Related
I am not starting an argumentative discussion here and this post is not about career development, but from the commercial point of view:
If a company was using ASP.Net MVC as a main methodology to build their web sites and application.
However, ASP.Net MVC takes more time to show a functional application than ASP.Net Web Forms, for example, building domain models would take some time which obviously can't be represented on a UI at that current stage.
My question is, if a client wants to see a functional demo application (just a proof of concept) so he knows that the company he is dealing with is professional and capable of doing that. Would it be better to do that demo in ASP.Net Web Forms only to show the client, and then work on the real application using ASP.Net MVC? If not, what are the (quick) alternatives?, I mean, if we tell the client to wait till we have a working demo (by ASP.Net MVC) we may lose the client and the whole project opportunity.
WebForms being faster than MVC is a myth:
You are not required to have a domain model, just something that represents your database tables. This is the same in WebForms unless you are using SqlDataSource's.
The code in your !IsPostBack or btnSubmit_OnSubmit is almost identical to the HttpPost controller actions. Except with MVC you don't have to write left to write object.FirstName = txtFirstName.Text when you understand how UpdateModel works.
UI is UI. If you know HTML/CSS creating the UI is just as easy. Almost easier in MVC because you don't have to set control properties any longer and all UI can be done in one place.
Fast MVC comes from understanding how to get the most bang from your buck using EditorFor, DisplayFor templates. You'll need to know and understand how to customize your Object.ascx file. With this technique under your belt you won't have to create forms by hand anymore. 2 projects ago we had a site with 100% autogenerated forms. Change a class, change a form. Done!
Another helpful MVC tool is the DataAnnotations attributes. Validation made easy. Customizing these is really easy too. Just create your own ModelMetaDataProvider and starting expanding the validations your application can handle.
The only part of MVC that is slower is displaying a grid. MVC 3 already has a useful grid tool and MVCContrib has had a grid tool out for a year now. I ended up rolling my own, its very simple actually, loop through properties, write <td />'s. < 200 lines of code. This isn't really a benefit to WebForms either. To use WebForms grid components means giving up a lot of quality using ObjectDataSources and the like.
To summarize fast MVC comes from these different techniques:
Object.ascx
ModelMetadataProviders
UpdateModel
DataAnnotations
If you are more advanced and know ORMS like EntityFramework and how to use Automapper your probably going to be even faster.
You can get a demo up and running very quickly in MVC. I could put one together much quicker than with WebForms, and I am familiar with both.
The reliance on convention in MCV will help a lot, binding is based on the names of objects.
If i was creating a quick demo, i would just create a bunch of ViewModels with static data in them, different button clicks etc will just bind one of these ViewModels to the page.
Turbo Fast!
I build prototypes in excel. No logic, no code. just basically screenshots to show the user that we are communicating the same ideas. Create a worksheet for each "View" or screen you need to show. Client's usually only care how "pretty" an application looks vs does it work right.
This also is a benefit as you can include more non-technical users in the prototyping process, since most are used to excel. I can send you an example and the finished production web application, if seeing is believing. I personally learn best by example.
And to your post where you wrote...
I mean, if we tell the client to wait till we have a working demo (by ASP.Net MVC) we may lose the client and the whole project opportunity.
They need to have their expectations adjusted and managed. A lot of bad development has been done quickly over the years, which makes client's ask questions like "Bob did it in 1 hour'. To that I say, you can either have a lousy project fast, that you have to constantly duct tape or a well thought out and well written project that will only need to be enhanced as Bus Reqs change
I think the answer is obvious: use whichever you think makes you faster. There's no point in using MVC if you are faster in WebForms. Especially since this is for a throw-away demo.
I know this question has been asked before and I read all the answers but they still don't give me the answers I am looking for. I need something concrete. I volunteered to give a presentation on MVC to other developers in our group which forces me to learn it. The big question everyone has is: "What can MVC bring to the table that we can't do in asp.net or MVC can do faster. I have just gone through Nerd Dinner and actually created a complete website that sort of mimics Nerd Dinner. But as great a job that Scott Guthrie did on it, there are big gaps that aren't answered such as, how do I throw a textbox on the listing page with a button and do a simple search. In asp.net, I would throw a textbox, button and grid on the page and bind it to a sproc and away I go. What is the equivalent in MVC. I guess I need a really good tutorial on how to use MVC without using Linq-to-Sql.
