I have a large web-application with a lot of .aspx/.ascx/.master view files that I would like to upgrade to ASP.NET 5, however the ability to load WebForms files is not supported by default in v5. I can't see how I can load/enable the WebForms view-engine.
Note that I'm not asking about WebForms in general. I'm only interested in WebForms-as-a-View-Engine within an MVC context.
I have searched through the ASP.NET 5 source repositories and cannot seem to locate any support for WebForms. There is only 1 implementation of IViewEngine and it is Razor (well, there is a composite one, too so you can plug in multiple view engines). But, as ASP.NET 5 is still a pre-release that doesn't necessarily mean that adding a WebForms view engine is not part of the plan.
That said, according to the ASP.NET 5 Roadmap at this stage the first release is feature complete. This means the initial release in Q1 2016 will surely not have support for WebForms.
I would suggest opening an issue on the MVC repository to see what the official plan for WebForms (if any) is.
Related
I am trying to migrate a project from classic ASP.Net Web Forms to ASP.NET MVC.
While I have read through http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/38778/ASP-NET-WebForms-and-ASP-NET-MVC-in-Harmony. I have a basic idea on how the code structure, libraries and routing should be done.
For your information, the scope of my existing project is around 400 pages and 300 tables.
On top of my head I have two approaches:
Start from stretch, rewriting the whole system - Obviously this would require intensive work and take a long time. Any change made on existing system would need a duplicate change made to the new system.
Migrate the page one each - I still have a rebuild the entire core library (for accessing db), and get the page migrated one by one. For this I would assume to have two core libraries (new and old) running simultaneously with different pages connect to one of those.
Would anyone have similar experience and advise a proper way to start?
For this complete revamp I may also target at the latest technology - .NET Core and MVC6, by taking these would I have extra advantage, or some blockages I would have to take care of?
Any suggestion and opinions are appreciated. Cheers.
Microsoft is a bit hush hush on the subject but the WebForms engine is probably never going to make its way to ASP.NET Core. One might think that MS is waiting to see if the community is calling for a port, but I think they're trying to kill it discretely (not like Silverlight).
Why? Because it proved to be a bad good idea on the long run, easy to use at first, but extremely complex to master (because of viewstate and page lifecycle), with a tendency to allow average developers to build very tedious application (in french we say steam factories). Also it was very poorly adapted to modern web development (Ajax, unit testing, IoC). They tried to fix it with a couple of tweaks, but the overall architecture is just not adapted to this kind of things. MVC is a treat in comparison!
To answer your question, it's not really possible to migrate WebForms to MVC, because those are quite different architectures, and of course the architecture is what an application sits on top on, so if you change it, you might as well rewrite it from scratch.
What can help you a lot is if your app is divided in tiers (business, data access, UI). If it's not the case, you could start by doing this, properly separating the UI project from the rest. Then you would just have to rewrite the ASP.NET project and not the rest.
There are some useful resources I'd like to share with the StackOverflow community just in case you are having troubles to decide what to do:
modernization of your existing Web Forms app
migration to MVC or Core
or whether to start a new project on Web Forms, MVC and Core.
Here you go:
https://www.telerik.com/blogs/review-of-telerik-toolsets-for-aspnet-web-forms-core
Modernizing ASP.NET Web Forms Applications by Tomáš Herceg (Microsoft MVP ) - https://tomasherceg.com/blog/post/modernizing-asp-net-web-forms-applications-part-1
Migrating Old ASP.NET Applications to .NET Core by Edi Wang (Microsoft MVP) - https://edi.wang/post/2018/10/31/migrating-old-aspnet-applications-to-net-core
Choose between ASP.NET and ASP.NET Core (Microsoft docs) - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/fundamentals/choose-aspnet-framework?view=aspnetcore-3.1
Migrate from ASP.NET to ASP.NET Core (Microsoft docs) - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/migration/proper-to-2x/?view=aspnetcore-3.1
i have come across below links
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZuqMrWSano
https://www.dotvvm.com/blog/59/Modernizing-ASP-NET-Web-Forms-applications-with-DotVVM
DotVVM package helps us to migrate ASP.Net Web Forms migration to ASP.NET Core without re-writting completely.
i have not tried any production application. still have tried some sample pages. you can try this out.
