Does anyone have any experience creating a skin engine for asp.net MVC? I know the suggested approach is to use flexible markup with CSS, but I would like the ability for a new view to be dropped in, and the application use that one instead of the default one.
Basically, I want to know how to tell the framework (at run time) to look into a specific folder for the views/content, and if the item isn't there to check the default locations.
I started to look into how the Oxite blog engine does it, but it seems like that might be a bit much for what I need (I am still looking through it, so I could be wrong.) Any help is appreciated.
You need to change the ViewEngine a little bit.
See this post http://bartreyserhove.blogspot.com/2009/02/building-multi-tenant-applications-with_22.html
It can be done for partials and masterpage also.
Related
My client does not like the Metronic UI provided in the ASPNETZERO template. He is looking into getting something custom designed by a UI/UX designer or purchasing another UI template. I wanted to find out if anyone else has done this change with ASPNETZERO and I wanted to ask some questions around this process.
Have you completely removed Metronic template from ASPNETZERO
and used another UI template?
What challenges did you run into?
How much effort did it take?
Any tips, tricks and advice that you can share on making this change would be much appreciated!
I haven't done such a change myself, but as a user and UI/UX student, here are some tips:
Have you completely removed Metronic template from ASPNETZERO and used another UI template?
If you're completely replacing the UI with another template, you can easily remove Metronic UI. That's the great thing about ASP.NET Zero (and the underlying ABP)'s n-layered architecture.
What challenges did you run into?
Make sure that the UI template that the designer gives can actually be used with the data that you want to display from view models. Tip 1: Request that the designer considers the models.
How much effort did it take?
It will take a lot of effort binding the UI back to the view models and some models may change since a UX designer may propose a different flow. Tip 2: Request that the designer uses some form of view model, or template strings like {Name} for the hard-coded values in his design.
Tip 3: Factor in time for ajax configuration, since the designer may only provide static screens.
Good luck!
Update
Do you know all the files/folders I need to alter/remove or change in the ASPNETZERO solution?
The particular files depend on what you actually modify. The designer should provide you with *.html and *.css files, maybe even *.js files. For the most part, you can leave the current *.css and *.js files (under wwwroot) alone. *.cshtml files (under Views) are safe to alter.
I am trying to learn ASP.NET MVC by porting my current app written in ASP.NET Webforms to MVC. For starters, I am planning to use the Default View Engine (WebFormsViewEngine) as most tutorials/examples and the book I have use that as the default.
However, I know for sure that I do not want to use WebformViewEngine in the future and once I have a grasp of MVC, I would like to switch to a different ViewEngine (Spark seems to be interesting)
Would this be a simple change or would it take a lot of effort in terms of coding new views? What I basically want to know is which would involve more effort? Learning an alternate ViewEngine now or switching later?
OK - firstly you've got a decent sized investment in WebForms I'm assuming, and by virtue of that, you'll have a fair amount of user controls on existing forms etc. I'm sure you already know that this in itself is going to be the most work in the process, and has nothing to do with which view engine you choose because even the WebForms MVC view engine doesn't support user controls directly. This part of the work will still need to be done regardless...
Secondly, you probably are looking for a view engine that can take most of your other view built in logic and code (i.e not user controls), and by that I mean the stuff between the bee-stings ( <%= blah %> ).
Obviously the WebForms view engine does support this same syntax, but you also say that you specifically don't want to use the default WebForms view engine. Well you'll be happy to know that Spark also supports the <%= blah %> syntax, and this has been done specifically to support migrations like this.
Your best bet before deciding would be to watch this recent video here, and see how Louis goes through the simple WebForms-based MVC solution and it keeps running correctly even though the code still contains <%= blah %> syntax.
This support makes it much easier to transition and when you're ready you can then start moving your code to the more recommended way of using ${blah} syntax instead. But this can be done at your own pace whilst the overall functionality still works.
Hope that helps,
All the best,
Rob G
Looks like you can have a mixed bag of view engines in your application... link
Also check out this post from Phil Haack that shows using partials using different view engines to render on the same page.
This would allow you to simply switch over to the new syntax and not need to rewrite all of your existing views.
It should be as simple as calling
SparkEngineStarter.RegisterViewEngine(ViewEngines.Engines);
SparkEngineStarter should be a class in the Mvc part of Spark.
The documentation of spark is actually pretty good. Check out the section on getting it to run in ASP.NET MVC
My group is working on a new web application and is considering using MVC. However, there are members who would rather include pages than use master pages. Is this possible to do in ASP.NET MVC? In the small amount of time that I've poked around with MVC I have not yet been able to figure out how one might accomplish that.
Why the preference?
Having used both in the past, Master Pages are much easier to use. You just have to get over the (very small) learning curve.
ASP.NET MVC doesn't force you to do either one though...