I know I am sort of babbling on about this but it is a very serious question that still seems to go unanswered.
On a side note, the View page of MVC brings back nightmares of classic asp with all the in-line code that we got away from way back when with code behind pages. Yes, MVC has Controller and Model classes which are great but I still don't like the classic asp tags in the html.
Help me out here, I really like the concept of MVC and want it to be successful but I need more!
how do I throw a textbox on the listing page with a button and do a simple search. In asp.net, I would throw a textbox, button and grid on the page and bind it to a sproc and away I go
That's exactly the biggest problem behind "classic" ASP.NET aka WebForms.
You shouldn't be thinking in terms of pages, buttons and events.
You should learn the basics of how web works. Then you'd understand that the web speaks in terms of HTTP protocol, its commands GET, POST and others. Presentation is HTML, CSS and the Document Object Model which is where JavaScript comes into play. And there are in fact no pages, an url is just a pointer to a resource which is not necessarily mapped to a physical file (.html or .aspx) on the server.
the View page of MVC brings back nightmares of classic asp with all the in-line code that we got away from way back when with code behind pages.
I also came to MVC after staying with WebForms and I discovered I like the inline code very much. It makes the view structure very clear, which cannot be said about the coupling of static markup (aspx) + manipulating server controls in code-behind. The latter is actually a nightmare - your code is generating the markup output but you don't see where and how.
What can MVC bring to the table that we can't do in asp.net or MVC can do faster
It removes the ugly stateful abstraction which WebForms gave us. You're now back where it started. What you have now is:
Option to separate your presentation part (views) from your application logic. Before there was all mixed together, code-behind talking to the database, calling other services, modifying the markup. It was mess. It resulted in lots of serious applications written but hardly maintainable any more.
Ability to automatically test your application logic. With WebForms and code-behind, how would you invoke a certain scenario? You'd use tools like Selenium to mimic user activities. Now, when your views are just a passive presentation layer, you don't have this problem any more. You test your business logic and model output very easily. Views are there to display the results. If the model got the correct data in a particular scenario, the view will display it correctly. If not then not. Period. No need to test views.
Control over your markup. That is if you care. If you a former Windows developer who doesn't give a damn about HTML documents being valid, being semantically correct and optimized for web engines, then it's of no use to you. I mean, "pages" are sort of displayed, user clicks are processed like in desktop application, what else, right? But if you were interested in all those things, then you'd look at the final markup output and see that it is ugly, with lots of errors, limitations which you simply can't fix. Because it's how controls, buttons, data grids etc. display themselves. An attempt to fix them would require to override markup generation of those controls which is a heavy task. Why don't just drop it and do everything manually?
What MVC takes from the table?
A server-side processing of "control" "events", like in Windows programming. If you're developing a desktop-like application for web medium, like those typical "business" software with dozens and hundreds of controls to drive you crazy, then MVC will drive you crazy, because you will have to wire each single control individually with JavaScript.
But if you're not developing those kinds of applications (which require certain mental abilities to work with), but developing modern usable software for web, then WebForms would drive you crazy. Sooner or later.
I was also learning MVC in the past few days. My experience is that is provides a much less complicated model of the web.
While WebForms promised that it will make web development very close to Windows development with a complicated event model, controls, and all the stuff.
Why? Because at the time Microsoft's developer base was mostly VB and C++ developers who were thinking in terms of forms, controls, and this provided an easy way for them to begin developing for the web.
What MVC provides is more control over the underlying protocol and more control over the HTML you output.
Plus, they give you ASP.NET routing built-in, so your URLs will also look and feel much better.
An example: StackOverflow was built using ASP.NET MVC.
Your example:
how do I throw a textbox on the
listing page with a button and do a
simple search. In asp.net, I would
throw a textbox, button and grid on
the page and bind it to a sproc and
away I go.