I can agree that for many cases a re-write of an ASP.NET application where WebForms is used widely may do not provide any business value.
Therefore we decided to use our experience with ASP NET WebForms to develop a highly compatible port of WebForms for ASP NET Core / .NET 6.0.
We use the solution in our own ASP NET WebForms-based products and projects as well as a licensable component library.
So the Forms can still be used and you can focus on the .NET CORE/6 migration.
Ive been confused about ASP.NET MVC.
As some said, MVC is better than ASP.NET. As some said, they are completely the same thing.
And my colleges debate that MVC is just an extension of asp.net, where asp.net is already in the form of MVC.
In fact I am starting web developing from scratch. If someone might help to clear the fog front of me, it would help a lot.
All ASP.NET web frameworks are build on top of Microsoft ASP.NET Framework. The unique feature of Web API is that it can be used with both MVC and WebForms applications to provide truly restful HTTP services.
Regarding the choice of suitable Asp.NET framework: you may get more information from official source - www.asp.net.
General rule of thumb is the architectural design how you want to build your application.
ASP.NET MVC promotes a cleaner separation which makes the developer think more in depth about design and code separation than traditional web forms.
There are endless debates about what is better but true benefits of ASP.NET MVC as
testability
more control over the rendered HTML
separation of concerns. However with MVC there is much more to learn for the developer.
ASP.NET WebForms - will always be around because some see it as a rapid application development tool. Just drag and drop and let ASP.NET handle the posting, state etc
ASP.NET Web API - is a framework that makes it easy to build HTTP services that reach a broad range of clients, including browsers and mobile devices. ASP.NET Web API is an ideal platform for building RESTful applications on the .NET Framework.
All in all, each of them has certain business solutions to be considered as required.
References to look for comparison:
ASP.NET MVC vs WebForms: speed and architecture comparison
ASP.NET Roadmap: One ASP.NET – Web Forms, MVC, Web API, and more
ASP.NET is the name of the overall web framework. There are a few different technologies that are built on ASP.NET. Two popular examples of these technologies are WebForms and MVC.
WebForms promotes a programming model that looks a lot more like Windows Forms. It attempts to abstract away the stateless nature of the web, and encourages you to use server-side controls instead of HTML. Because WebForms was the primary way to write web applications on ASP.NET for a long time before MVC came out, you'll often see people talk about "ASP.NET" as the same thing as WebForms. This is part of the reason for your confusion. ASP.NET WebForms is very different from ASP.NET MVC, but they are both built on ASP.NET.
ASP.NET MVC gets away from server-side controls. It eliminates the abstractions, allowing you to have closer control over the actual HTML that gets generated. For developers of modern applications, this is very useful because it makes it much easier to use AJAX and rich client-side javascript.
(Humble Opinion incoming)
ASP.NET (in terms of using Webforms) is programming the web for a WinForms developer. You "bind" events, you have "controls" and everything (sessionstate) is stored in a huge hidden field within the page so it knows where it left off from the previous call. You rely heavily on this information being present which is why everything you do needs to reside in that master form wrapping the entire page.
On the other hand, MVC is bringing C# .NET programming back to the web the way the web was intended. No bloat, no hidden fields, no heavy bindings. It's brings everything back to the classic "i have this form and now I need to process it". Arguably, the real magic is the routing methods and the "automatic binding" of submitted fields to an object. (if fields x, y & z are submitted and your action is looking for FooBar with the properties x, y & z it's automatically converted for you.
ASP.NET is common to both WEB-API and ASP.NET MVC. I assume you wonder about MVC or WEB-API.
MVC is a controller / model based with Views. Although the controllers can be used for AJAX json purposes. MVC is a good way to build a serious Browser based Application. The WEB-API allows you to build simple http server features, not necessarily Browser related. Good for REST style programming. Very flexible and a good alternative to WCF services. The are good tutorials on Both on the official ASP.NET site. START here http://www.asp.net/get-started
choose depends on your project n you. I suggest you to choose MVC because its productivity is very high we r using it since 1 year and found better than webforms.
for more knowledge please visit http://www.asp.net/mvc
The choice depends completely on you, I have been developing MVC application since 2010, its going to be over 2 years now have worked with almost all the versions of MVC both with Razor and aspx view. I have also worked on ASP.Net webform based applications.
