP.NET MVC and Ajax framework freedom
Should I pursue ASP.NET WebForms or ASP.NET MVC
ASP.NET MVC Web application vs ASP.NET Web Application
... please let me state that I'm not looking for a comparison.
Some of my concerns that I need answers for include:
Is the learning curve for doing crazy UIs (e.g. having UI for building a BOM tree online) steep? Lots of people posting questions seem to be having problems with some UI requirement or another which has me worried. Is the technology mature enough to handle those type of requirements?
Is there a pretty well developed community and how available is online literature? You can get tons of literature for WebForms.
Would the time to develop it be comparable or less to building a traditional enterprise WebForms site?
How long would it take to get a whole team of developers comfortable (if not enamored) with WebForms to become well versed in ASP.NET MVC?
The truth of it I think is that StackOverflow is Google-like product and ASP.NET MVC might be great for that. But I'm stuck developing software in the Your company's app category.
alt text http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/simplicity.png
So taking a plunge could prove very costly later on if something can't be done or it has to be hacked. Hope to hear from those that have taken the plunge.
Thanks.
About 3 months ago, I was told that I needed to develop an enterprise web-app (well, a series of small web-apps actually), but that I could choose whatever technology I wanted.
Since I'm most comfortable with VS/C#/.Net, the dilemma was whether to choose ASP.NET WebForms or ASP.NET MVC2 -- Unlike you, my only background was with Windows Forms (WinForms) and a little WPF. So I had to research (and try-out) both WebForms and MVC.
Just like you, I realized that my app would be neither Google nor Apple like, but your bog standard company app with thousands of buttons and boxes, etc. WebForms seemed like it would be the fastest to deploy, but hard to test and hard to maintain on a long-term basis. MVC seemed to have a much steeper learning curve, but once established, testing and maintenance would be a breeze.
I only fiddled with WebForms for a week, so I can't really comment on it. But MVC is definitely everything I was expecting it to be.
Yes, it's a steep learning curve. Concepts that were new to me:
Model-View-Controller (MVC)
Separation of Concerns (SoC)
Model Binding
Unit Testing and Test Driven Design (TDD)
Mocking and Stubbing
Dependency Injection (DI)
The books that helped me the most were:
Pro ASP.NET MVC2 by Sanderson (MVC, Model Binding, DI, TDD)
The Art of Unit Testing by Osherove (TDD, Mocking, Stubbing, DI)
I also had to brush up on my HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
Overall, there seems to be a fair amount of ramp-up work in the beginning, but maintaining and extending the existing application has been pretty painless. Whenever I've been asked to make changes, it's been fairly easy and I've typically been able to deliver on-time or even sometimes ahead of schedule.
In an ideal world, writing an MVC app would happen with 2 people. One person writing the core code and a second person writing the UI and the Views (HTML, CSS, Javascript.) Although it's entirely possible to do it all by yourself. (which is what I'm doing right now...)
I have run into some hitches deploying in the Enterprise, though. Internally, my company is running Windows Server 2003 and IIS6. Unfortunately, we have been unable to get the app to deploy properly on IIS6 when using Virtual Pathing. (All the references to and in the CSS files are broken.) If you plan on deploying MVC, I would recommend using IIS7 or higher. MVC supposedly works on IIS6, but requires that your IT department be willing to figure out how to get it to work.
Edit: I just realized I never directly answered your questions. Here goes:
My personal experience has said, that, yes, the learning curve is steep for building good Models and UIs, but I'm not really a web-developer so I've been working with that handicap. The good news is that the MVC technology is pretty mature.
Yes, the community is pretty well developed and growing. You'll get a lot of good answers from StackOverflow as well as MS's ASP.NET MVC sub-forum.
I have no personal experience coding WebForms, but I have coded plenty of WinForms apps and I feel like it's taken me approx. 3 times longer to build this MVC app. The initial investment is a bear, but regular maintenance and improvements seem to come WAY faster, especially as the app has grown... Since you seem to have a team of programmers, it may come faster for you guys as you can probably split up the learning/workload.
Again, no prior experience with WebForms, but what I can tell you is that as I was learning ASP.NET MVC, there were times when I was struggling to understand what was going on because I had no prior ASP.NET background. (Example: Membership and Role Providers -- I had to code my own recently. Boy was that fun...) On the plus side, I didn't have any "old ways of doing things" (aka. WebForms) to unlearn either. If you have a team of folks enamored with PostBack / CodeBehind, you can bet that MVC is gonna seem awfully strange at first. But hopefully your team will see the advantages that MVC brings and embraces it fully.
Oh, and it should be noted that you can blend MVC and WebForms. It's not an all-or-nothing proposition. Although, if I were in your shoes, I'd try to embrace MVC as much as possible and only use WebForms where it clearly makes more sense.
Ok, I hope this helps... :-)
I can answer half of your question. I've just dove into MVC from a WebForms background. There is (obviously) a learning curve, but it's really not very steep. I've been able to make the transition with little effort, and I find the whole thing to be a breath of fresh air.
However, I am quite capable with front-end technologies (HTML & Javascript), and I don't like the HTML the WebForms and Microsoft ajax framework generates. If you and/or your team are like this, you will love it. However, if you are proud of the in-depth knowledge you have of the event hierarchy, or if you love the simplicity of UpdatePanels, then you'll probably bridle against the changes.
The documentation is OK, enough to get going happily, anyway. Here's a few videos to whet your appetite:
http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/T49F
http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/T50F
http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/T44F
Here's your documentation home:
http://www.asp.net/mvc/
For a bit more info, the first chapter of the asp.net mvc 1.0 book is online and can be downloaded for free. See ScottGu's blog here:
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/03/10/free-asp-net-mvc-ebook-tutorial.aspx
And, the full code for the chapter can be found here:
http://www.codeplex.com/nerddinner
Finally, in terms of development time, I think it might take a bit longer to develop apps using MVC (although I have no evidence of this), but I think supporting, maintaining, bugfixing and enhancing will take a lot less time. So, with a small up-front investment, I think you'll more than recoup that effort.
Anyway, like I said, these are my preliminary findings. I still have yet to hit a really hairy problem.
As you know its all about the people first, technology 2nd. You can simply build out a new functionality of your company app because they can co-exist, then you can answer all those questions yourself.
It's new stuff so it will of course take more time than what you're used to but heck its all fun so jump right in and start answering these questions for your own people and app.
Interesting that your question focused all on your concerns and not on any benefits. Have you asked yourself the "why" question? If you feel you can be successful with WebForms, why change to MVC? What is there in MVC that justifies the risks? If you were paying for the project, what would you do?
I'm not pitching WebForms over MVC by any means, but as an architect, you need to be able to come back very strong to the question of why you decided to go away from a very well-known quantity to a relatively new one. I think that there are many good reasons to do so, but it not my job on the line. :)