You create an Action for it in the current Controller, throw a form on the page with Html.BeginForm which points to that action (remember, with MVC, you can have multiple forms on pages), throw a textbox and a submit button in it.
Then, according to your taste, you can either create a separate view for the search results, or reuse the existing view. The new action can be named the same as the old one, with [HttpPost] on it (or [HttpGet] if you prefer that), so the URL won't confuse the users more. You can then call your SPROC in your action and you are good to go.
(All this accomplishable in a matter of minutes.)
The other thing I like about MVC is that it is basically VERY EASY to create CRUD operations with it. (Like NerdDinner.)
VS generates 80% of the code required for your views, which then you can customise very easily.
I recommend you reading the whole book and not only the NerdDinner free episode, it gives you a very good picture about the technology.
The bulky Behind code is one the biggest issue with Webform. The RAD approach is good to create project faster but the growing bulky behind code is not maintainable , reusable and testable. There are 5 problems which MVC resolves of WebForm.
Problem 1 :- Webform was a View based solution for Action based requirement
Problem 2:- Tight coupling between behind code and view
Problem 3:- HTML is not the only response type in Webform it was not flexible
Problem 4:- Flexible Combination of view and data not possible with webforms
Problem 5:- Behind code was a heavy bulky class which can not be instantiated.
All the above points has been explained in this codeproject article http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/821275/Why-ASP-NET-MVC-ASP-NET-MVC-vs-ASP-NET-webforms
The following article got me started with MVC
ASP.NET web forms aren't going
anywhere. As much as I love ASP.NET
MVC, it is not the end-all-be-all
one-size-fits-all solution to web
development. Both of these approaches
have their rightful place in a web
developer's toolbox and it's important
to recognize their strengths and
weaknesses. In general, the ASP.NET
MVC framework tends to sacrafice
ease-of-use (e.g. viewstate,
validation, etc.) in order give
developers tighter control over the
reins. This can be a great thing, but
only if you take advantage of it.
Otherwise it can just as easily be a
hindrance.
With that in mind, I have developed a
quick metric to determine if ASP.NET
MVC is right for you. The way I see
it, there are three primary reasons a
developer should choose the ASP.NET
MVC framework over ASP.NET web forms.
If none of these reasons are
compelling to you, then you should
stick with ASP.NET web forms:
To Unit Test This, in my opinion, is
the most compelling reason to use
ASP.NET MVC. When it comes to unit
testing, ASP.NET MVC simply blows
ASP.NET web forms out of the water.
It's not even close. Whereas ASP.NET
web forms requires you to jump through
all sorts of hoops to test around the
page event lifecycle, the ASP.NET MVC
framework practically begs to be
tested. There are interfaces
everywhere screaming "mock me!".
There's a reason why the biggest
ASP.NET MVC supporters also tend to be
TDD proponents; it's because ASP.NET
MVC actually allows for TDD.
Personally, I think this is where all
the zeal comes from. Simply put: it's
really, really hard to do TDD with
ASP.NET web forms and really, really
easy to do it in ASP.NET MVC.
To Gain Control and Extensibility As
pointed out in the comments, ASP.NET
MVC gives you more control and
extensibility options than ASP.NET web
forms. You get complete control over
the page request lifecycle and the
ability to substitute out several key
pieces of the framework (e.g. view
engine, routing, etc.), none of which
is possible with ASP.NET web forms.
In addition to this, you also gain
full control over the rendered HTML.
In general, the rendered HTML from
ASP.NET web forms applications is
atrocious. The web controls it
utilizes generate garbage ids and
hidden fields galore that not only
hamper the performance of a site, but
also make CSS styling and Javascript
development a pain. ASP.NET MVC
forces you to be more in tune with
your HTML. There aren't any repeaters
or datagrids that magically generate
markup for you. There aren't any
hidden fields to persist state for
you. It's just you, the HTML, and a
few extension methods (which you don't
even have to use).
To Learn Something New In other words,
"because you feel like it". This was
actually why I started using ASP.NET
MVC. It never hurts to look at how
you're approaching development from
another angle.