With MVC you will not get built in controls, you will have to develop every control you want to use, you will have to rely mostly on html controls, while with web forms you will get advantage of using built in controls, Even getting help from other developers in your surroundings may be easy for webforms as you can easily get a webform developer.
But on the other hand with MVC the maintability is very high. As for as productivity is concerned, its very high once your are accustomed to it, initially it will be low as you will be in learning phase. Don't forget to use Entity Framework.
You may also consider developing your App using WebAPI, if it suits your scenario.
I'm new to ASP.NET MVC world. I have enough experience for ASP.NET 2.0 and 3.5.
But as I'm seeing that we are now at Version 4, it is making me feel uncomfortable to directly start with this latest version. I'm browsing through ASP.NET MVC video tutorials at microsoft website which is listing learning series starting with ASP.NET MVC -1, MVC -2, MVC -3 and even MVC - 4.
So now the confusion comes here..!! If I start with MVC -3 directly.. did I missed something by ignoring MVC - 1 and MVC - 2 ?
Can I directly start with MVC - 3? without worrying about anything else.
You should definitely not go back to 1 or 2, things have changed quite significantly since then. You don't want to spend too much time in learning things that's not applicable any more. I will recommend you to start with the Book "Pro ASP.NET MVC 3 Framework", that's how I learnt my MVC.
The book starts with a simple example on how MVC works and goes in detail for each individual features of MVC used. If you master the book, you master the MVC!
Don't worry at all about the versions of asp.net mvc at the time of learning. Major concepts in mvc framework are Model, View, Controller, Routes and once you have basic understand of them you will be able to work with any of the version.
All basic features stated above works same in all versions but different versions added some more capabilities. One of the example for mvc3 compared to mvc4 is the mobile views.
So, don't hesitate and get started!
I would recommend starting with at least Mvc3 and to even consider using Mvc4.
The newer releases tend to be supersets and improvements on previous releases.
The only reason not to go with Mvc4 is that there may be more current training material with Mvc3. That said I think there is already plenty on Mvc4.
You won't miss a thing if you start at MVC3 (or 4), I would even recommend it. And start at looking at Razor-views immediately, that's the view-language you'd want to use.
I am starting a new project in VB /.Net Framework 2.0 for a company corporate website with data driven forms. So should I go further with Asp.net MVC or Asp.Net web forms and WHY ??? We are not ready for Ajax now but later.
And also we have DevExpress components.
Actually I see ASP.NET MVC as next generation in that it is an evolution - trying to be a better programming environment, as software development for web apps asks for something more testable.
It is a huge beast. Decide based on features whether you need it. MVC has less documentation and is a lot harder to master thanks to a less RAD approach, but it seems that once you are in, it will be quite a better experience. If you have a web application (like stackoverflow.com) then it may be a good approach.
DevExpress components - have fun... throwing them away. Like most ASP.NET components they will not work or only work very partially. Totally different approach.e
ASP.Net MVC is not "next generation" ASP.Net. It's an alternative approach to design that can be more beneficial depending on the kind of project you're working with. Without more information about the particular type of project you're working on no one can give you any informed recommendations.
I'm trying to upgrade my existing web forms application to upcoming framework and rewriting couple of workflow as per the new business requirements. I want to introduce TDD based development in this project but after some investigation found that ASP.NET MVC will not help me as my web existing application is using lots of Infragistics UltraWebGrid controls for grouping, paging, column moving etc and there is no good alternative grids in ASP.NET MVC world. I also need to support blackberry in this release. So, am planning to use both MVP for desktop client and MVC for blackberry client in same project.
I would like to know if someone has done something similar in their project and links to any good open source asp.net applicaton using MVP pattern. I dont want to use WCSF as it is too heavy weight. I saw their MVPBundle sample application but it lacks use of modern tools like IoC (Unity or StructureMap), Mocking framework etc.
Regards,
Sunil
The latest incarnation of Nerd Dinner has mobile support in an ASP.NET MVC app.
I'm not sure about the JS support on a black-berry but there are quite a few grid/repeater type controls and mechanisms available using either jQuery or the forthcoming ASP.NET AJAX 4 templating controls.