ASP.NET MVC2 Apps - Extending App - asp.net-mvc

Here is my problem for using mvc2, I cant find a silver bullet fix for this.
I have a standard mvc app which has following views, controllers and Models
View
WorkOrders
Estimates
Model
WorkOrder
Estimate
Controller
WorkOrderController
EstimateController
I recently got a client who wants this app with little customization. I am still adding new modules to this app so I dont want to clone my app and customize because then I have to maintain two code bases. Upgrading any modules in base app as well as app that I cloned.
So here is how my Client App will look like
View
ClientWorkOrders
Estimates
Model
WorkOrder
Estimate
Controller
ClientWorkOrderController
EstimateController
Now If I want to add invoice I have to add it at both apps. Any easier way to handle this in microsoft mvc.

Without knowing much about the application -- you could turn to the provider model (depending how much additional functionality they need) or you could implement a plugin framework. Both options could be a huge architecture change.
I've never used it, but the MEF framework was specifically designed for creating plugin architectures.

Related

In Rails, what is the best way to have a Model with conditionals based on whether or not a request has come via the API or the web front-end?

We are in the progress of building/migrating new features into our web application. We have a namespaced API (V1) that the mobile applications use to communicate with the app.
While we are in transition (we will launch the features for the web first), how can one differentiate between API requests and web requests, for purposes of bifurcating the logic in the shared model files? We need the models to stay the same for the mobile apps, but be different for the new big web-based features. Unfortunately code like
request.format
Isn't available in models.
Or is there a way to tell the API controllers to use different model files, and have separate models for some API vs. web app controllers?
I know that you should put as much code as possible within the model, however does this particular piece of code belong there?
It begs the question, because this seems to be 1) presentation oriented and 2) concern with the state/request.
It makes me believe that this code should actually reside within controllers.
API controllers to use different model files
Ofc, just use a different model...
You've provided little information about what you're trying to achieve, which makes things difficult.
However, this seems like some presentation oriented code based of a web state.
There for, add decorators to your application and do your conditional presentation there.

creating a web application with different server side languages

I been practicing developing an application in .NET and with other languages and server, and now I want to start sketching out an architecture I want to implement.
The reason why I want to separate the two is because I cannot focus on a specific thing when everything is Jumbled into one server. I would like to be able to have the freedom to offer features that would otherwise bottleneck one server and not another(ex. notification, chatting)
What brought me here to ask this question is because I am totally confused on why everything on the UI is always called MVC. When searching for solutions to a distributed architecture that I can implement I keep running across frameworks that use an MVC pattern.
How does this actually work when you already have your API models? Isn't an MVC pattern just going to duplicate all of the models on the API (ex django, asp.net mvc or ruby on the rails)?
One scenario that threw me off and brought me to research a whole lot more, is when I wanted to create a registration form that has steps, validating the username uniqueness was on one step and zip code was on another. I found myself wanting the tweak the API based on how I wanted to present my view and thought about having to do that for different types of clients(mobile, different user agents) and quickly backed off that idea. The problem is those fields need some sort of call to the back end and every view wont have that way of registering.
The main question is how do I implement a UI layer that I can customize toward certain views, without changing the way my API is structured?
You might be interested in this article from LinkedIn dev team.
https://engineering.linkedin.com/frontend/leaving-jsps-dust-moving-linkedin-dustjs-client-side-templates

Best architecture for AngularJS based MVC application?

Client side complexity will increase by adding angular mechanisms such as client side modules, controllers and models!
in the other hand by developing MVC .Net web applications we have a good pattern so supports a lot of features and specially increasing re-useability, which we generally miss that in angular based web applications
angular pages with MVC apps causes duplicate codes in server side and client side. i don't know any way to avoid duplicate models and also strongly-typed models!
ok, i know implementing strongly typed model mechanism which models comes from server side is hard. but at least i want to prevent duplicate code with some existing techniques or NEW techniques!
First: are there existing approach? i did not find after lots of searching.
Scenario:
I'm developing a Plugin-Based MVC application which has core and some plugins that they have been implemented on MVC atchitecture. so all of them have own controllers and also own actions and views. The starting page or the so called "Main Application" which starts at first of core staring and contains my plugins contents within, is a SPA(Single Page Application) application that is based on angular libraries.
Now you consider that we're going to have implement all of the our plugin views just in Main SPA application! for example every view in plugins maybe have some forms, models or inputs ... . but anything within there should be angular-based! and it increase client side complexity. in the other hands implementing some rules and helpers for plugins developers seems necessary to preventing irregularity.
my solution is customizing the WebViewPage and enrich it to have lots of helpers to provide angular elements and manage them. for example adding Angular helper which have own BeginForm method instead of Html.BeginForm, and it configures some attributed such as ng-submit and so on.
Second : Is there any better approach or existing better techniques to do it?

Should I move my solution to Orchard CMS or add everything manually?

