I figure this is a straight forward question, and I think there is a good chance the answer is "yes" (while mixed-language projects are generally not possible, it seems to me that the View Engine gets special treatment). I know I could also try this out pretty easily myself, but for the record, and to save myself some time, I'd like to know if this combination is possible (I've not used ASP.NET MVC or Razor myself yet, I'm considering options for a new project at work).
Edit: I am particularly interested in whether this combination is possible within a single project. Or more specifically whether there are any feature losses using this combination (even if the two project setup is the way to go).
You can definitely mix a C# Razor code with F# controllers. It may be possible to do this in a single project (by modifying the web project to use F#). An easier alternative is to create a standard C# Razor Web project and a separate F# project (containing model and controller code).
I created a Visual Studio template that allows you to do exactly this.
Unfortunatelly, the template is not yet available on Visual Studio Gallery (so you cannot see it from "Online Templates" tab in "New Project" dialog). There is some issue with their upload mechanism, that I'm trying to resolve, so it should hopefully appear there soon. There are also several ASP.NET MVC templates by Daniel Mohl on Visual Studio Gallery, but I'm not sure if any of them uses Razor.
Related
Has there ever been a more confusing/difficult time to be a web developer using the Microsoft stack? That's not really my question... I know that the answer is a categorical no. :)
The single page app template that comes with VS 2013 is deplorable.
I've been working on building up a similar project template that uses Angular JS on the client, but I'm starting to spin my wheels a bit porting over the external (openId/oauth) login features.
I believe this is because of the lack of good, single-point-of-truth, and current documentation for Katana's auth/security bits and also because of how unreadable the client side code is in the S.P.A. template in visual studio 2013.
I know that I can get through it, but while I'm struggling with it, I'm wondering:
Are there any good community provided project templates or example code bases in existence that use .NET 4.5 (MVC5/Web Api 2), Angular JS, the new ASP.NET Identity stuff, and the Katana packages?
There's HotTowel.Angular, but it takes no stance on security. Besides, it's a Nuget package, which can't or shouldn't dictate as much as a proper project template can.
I agree with your observations. I have found the following setup that seems to meet your requirements and I think works very well (I don't have a template), I would suggest the following:
Create an empty WebApi2 project and adopt authentication/authorization depicted here
Use a regular index.html in the base directory as a launching point for your angular application. You can either maintain your client packages with nuget, npm, or bower.
Use whatever technique you like for organization of client code.
Personally, I would create 3 projects, One for client code, (mydomain.com) One for your api (api.mydomain.com) and one for your Model/Repository/Data Access layer.
update
Here is an open-source project that might be what you're looking for!
this is my first question. The company I work for uses a pretty large and old vb.net site. We were hoping to integrate mvc.net into the site. I've been following a book "Pro ASP.NET MVC 2 Framework" by Steven Sanderson - and it doesn't seem terrible complicated to merge the 2 systems together.
The breakdown looks like this:
Update build file - add GUIDs to so IDE gives options for mvc files.
Add assembly references for mvc.net.
enable routing. (I need to be sure it still uses the vb.net routing first, then mvc)
Merge web.configs. (Using a new blank mvc.net vb project, also where I got the GUID from)
Add whatever folders and start using mvc.
For reference, we currently use .net 3.5, but our operations team tells me 4.0 should be no problem.
The problem I run into is that the GUID from the blank mvc project doesn't work. When I add them to the older project I get "The project type is not supported by this installation." errors. I'm not very familiar with the project types and I'm not sure how to proceed from here. I've tried several combinations to with no success.
Does anyone know how to where I can get or generate the correct GUIDs to get this working? If anyone has done this, are there any other pitfalls I should watch out for? I have the project copied to another branch, so I'm free to make changes without affecting anything else.