I should also point out that learning
ASP.NET MVC is incredibly engaging
process since the ASP.NET MVC
framework team has been so interactive
in the process. I think a large part
of the appeal of ASP.NET MVC is that
the community's input is not only
being taken into consideration, it is
actively being sought after. The
framework has sparked so many
discussions and debates over best
practices that simply following along
introduces you to concepts you might
previously have been unaware of. I
would actually recommend learning the
ASP.NET MVC framework for this reason
alone. The threads on TDD, BDD, ORM,
AJAX, etc. you stumble across during
the learning process are worth it.
So there you have it. Aside from
those three, I can't think of any
other reasons why a developer would
learn ASP.NET MVC. Maybe this is why
the adoption rate isn't nearly as high
as we think it should be. The
incentive for using the framework
essentially boils down to unit
testing, control/extensibility, and
boredom/curiosity. Good reasons, to
be sure, but hardly game breakers for
the vast majority of developers out
there.
Control over the HTML output - is one thing. All those fancy controls SERIOUSLY SUCK from a SEO point of view.
Plus for COMPLEX forms, the ASP.NET state model is hell, too ;)
Anyhow, an example is your search box... it sucks ;)
I would use MVC like this:
Search is a URL:
/search/keyword
or
/search/keyword/pagenr (like /search/programming/5
Good thing is: I can easily have search results spidered by google - some sites I Know get most hits from something like that.
Is it harder to program than asp.net - depends whether you want efficient HTML or not. THe control model from ASP.NET does not lead to lean defined HTML somehow.
Besides that - MVC is a lot more testable. Unit testing a classical HTML site is pretty impossible, the decoupled model of MVC makes that easier.
I don't come from a Microsoft background, so I might be missing something strictly related to ASP.NET but MVC isn't something different than ASP.NET. MVC, or model-view-controller, is an architectural principal in software design that isn't strictly for the web. Graphical user interface applications commonly use this model.
Anyway, your question is dealing with the "why". The search listing page is a good example to start with. With MVC, you can use templates to only modify the visual aspects of the search (the view). You can add buttons and format what the controller gives you without having to make changes to the controller itself. Similarly, with a view you can change the logic of what is "given" to the view without actually changing the view. Finally, you can go from a relational database to an XML database and without having to worry about changing any of the other aspects of your program. The logic is separated cleanly and this pattern fits many use-cases.
I would highly recommend seeing the Wikipedia article on MVC. It may be easier to understand using a graphical user interface (GUI) example instead of a simple web based example.
Ryan
MVC is considered as an alternative to good old asp.net, not the next step. IMHO MVC has a clear advantage if you want to write unit tests for your pages.
But I don't agree that MVC adds anything to classic asp.net in the name of performance, code quality or productivity. You can achieve same performance with asp.net by shutting down viewstate when not necessary or you can be more in control of HTML output by using lightweight server controls. (Repeater instead of DataGrid for example.)
I am new to ASP.NET Development.
Could anyone please refer a document/tutorial/link which gives a sample code, architecture, class and sequence diagrams for 3 / 4 / n tier based simple ASP.NET application/example?
It would be of great help to me.
There is a lot of techniques / tool and various ways to do what you asked with .Net so I will give you some links for various tools:
N-Tier with:
ASP.Net 2.0
http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/archive/2006/08/13/3_2D00_tier-Architecture-wtih-ASP.NET-2.0.aspx
ASP.Net 3.5
http://imar.spaanjaars.com/QuickDocId.aspx?quickdoc=476
LINQ 2 SQL
http://weblogs.asp.net/dwahlin/archive/2008/02/28/building-an-n-layer-asp-net-application-with-linq-lambdas-and-stored-procedures.aspx
Dynamic Data
http://weblogs.asp.net/craigshoemaker/archive/2008/07/01/6-steps-to-n-tier-asp-net-dynamic-data.aspx
MVC
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/aspnetmvc_bugtracker_v4.aspx
There is a lot of examples out there. Don't take the one's I have given you as the only one's but as a start for you. :-)
Happy Coding!