If you like the Include method, then you would probably feel most comfortable using Partial Views to provide the same functionality. You would just add the Partial Views to each page instead of including another page.
No. It does not force you in any way.
You should really avoid server-side includes with anything newer than classic ASP. They're more difficult to debug, IIS has a hard time finding correct line numbers when there's a problem, etc. Also, I haven't looked at the order in which SSIs are processed in the request pipeline - they may not work at all with ASP.NET.
If you're moving into MVC, use RenderPartial() or RenderAction() instead. These perform essentially the same function as a server-side include, but are more inline with the spirit of the framework and provide some additional benefits, like passing models without having to declare a global variable (which should also be avoided, and I'm not sure if it is even possible under .NET scope rules).
And, no, master pages are not required, but you really should use them. Using includes to build your page layout works, but only if you don't and won't need to radically change the layout of your site at any point in the future. I'm in that boat now with a 350k line classic ASP app which used very nicely structured code and #includes to create the page layout. That was the best solution available at the time, but it's causing me a lot of headaches now (10+ years later).
With a master page you can move your ContentPlaceHolder blocks anywhere you want, whereas with #includes the final page really determines the format by the order in which the includes are placed. This also makes it pretty straightforward to create a mobile version of your site - you can create a mobile-specific master page and use the same content views.
Its a matter of choice,but for consistent look and feel across the web application, master pages give you just that. You have to take the team through the learning curve of good master page design, not only would it be useful for the current project at hand but also future projects. Good luck!
I would rather opt to go for Master pages due to the ease of use and built in support in MVC for this.
If you want to know more about it check out this tutorial: Creating Page Layouts with View Master Pages.
Grz, Kris.
I am really missing heavily the ability to test Views independently of controllers. The way RSpec does it.
What I want to do is to perform assertions on the rendered view (where no controller is involved!). In order to do so I should provide required Model, ViewData and maybe some details from HttpContextBase (when will we get rid of HttpContext!).
So far I have not found anything that allows doing it. Also it might heavily depend on the ViewEngine being used.
List of things that views might contain are:
Partial views (may be nested deeply).
Master pages (or similar in other view engines).
Html helpers generating links and other elements.
Generally almost anything in a range of common sense :) .
Also please note that I am not talking about client-side testing and thus Selenium is just not related to it at all. It is just plain .NET testing.
So are there any options to actually do the testing of views?
Thanks,
Dmitriy.
The main issue with testing full views is that the asp.net view engine calls Response.Write in the supplied context / and not on the supplied writer.
The above is not the case for testing partial views, so for those you can use this solution:
http://www.brightmix.com/blog/renderpartial-to-string-in-asp-net-mvc/
There are other view engines that do allow you to test the view i.e. Spark.
ps. the concept in asp.net mvc is that you should be able to test the view by using the ViewEngine, but as I understand the asp.net mvc team didn't work around the existing asp.net engine restrictions to be able to do so for their view engine.
You may want to check out the UI Test Helpers that Eric Hexter and the guys with MVCContrib are working on. I haven't had a chance to look at it in depth, but it may help you. I found this link that shows some of the syntax: http://codepaste.net/cw8ie4
I would be interested to know what you find out as I will be doing this pretty soon also.
Interested to know if you find anything for .Net that does this. Our current app is WPF, but we are stuck with trusting Cucumber to touch our Views in all our Features... so yeah, that sucks. Hope you find something and update us.
When you start creating an application or site in ASP.NET MVC, what do you do before typing in that first line of code?
I'm personally fond of creating a new ASP.NET MVC Web Application project and then cleaning out controllers/views until I have what is essentially a blank project (i.e. it runs but doesn't offer functionality). Then I start working on my model and adding controllers/views as needed.
I've also read about starter kits and sample applications but I have not yet started actively working with any of them. However, in my reading I have seen authors suggest that it might be good to start off with an existing template and build on it.
I'm trying to determine if there are better ways of starting off a project such that time is saved and/or the resulting deliverable is of higher quality.
The other things I do (I also clear out the controller/views etc)
Put an IOC in place.
Put ELMAH into the project.
Then I grab a coffee and write my first test.
Kindness,
Dan
PS: At some point I shall get around to creating a template for this so I don't redo it everytime. As soon as I decide upon my favourite IOC. :-)
I usually clear out the Content folder as well and put in place a nice CSS reset file and/or a CSS framework like the 960 grid
Before starting any type of project you must know what you want to do. So take a sheet of paper and start writing on here:
The name of your application
Enumerate the features
Make a quick draft of the domain model (entities that you are going to have)
Try finding the ways (choosing a technology) you are going to do different stuff like: data access, validation (client and server side), logging, IoC, Security, Caching etc.
Do a quick draft of all the views you are going to have in your application
Identify any other problems you might need to solve/implement/develop and think how are you going to do that