Edit:
These are the GUIDs from our main site project:
{349c5851-65df-11da-9384-00065b846f21};
{F184B08F-C81C-45F6-A57F-5ABD9991F28F}
These are the GUIDs from a new mvc4 project (I'm not picky about MVC2-4)
{E3E379DF-F4C6-4180-9B81-6769533ABE47};
{349c5851-65df-11da-9384-00065b846f21};{fae04ec0-301f-11d3-bf4b-00c04f79efbc}
I would suggest that you leave the current code base as it is.
You can start all your new development(new modules) in ASP.Net MVC. You can then just integrate this new module in your application. This way you can keep all the regression in respected code bases.
You will face problem only in case of session. If you are having InProc session then it would be little difficult to share. If it is already OutProc then it is easy.
I have been looking at ASP.Net Web Pages and I think it would be a good replacement for some classic asp sites I am working on. There is a lot about them that is similar to how classic asp did things, so I believe there is a chance I can drag the other programmers into the present. My problem is that I have yet been able to find any indepth documentation to see if there is any "gotchas" I need to be aware of if I choose to go down this path. So if anyone knows of any, I could really use that information. I think going straight to MVC and Web Forms would be a bridge too far for the others at the moment. Thanks.
Wade
I found a link from Mike Brind - should I use WebMatrix to build a real-world website?
I'd suggest that Web Pages as a framework is probably the best next step you can take, but I would also advise that at least one person in the team takes time to understand the basics behind the MVC pattern. You may decide it's too much for the majority of the team at the moment, and that's fair enough, but you can use your knowledge to plan the development of the Web Pages site so that it can be more easily converted to MVC at some stage in the future, should you decide that's the way to go.
The things I would look at (coming from a classic ASP background myself) are functions and helpers. Decide on a data access strategy - The Entity Framework works well with Web Pages and can be transferred to MVC easily. Avoid the Database helper. Use Visual Web Developer 2010 SP1 for the Intellisense option.
As Knox said, you have the whole of the ASP.NET framework available to you so there should be no Web Pages specific "gotchas", and it's a massive step up from classic ASP.
I've been using Webmatrix/WebPages/Razor for a while now and like it. It's been a while since I used Classic ASP, but WebPages to me feels like a true successor to classic asp and what ASP.net should have been from the start. I'm actually moving most of my smaller sites to the WebPages framework from WebForms. Here are some things I've encountered.
I'm not sure if this is a gotcha or not, but I thought I would mention that with WebPages the scope of your variables may behave differently. I know a lot of Classic ASP sites that used to use include files to run snippets of code. Many of them depended on global variables set in the parent document. In WebPages, if you use RenderPage or Helpers to replace includes they run mostly outside of the Parent's scope. If you used Server.Execute instead of includes then you might not notice much difference, but if you did use includes and lots of global variables you may notice it.
Another possible gotcha is in ClassicASP <%=%> doesn't encode output, but in WebPages the Razor syntax # encodes output by default.
Another thing to consider is using C# vs VB.net with Webpages. Although vb.net works you'll find that most samples, tutorials and people in forums use C#.
Finally something that bothers me is that it is named the "webpages" framework. I've found it hard to do a good Google search using the term "webpages". Even "asp.net webpages" brings back mostly webform results. I have more success using "webmatrix" or "razor".
Can't recommend any documentation but here is an introduction to Web Matrix on mikesdotnetting.com blog where he has blogged quite a lot about Web Pages with Web Matrix.
We have two production sites, developed using Web Matrix. One serves our customers, the other is an intranet for our staff. They've been running in production for almost a year. I'd say about 95% of the sites were developed purely in WebMatrix IDE with about 5% going into Visual Studio, especially for the occassional obscure debugging. We're happy with WebMatrix / Web Pages. I didn't use WebForms because I was concerned about WebForm's ability to do really lightweight pages, since many of our users are using cellular data on iPads or iPhones. I didn't use MVC because of the additional complexity, since many of our pages are just showing the user read-only data from our production database. Because WebMatrix gives you access to the complete ASP.NET library, I haven't felt held back at all.
We are currently converting our ASP pages to Web Matrix. We tried to do conversions using WebForms a few years ago, only ending in frustration. After a small learning curve on the C# and Razor syntax, our development staff feel that we made a correct decision in going with Web Matrix.
