Toolkit for Asp.net mvc - asp.net-mvc

Does anyone know asp.net mvc toolkit which has a ready tools for typical web developnet tasks(paging, comments, profiles, messaging, etc....) ?

Have you checked out http://mvccontrib.codeplex.com/

mvccontrib is a great project with lots of useful stuff in and well worth a look.
I'd also have a look at teleriks controls which includes some useful bits
http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-mvc/
Also jquery and jquery ui come in very handy..
The asp.net membership providers can handle a lot of your user/profile stuff but may need extending to get the best out of it. As far as comments and messaging etc ?? there are a number of open source blogging engines and cms tools available.
http://orchard.codeplex.com/
http://blogengine.codeplex.com/
Would be good starting points

Related

Plugin architecture in .NET like wordpress

We're going to upgrade our old classic ASP system to .net.
This old system manages different ecommerce sites.
What we would like to do is to create a asp.net (vb) system like wordpress with plugins.
This way, the layout can be completely different between the sites.
For example a login plugin can be anywhere on the page with different settings for layout and display. Or even with a separate plugin css.
This way the setup time is minimal for the webmasters, and the developers can develop new plugins.
Now i'm stuck at .net 2. and haven't had time to follow the advantages of 4 or even 4.5.
I just start reading about MVC.
What is a good solution to follow? MVC? Any available frameworks for this setup?
If you have any links o samples, please share.
thanks for the help.
The Orchard CMS project is a good example of a modular, plug-in based MVC application: http://www.orchardproject.net/ Although not branded as a Microsoft project, they have contributed to its development, and I believe part of the intent is for it to be used as a reference architecture.
There are also any number of very similar questions here on SO, many with good answers:
How to use Plugin Architecture in ASP.NET?
Plugin-like architecture in .NET
I can't personally think of any reason you would stick with .NET 2.0 if 4.0 or 4.5 is an option. Each version of the framework has built upon those previous to it, and I don't know of any mainstream body of opinion that thinks any version has been a major mistake. Whether you choose MVC or WebForms is a matter of personal taste. My own view would be that MVC is marginally better-suited to the kind of modular development you are planning, but other's mileage may vary...
Take a look at http://umbraco.org/ it's build on ASP.NET MVC and already has the features you want, Umbraco is open source so you can learn allot from it's code base.

Is ASP.NET MVC a good platform?

I aim to try use DevExpress web server controls (which are awesome) in an ASP.NET MVC project (some articles I read on 'net seems to indicate the two can work well together).
I'm eager to start a new project using ASP.NET MVC, and I have been reading up a lot on ASP.NET MVC lately, but I'm not sure if I should invest a project in it. My concern is that it may turn out to be like LINQ to SQL, which is essentially been killed off since MS will not be providing updates.
Is ASP.NET MVC a viable solution to invest in my case?
Yes definitely ASP.NET MVC or any other MVC framework is worth learning. MVC pattern is all about seperation of concerns and helps you to keep your code clean.
If you like Devexpress control too much you could be disappointed because there is no server side control in ASP.NET MVC. But if you want to learn Web's underlying mechanism,HTML, Javascript , clean code, TDD ASP.NET MVC is a good way to go.
Learn first, experiment later
Asp.net MVC is a great development platform for building web applications, so it's definitely worth your time to learn it through and through.
But I suggest you first learn MVC framework and build at least one semi complex app with it and then start experimenting with mixing MVC with web forms controls. It is possible but as much you think you will gain you'll probably loose more. So I would be a bit reluctant and advise you not to match these. At least not on a Greenfield project.
In other words: presumably knowing Asp.net web forms would you suggest someone to heavy use dynamicly created user controls in their web pages if they're just about to learn the technology of Asp.net web forms? Probably not. Or mixing web forms with ASP pages on a greenfield project...
Instead try finding great either MVC-friendly server extensions or client-side libraries that will help you create rich web apps like ExtJS (I don't work for ExtJS llc, but I used the lib on a project in the past and liked it a lot). Using something like this you won't loose stuff from MVC and gain great user experience and rich functionality.
Seeing how you're asking the question on this site, I'd say YES!
DevExpress has a bunch of MVC specialized controls, that use Ajax to get data from the server via callbacks. You can see demos of the controls here:
http://mvc.devexpress.com.
I am not sure if you can use the web forms controls, my understanding is that you can't.
Also, regarding LinqToSql, you don't have to use that. I am using NHibernate for the data layer and it works very nice with MVC.
I worked with asp.net and web forms for more than 5 years and at least 1 year with the DevExpress controls for asp.net, but now I love MVC so much that I think I don't want to go back to the web forms anytime soon.
Hope this helped.