At the moment I am building a big project using:
ASP.Net MVC 4
jQuery (With some extra libraries)
Castle ActiveRecord (based on NHibernate)
Implemented users and roles using .Net Membership Provider
I built almost all the website, but some very relevant parts are missing still and I noticed that this CMS supports
ASP.Net MVC and NHibernate, and have almost all the features that I need already implemented.
The features that I still need to implement are:
Internal Search Engine
Comments
Version of content
Chat betwwen users
Users Profiles Page (Something like a very basic social network)
Forum
SEO
I don't know if is harder to use the CMS or if is better to add the features one by one manually.
I am worried about the time I spend learning and adapting to Orchard is the same time I would spent adding this
features manually.
Basically, the question is:
Should I move my solution to Orchard CMS or add everything manually ?
You can't just move your solution to Orchard, you could but i won't recommend it. Orchard is still MVC 3 at the base and that way most should work if you just move your solution including the database etc. But if you ask me, spending time to add the features manually is the way u should go.
In the Orchard Galery you can find existing many modules
Internal Search Engine
Lucene (Fully functional - Writen by the Orchard Team)
Comments
Already exists in the Orchard Core Module
Version of content
Already exists in the Orchard Framework functionalty
Users Profiles Page
Profile (Fully functional? Or at least good enough as example)
SEO
Several modules
Only 2 features u will have to write yourself
Chat between users
I can't find any example code for this, but I know Piotr Szmyd has tested SignalR inside a Orchard Module which, I think, will be usefull for a Chat module. Demo is here.
Forum
Nicholas Mayne made a start of a forum module which can be used as example or starting point, maybe you can help him extent it? Currently it's sort of a pre-alpha version :(
+1 to rfcdejon's answer. I ported my current project to Orchard after at 50-60% complete. I wish I had done it sooner due to the learning curve and time to integrate all the stuff I had already written, but overall it was the right choice.
If you have significant data already set up you should account for the extra time it will take to port that into Orchard. But if you are making an app from scratch with very little existing data that would make the switch to Orchard easier. Orchard is a great choice for anyone looking for a .NET CMS that supports MVC.
Some things to keep in mind:
Features you've already built will have to be converted into Orchard content types/parts in order to take advantage of things that come out of the box with Orchard, like search, comments, versioning, etc.
Orchard has its own users/roles system, so you might have to do some work to find a module for what you're already using, or override Orchard's user/membership system yourself.
Your entire app will have to become an Orchard app, and your existing MVC stuff will have to convert into an Orchard module. Existing data access code will have to be wrapped inside a using (new TransactionScope(TransactionScopeOption.Suppress)) {...}
Forums project has started but isn't done, so you will either be banking that it will finish in time for you to use it, or that you will be able to help get it working.

Web framework with really good admin/CRUD module?

Lot's (if not most) of the current Web frameworks provide an admin module for basic CRUD operations, but I find the ones I know usually very limited...
So, my question is, which Web framework out there provide the best administration backend?
By the best, I mean namely:
Domain objects that can be heavily polymorphic. Attributes/relations defined in a class appear when editing a record/instance of any of it's subclasses (and sub-subclasses, and sub-sub-subclasses, etc).
Abstract classes. It's ok to have abstract classes anywhere in the domain classes' hierarchy. Their attributes and relations also show in the records/instances of all descending classes.
Relations. Allow to edit (out-of-the-box) the records/instances that have many-to-many relations, and relations with associative classes (e.g., django calls these intermediate models)
Extension. Allow to extend the admin so that we can use our own "UI controls" for specific domain objects. Some information is just too "exquisite" for an out-of-the-box form-based control to work in a suitable way.
UI Components. Instead of having to choose between using all of it or none of it, it'd be nice to have generic "UI controls" that one could reuse from within any page of the website, to edit specific domain objects.
Programming language is not an issue at this point, although I lean towards the languages (or frameworks) that allow me to express the most information at the domain model level (and that the admin module can then use to give me a richer UI).
I've been playing with Active Admin and Rails Admin for a couple of Rails 3.1 projects I am working on. While both are nice, I've migrated more and more to Rails Admin. I've found it easy to customize, it does a very nice job with associated models, and has a great default UI.
Rails Admin
Definitely good old WebObjects with it rule system called DirectToWeb. It generates everything at runtime based on rules. By default it can display all your entity's properties and relationships.
I guess that every current web framework will offer something like scaffolding, but often times, the work begins as soon as you change your model.
Check out this post and this teaser about the latest DirectToWeb-based framework, ERModern. You use nearly zero code for what you see in the video and you can build entire applications around it. It was sponsored by the iTunes team.
Edit for your bullet points:
Abstract classes and domain objects that can be heavily polymorphic - You handle these using rules.
Editing relations - No problem, it only depends on the design of your components. If you use ERModern, you get this for free.
Generic UI components - This is exactly how DirectToWeb works. You use (or define your own) generic components that display themselves according to the current entity (an object inheriting from EOEnterpriseObject) and the rules that fired for the current state (the D2WContext, essentially a big dictionary).
You can see all of this in action in the 45 minutes long ERModern Intro Video.
This isn't an easy question to answer.
You never specify what language you want to use, and you named some features, but how much of these features do you want.
I mean I could suggest a number of frameworks and tools for ASP.Net MVC or Web Forms but what if you're a PHP developer or a Java developer?
I could suggest SharePoint (and I generally dislike sharepoint, but everything you want is in SharePoint), but then the question to ask is.
How much flexibility and freedom do you want to customize or how much do you want the framework to do and you just be a code monkey.
So I will give you just my opinion.
I use ASP.Net MVC for my custom apps. It does all of what you want and allows me the most freedom to create and extend with tools if I so to do so. Plus out of the box there's a user databse with roles I can easily create out of the boss once I run the app for the first time.
Also CRUD is completely easy and straight forward out of the box. just check it out http://www.asp.net/mvc there's a tutorial section that goes through what you're wanting that you could complete in half a day.
Then there are some OR/M like NHibernate, Entity Framework, Subsonic use www.google.com to find tutorials for these if you're not familiar with them.
Then there's SharePoint it has a learning curve but once you get past it it's pretty straight forward as it's easy to pinpoint bugs, focus on the business logic and not worry aobut data base schema (as you don't even need to touch a database).
I love WebObjects.
WebObjects -> EntityModeler -> Wonder -> ERD2WModernLook -> ERAttachment --> ERRest
Bam. Done.

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