I want to implement rich reporting features in one of our asp.net mvc based web applications. The required features in the reports are
Graphs
Charts
Grouping, sub totals, page breaking, etc
Ability to export to excel, pdf, csv and other formats
Printing Support
We are ready to purchase commercial controls(if free ones are not available). Please suggest us the best of available options.
I do not know what rich reporting packages are out there that are 100% ASP.NET MVC-driven. I've seen a few talk about MVC.
But technically, you don't need an MVC-version of reporting controls. ASP.NET MVC allows you to use standard ASP.NET functions, such as WebForms, postbacks, server controls, etc. This is easy as a drop-in-place solution because ASP.NET MVC's default Convention-over-Configuration programming checks to see if a directory or file exists first, before being routed through the controller logic.
So, if there are no Asp.Net Mvc versions of graphs and charts you like - then fear not, you can fall back to the ones you've used for your previous asp.net forms projects. Even though I recommend sticking it into a dedicated directory (i.e. /reports) to keep a clean website.
I suggest you try and use a regular web form for the reports, with graphic, charts, and any other ontrol you might need. MVC views and web forms can live in the same project, noting wrong with that. At least until you find a way to do it using a MVC view.
In my own opinion, you don't have to do everything MVC in a project, you are "allowed" to do whatever you need to do to make your application work the way you want to.
You can use the asp.net chart control which is free to download and supported with ASP.net MVC
I found this while searching for something similar.
http://www.componentsource.com/products/syncfusion-essential-studio-aspnet-mvc/index-gbp.html
I haven't used it though. There is a trial download.
Has anyone successfully used a CMS developed for standard ASP.NET with ASP.NET MVC?
I currently use Immediacy CMS and it seems to be quite tightly coupled with standard ASP.NET, but I'd really like to start using ASP.NET MVC.
Are there any CMS systems out there directed at MVC?
How could I persuade my employer to move to ASP.NET MVC?
I suggest take a look to Kooboo (kooboo.com), a simple to use but powerful for developers. Well documented API and based upon ASP.NET MVC (of course ;-)
N2 CMS has an example site in ASP.NET MVC that I've been playing around with that works quite nicely - note that the code is now hosted on Google Code.
The problem you've got is that many CMS' already do a lot of "routing" in that the pages you are requesting/editing don't actually exist on disk, but are all in a data store of some kind, and there's an HttpHandler or ISAPI Filter sitting in front of ASP.NET to intercept the requests and work out what should be happening.
I have not personally seen any of the big name CMS systems out there upgraded yet to take advantage of many of the new things the .NET framework offers, let alone start working on the MVC framework.
As with all things, a cost-benefit analysis is the best way to convince your boss to do anything. If you can point how how moving towards the MVC framework is going to make some immediate positives (as well as many long term positives) that can outweigh the costs (in time, energy, and money) in the switchover, then you have succeeded.
ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC are very different beasts in terms of how you develop applications on top of them. Technically, an ASP.NET MVC application is an ASP.NET application with some generic handler that invokes the core MVC framework.
The ASP.NET MVC framework is also relatively new (1.0 just released last MIX) and so it'll take a while before becoming mainstream.
How you can persuade your boss? Talk to him about the positive sides of ASP.NET MVC, and how it will improve his future business. There's plenty of material available to demonstrate that.
I do a lot of work using Immediacy (I used to work there) and I had thought about doing the same thing a couple of months ago. I think that the main issues would result from things like the plug-in handler, the idoc handler and (if your still using it) the ilink hander.
When you enable things like friendly URLS I think this would cause issues if you had similar named methods in your controller actions.
You may be able use some MVC in your project, I could see it working as an admin add-in but I couldn't see it being used to usefully in the main webroot.
I would think a CMS would have to be built using MVC in mind to get the most benefits from using the pattern, instead of trying to make it work in parallel with a pre-existing system API (limited as it is) and making more work for yourself.