Replicate Webforms GridView in ASP.NET MVC

Is there a realistic way to implement a webforms stylegridview in ASP.NET MVC, with inline editing?
I have found various solutions to get a grid with inline editing working in MVC using JQuery add-ins but so far they have been very messy, require an unrealistic amount of work and that all gets worse when you want to add client and server side validations.
I develop a lot of sites that have fairly extensive administration sections to them. So far I have spent longer doing one page with MVC (which still does not work) than I would have doing the whole administration section of a site. Grids with inline editing work really well for somethings, say maintaining a list of countries and marking some as active or inactive. I know I can easily make this open a "details/edit" page, or even handle it with an AJAX popup, but neither of these options provides as clean a user experience as inline editing for things this simple.
Has anyone found an easy way to achieve inline grid editing or do I need to go for a hybrid MVC / winforms site (which I really didn't want to do).
Thanks
Andrew
The Java Script Framework Ext JS has some good support for all different types of grids. This is something you could easily use with ASP .NET MVC, I'm sure there are some other solutions both client and server side out there as well.
I have had luck with incorporating Dynamic Data with ASP.NET MVC for just this very purpose. This hybrid solution can give you all the perceived benefits of a foward facing MVC site while giving you a quick and easy way to create CRUD functionality on all your data for admnistrative purposes. To be honest, if your user base isn't that large, designing the whole application in Dynamic Data is a legitimate option, especially once you get comfortable enough with it to use it past its basic "scaffolding" abilities.
As far as actually finding a packaged solution for providing ASP.NET GridView functionality in ASP.NET MVC, good luck. I have yet to find any solution that doesn't require some sort of melding with javscript frameworks or incomplete solutions like those offered by MVC Contrib. If you do find one, please let me know.

Telerik controls in ASP.NET MVC

Telerik claims their controls work with ASP.NET MVC now. Has anyone already used the controls in a MVC project?
My company uses the Telerik ASP.NET controls in a large application and it works out quite well. That's why we think about using them in a MVC project.
EDIT 1:
telerik has a new go at ASP.NET MVC this looks much better then their first go at it. But it was to late for my project. http://www.telerik.com/products/aspnet-mvc.aspx
You could check out the demo application (a forums application) they built using ASP.NET MVC, announced here. Source code is available.
The demo is a simple- and stylish -
forums application. It uses 9 of the
RadControls, including RadGrid,
RadEditor, RadChart, RadTreeView and
RadUpload, to build a forum site that
has basic thread/post navigation,
formatted forum posting, user
authentication (with support for
custom avatars), and a site activity
"Statistics" view. Everything you need
to have a fully functional MVC forums
app. The source is available for
immediate download, so I encourage
anyone interested in learning more
about MVC or the RadControls in MVC to
grab the bites and study the example.
You may have already seen it, but Telerik has a blog post about how to use their controls with MVC and some of the limitations. I don't actually use their controls so I can't speak to whether the limitations are really a problem. It does appear that there is a a little more "manual lifting", so to speak, when using the controls with MVC but that there are workarounds to get most of them to work properly.
I'm hoping that they will eventually release MVC versions of their controls. I'm holding off evaluating them until that happens, but if you're already using them I'd certainly look to see how easy they would be to use with MVC. Perhaps you could update your question with an answer if you give it a try and let the rest of us know how it went.
I have been using the Telerik controls for about 6 months. I have been using the Grid and Window controls on MVC 2. Like most commercial products there are issues we have been fortunate to work them out. Once you get past the initial learning curve the controls are time savers. You can't beat the price for the amount of functionality you get.
My biggest issue is that they seem a bit sluggish responding on their forums. Maybe I'm just asking lame questions. I've been lobbying management to pay the $ for the supported version. Considering the amount of time we spend digging around to solve some of the more complicated problems I think it would be worth it.
I've just had a look at their grid and wrote a small POC project with it and must say I'm quite impressed. I'm not sure about their previous MVC controls iterations, but the current one can be a real time saver. It also fits very nicely into ASP.NET MVC ajax applications since there is a rich client-side API. Having jquery DataTables on the client side results in an even better user experience (because it is much faster), but also requires more error-prone javascript code.
As an alternative, you can check for MDBootstrap (it´s a front-end framework built on top of Bootstrap). There you will find an article with free ASP.NET MVC templates.

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

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

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