We are building a large ASP.net MVC 4 Website where one of the modules for Questionaire needs to build the view dynamically.
We are trying to solve 3 problems:
- Generate the view using data from the database (Control Name, Value)
- Have events against the generated controls (Eg: radiobuttion needs to have a change event and needs to enable/disable items accordingly)
- Validate the controls (possibly client side validation)
What is the best approach to do this? We have thought about generating view using Html helpers and Editor templates. The other options floating are using dynamic model and custom model binders.
While we are trying things through POC, any thoughts and solution to solve the above problem will be helpful.
Thanks
Here is a nice webcast from Brad Wilson : Advanced MVC 3.
Also check the source for this presentation. You will be interested in NonClassModels part. It shows how to wire all framework pieces around dictionary type. Validation, editors etc.
Hope this will help.
Related
guys, I was applied a big task is about to make the MVC page configurable.
It means:
It just like the webpart in webform.
1.We can config the partial view in the view,make the partial view enable or not,we can drag and drop the partial view anywhere in the container.
2.One partial view is related to a simple mode(entity),and also the fields of the form in the partial view can be configurable:enable or not and the position can be adjusted.
now I have some ideas as following:
1.I create an model base, let other models inherit from model base,model base just hold the metadata related to the fields and the model itself.
2.Render the settings which is in model base to hidden field throght html helper and partial view.And on the client, I just use the jquery to handle the layout according to the setting in the hidden field.
3.The partial view I just let it to render only, and the real logic I will hand it on the page which contain the partial view. I think this would be simple and extendable.right?
So any ideas here? I really think this task is complicate.
In the past, Omar AL Zabir Blog has an portal website, called dropthings, maybe it is closed now. He tried to implemented the things like igoogle did. You can see that project at codeplex.
And you also can find some ideas for that find of application at Lakkakula's Blog
Hope this help.
I need to write a web page which I need to interact with Grid entry/edit.
I choose ASP.Net MVC and LINQ TO Entity Framework.
What my problem is I have two option to choose at View Layer.
ASPX
Razor CSHTML
Could someone please give me suggestion which one is more suitable to interact Grid Entry Edit process? And Why?
If there are any references , please let me see them also.
[UPDATED]
JQUERY Grid
Telerik Grid for ASP.NET MVC
Razor Web Grid
After I searching through at Google, I get more than one Grid Controls.
I still wondering which one I need to use.
When I was writing with net 2.0 framework, I use template control from GridView Control in traditional way to put Combo or some other controls to attatch with GridView.It is really useful.
So What i thinking is, at asp net MVC 3 version, should i also use these traditional technique as well.
Could anyone please give me suggestion?
Razor is simply more concise. Both Razor and WebForms will offer the same basic functionality, but Razor results in Views that are much less cluttered and therefore more easily understood.
View engines have nothing to do with this. They both provide the same functionality, which you use is up to you and your preference.
There are many kinds of grids available for MVC, but MVC itself does not come with a grid. You either have to build the grid yourself, or use a third party component, most of which are jQuery based. Again, it's up to you what to use, as it's your preference.
All you can do is choose something and go with it. If it doesn't work for you, choose something else. MVC is a technology that requires you to know much more about how the framework works. If you want point and click and drag and drop, you should go back to Web Forms.
.chtm provides "Mapping of Data(or Business) objects that Your UI needs to Render(the html)" in a isolated way, so you can control the Test Cases for your UI as well as your Business Object Unit testing, which is Hard using ASPX since you have to create HTTPContext and (SSL and all crap) just to TEST your Business Logic..in short .cshmt is more NEATLY TESTABLE than aspx.
I am trying to figure out how to use/create a custom control in ASP.NET MVC 2.
I created a custom control earlier and compiled it (ccontrol.dll), the control renders a div, textbox and a button + some javascript in order to post a comment on the website. It could be a static aspx page that i wanted to allow my visitors to add a comment to. I would then drag my control from the toolbar to the aspx page and run it, it would then render all the code needed on the webpage including fetching the data from a datasource and displaying that inside the div. The user could also just type in a comment and press the button to save it to the datasource.
Is this possible to convert to MVC 2? Any good tutorial that covers custom controls and MVC 2? (Ideally would be if the control could be made into a .dll file that i then could reuse on future webpages)
How do i write a custom control the mvc way? Any good tutorials on the topic?
You cannot design Custom Controls according the normal asp.net style because in Mvc there is no ViewState and there are no server side control events. Data are returned back to the server through a Model Binding process. The fact that rendering and filling data in are handled in separated pieces of code make difficult to implement complex server controls in Mvc.
However, I developed a theory, and also a toolset to make quite easily custom controls ina Mvc too in the full spirit of the Mvc paradigm i.e keeping separation of concerns between Views and Controllers. See My Codeplex project. There, you will find pointers to documentation and tutorials on my blog. If you need assistance feel free to contact me.
No it is not possible to use custom controls in ASP.NET MVC. you need to re-write in MVC way
A friend has asked me to help him with a project that's MVC. This is my first experience with MVC. I'm trying to build the MVC components for a form for him.
A page has a modal popup which uses a JavaScript to POST or GET and receive HTML back—that it displays inside the popup modal.
I need to create an MVC form that has validation to display inside aforementioned popup. This popped-up form will be used elsewhere on the site, so needs to be modular.
Should I create an ActionResult in my Route's Controller that returns an View (.aspx) containing my form? Should I instead create a Partial View (.ascx) that has the form, then use that Partial View in a View for my Route so other parts of the site--other Routes--can do the same?