I made this sketch recently when explaining the difference between a typical classic Microsoft .ASP/SQL Server website architecture, and one that incorporates the newer Microsoft ASP.NET technology.
The box labeled “Front” at the top of the diagram represents a public website. Could be any size, large or small.
The “can” at the bottom represents a SQL Server database that is behind the scenes. The website user really doesn’t know or care that it is there, holding all the data for the website.
The middle area represents what can be done with ASP.NET technology. The boxes represent little “engines” of code that do specific things. One might process a credit card. One might add an item to a shopping cart. Another might list items on a page with a thumbnail image next to them. The list is endless.
The point here is that with ASP.NET, all these “engines” can be ready at anytime for use by themselves, or in combination with other “engines” to perform website tasks, and features. This lessens the amount of special code that needs to be placed inside the actual web pages represented by the top box. It is a far more efficient, and much faster technology, especially the more complex and complicated a website may be.
Just thought you might like to know that.
This may be the best collection you will find...
http://www.asp.net/get-started/
Look at sharpdevelop
It provides a solid foundation for creating asp.net mvc apps using best practices.
The project even provides Visual Studio templates.
Do yourself a favour and start with ASP.NET MVC and leave Webforms behind. Rob's Storefront tutorial is a great 3 tier example and the videos make it very easy to learn.
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Let's say that you will start a new ASP.NET web site/application tomorrow. Would you chose Web Forms or MVC, and why?
MVC baby! And JQuery!
Edit: OK, it's fair enough to say my response warrants a little more info.
I'd choose MVC for the following reasons:
I have worked in Rails and found it highly productive. ASP MVC has borrowed so much from Rails that it feels like a direct port in some ways (and that's a good thing in my mind).
AJAX is important, but I hate the Microsoft "Atlas" approach to AJAX (whatever the product name is these days). If you're going to do AJAX, you need to understand the HTML and the JavaScript. Frameworks that hide that from you are hurting you more than they are helping you (IMO).
JQuery has taken over the world it seems in terms of JavaScript frameworks. ASPMVC is well-integrated with it. I want to learn it, so there's great alignment here.
The whole "control" model is a neat idea, but it is more complicated than it appears on the surface. For example, look around on SO for questions about how a UserControl can find its highest level containing control and so forth. The control hierarchy abstraction has leaks in it. Grids are great if they do what you want out of the box, but it's very very hard to customize them to do something they weren't made to do. And the best grid controls on the market (the ones that are highly customizable) are large, bloated, overly complicated beasts. Maybe that shows us that we should drop back down to HTML and let loops in our views do that kind of thing for us.
I believe I can build complete, beautiful apps in ASPMVC much faster than in ASP.Net (and I've got some years of ASP.Net under my belt). Look at StackOverflow ... built quickly on ASPMVC with JQuery, and it's fast, scalable and a joy to use IMO.
Oh, and it's completely open source! It is ok to read the source code, blog about it, and even modify then redistribute it!
I would choose MVC simply because it's designed to be testable and mock'able. That would be the major factor in my decision.
WebForms are much more difficult to Unit Test because they're rooted in several concrete classes that are difficult, it at all possible, to Mock. These include HttpContext, HttpResponse, HttpRequest and HttpCookie.
MVC is designed to be testable and it's API greatly facilitates doing so.
Good article on the testability of MVC: http://dotnetslackers.com/articles/aspnet/ASPNETMVCFrameworkPart2.aspx
Personally, I have decided to use both...
If it's a website (viewed online), I have decided to use ASP.NET MVC.
If it was an application (web application with a single purpose) I have decided to use web forms.
This decision is purely based on the case use and the solution you trying to deliver. If you are interested in good SEO and a faster website, MVC is much cleaner HTML and faster than web forms.
However if you after a complex functionality with a lot of filters, grids, postbacks on the same page and you are well experienced in Web Forms, just stick with it.
If I were starting today I would probably still stick with webforms because of the volume of knowledge and resources surrounding it.
That said I really want to give MVC a shot and as others have mentioned the excitement within the community means it wont take long before there is a lot of support for it.
MVC FTW!, Reasons?