I'm stuck at that basic understanding. From there, I don't even know what to do about the validation (was told the same validation will be used on a nearly identical form) and how a ViewModel fits into this like is used elsewhere on the site.
I've been reading a lot and looking at a lot of examples but I'm still confused.
You've got two separate questions here really. To deal with whether you should use a partial view or a regular view, just think of it this way. Does the HTML content in question represent a full page, or just a piece of a page that will be reused inside of other pages?
If it's the former, then use a full View. If it's the latter, then put it in a partial view. It sounds to me like you just need a full View. In either case, it's easy to change to the other if it turns out it's not meeting your needs.
As to validation, take a look at xVal if you're using ASP.Net MVC 1. It allows for easy validation using attributes on your models.
When you make your post from the modal popup do the validation then in the actionmethod you created specifically for that popup. If you want client side validation write up the js to do it.
As for the modal markup and what not just create a partial view for that, shouldn't be a big deal.
In traditional ASP.NET Web Form applications, UserControls are a great way to encapsulate functionality so that it can be reused. However, UserControls don't fit well into the MVC model. They often make heavy use of ViewState and they blur the seperation of concerns that MVC promotes.
My question is, how do you best bundle a piece of functionality so it can be shared across MVC applications?
As an example, consider a from/to date-selector UserControl that:
allows a user to select two dates, either using a javascript overlay or by typing in day, month and year into seperate fields
can be configured to default to either today and tomorrow's dates or to dates of the developer's choosing
validates the dates that comes back from the user to ensure the from date is before the to date
exposes From and To properties that can be accessed by code-behind
How would I best build something like this in .NET MVC so that I can easily reuse it?
Note that to fully emulate User Control's functionality the MVC component would have to manage the submitted form data and validation - not just the presentation.
In general I would agree that user controls are nice in terms of encapsulating UI stuff, but I don't think too much has really changed in MVC. If I remember right re-using user controls across classic Asp.net projects was a pain and was never really the best way to truly create reusable components. Most UI toolkits that you bought for classic ASP.net didn't give you user controls, they gave you essentially server controls and javascript controls.
In your example, I would probably create or find a jquery (or ur framework of choice) plugin that did what you wanted on the client side. You could also build a C# wrapper around it similar to what Telerik did with some of the jquery UI controls. I do think that the word code-behind and even viewstate will disappear from your vocabulary the more you get into MVC.
If you look at what open source projects are out there for MVC you will get your answer in terms of what you should be doing.
The MVC Contrib app adds a lot of features by creating extension methods and helpers. Their grid control is a typical way to create a reusable component that you could use across projects
Telerik, created some extensions that wrap jquery controls and do asset management.
Finally I think if you look to the future, MVC has areas, which if I interpret it right will give you the ability to break your project apart into multiple smaller projects.
Besides what is already suggested, ASP.NET MVC v2 will have generic templated input controls, see here. You can read how other people do similar techniques, for example, here:
We have
exactly 1 method call for generating a
form element, “Html.InputFor”. As
part of that “InputFor”, it examines
an input specification, that collects
the PropertyInfo, any attributes, the
type, any modifiers called, and
selects an appropriate InputBuilder.
Call InputFor(p => p.Id) and Id is a
GUID? That creates a hidden input
element. Call InputFor(p =>
p.Customer.Address) and Address is a
complex type? That looks for a
partial with the same name of the type
Having considered the helpful answers from others, I will have a go at answering my own question.
It seems to me that the key difficulty with emulating UserControls in MVC is that they crosscut the concerns that MVC aims to seperate. The from/to date selector UserControl in my example incorporates elements of Model, View, Control and interation. UserControls' ability to bundle all this together is exactly the reason that they don't fit well into MVC.
That means that to create a psuedo-UserControl in MVC requires four seperate pieces:
A Model class - in this case an Interval class or similar
A PartialView that knows how to render the Model to HTML
A jQuery script to layer interactivity on top of the PartialView's HTML
A ModelBinder that can deserialise postdata into an instance of the Model class.
The ModelBinder is important because it deals with data coming back from the user. Without it, every Controller that wanted to display a to/from date selector in any of its Views would have to know how to assemble the six postdata fields - and how to cope if they were invalid or some were missing.
Two ways that I can think of. A partial view though this doesn't really transfer well from app to app because you are moving around ascx files. Not a big pain but not my flavour.
I prefer to use WebControls. They are super easy in mvc and all you need to do is reference the library in the project and possibly in your config file and there you go.
I think some of the answers have missed out on the postback functionality of controls. One way you could handle that is to pass any generic information via ViewData when rendering your partial view. That could then post back to its own control, which in turn could redirect to the UrlReferrer.
Its a little messy and use of UrlReferrer poses a security risk. But it is one way around the problem
You can create a jQuery plugin.
As user-controls provided in ASP.NET Webforms, MVC provide a lot of ways to make the controls and code that can be reused in other app.
Using Partials If your partial code have some C# logic and render the html using Razor/aspx code then it's bst to maintain them in razor file.
Write JavaScript Functionality as plugin If you maintain your code and write it as better as it can be used in other app then it would be a huge advantage for you. Next time when you work on other app just open this solution copy it and modify it. Write JavaScript code that can be used as plugin maybe take some more brainstorming.
Write Code As a Separate C# library If some code is too common for every app you make.for example you write a member authentication system or some global function (C#) that are used in every app you made then maintain them in a separate solution so it can be used in other app you made whenever you trying to make a new app in future.