Total Control over my HTML
No Web Forms magic
No complex page life-cycles
Closer to the metal
It is the natural thing to use with HTTP
Is MVC the "flavor of the day", or does it have staying power?
I have worked with MVC, and have a vast amount of webform experience. I often wonder about the staying power of MVC.
You should consider this when choosing one or the other. What do you want to support for the entire product lifespan?
I can't say which I'd really go with having not tried MVC yet. But I'd be a bit worried about using it for a really big enterprise project as yet.
Scroll through pass questions and you'll see that there a lots of questions/issues with MVC (compared to good o' WebForms that is). That alone has me worried. And a lot of the questions seems to be for special UI needs. Again having not tried it I don't know how mature it is yet but I'd still be a bit worried.
Maybe someone who has used it for an enterprise project can shed some light.
While MVC is the new kid on the block there are still a lot of benefits to designing with the Web Forms model.
Familiarity with the tool
consistency of look/feel with existing projects
Tooling/designer
Postbacks
Event driven
Controls to abstract
3rd party controls that work
Rapid development
Declaritive style
Rachel Appel did a great presentation at MIX on this very topic. You can view the video here:
Choosing between ASP.NET Web Forms and MVC
http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/T23F
I would choose Webforms for local/intranet applications with rich business logic and MVC for public/internet site (blogs/forums/presentations/simple services). "WebForms application model" is preferable in areas where rich state support is critical
I have started a new Web site for our own product a week ago and I couldn't be happier with ASP.NET MVC. Everything seems natural, I always know where to go and look if something doesn't work or does not look the way I intended.
Frankly, the biggest chunk of time I've spent has been CSS. Coding, integration with jQuery... peanuts.
OTOH, if you are not experienced developer, ASP.NET will not appeal to you as it encourages you to go all the way and control all aspects of your site - HTML markup, CSS etc., which in turn means no controls, drag and drop visual editing etc.
Unlike traditional ASP.NET where you are left to yourself and often end up mixing all kinds of UI, persistence (DB) and business logic code in various pages, MVC will guide you and help you structure your app much more consistently. This will not sit with you if you don't like "opinionated" frameworks and/or just want to get the job done without caring about structure of the site, maintainability, scalability etc.
Note that it's perfectly possible not to care about this if all you're building is a one-off intranet site, but for public Internet site I'd choose MVC over classic ASP.NET every time.
MVC
... it just seems so obvious that's where the future is
In ASP.NET MVC you sacrifice your controls toolbox,
URL routing is already in ASP.NET (web forms)
So I would stick with ASP.NET web forms ( I'm not saying that MVC isn't good.)
jQuery, do you think the IT folks will let you use it?
ASP.NET MVC because I want to learn how to use it.
I would currently choose ASP.NET MVC for 2 reasons: 1) I want to learn to master it. 2) There is already a great community forming around ASP.NET MVC and everyone seems to have very positive entergy regarding it's use. I can't wait to see where it all ends up and I want to be part of it.
I would like to go with MVC. I always seam to be fighting the abstraction when I work with WebForms.
To use WebForms effectively you actually need to know more about how the web works than if you use something like PHP. I find myself using <asp:Literal instead of <asp:Label to avoid putting a <span> around the text and running labs to figure out the order of events, etc.
it really depends on the project, since i havent build anything with MVC and if the project has a short time delivery, i will probably find some hinders in MVC that could make me not to deliver the project in Time.
I wait for MVC on .net for a long time.
I think more than 90% people will choose MVC rather than webform.
If it was a personal project then I would use MVC. Just to learn more about it. If it was a project at work I would use WebForms, possibly in combination with DynamicData for the administrative parts. The reason is that I would be more productive with a technology I know, and using DynamicData for the administrative part would let me setup that part in minutes.
As always it depends upon the type of application you are developing and the individual circumstances. A lot of our internal applications are being developed in SharePoint as that is our internal platform of choice for intranet type applications.
This automatically limits us to ASP.Net on the standard model.
I really want to get to grips with MVC, but I don't have a justification for this at work and I have 2 kids and a wife at home so no time to develop at home.
Sometimes circumstances force your hand, if only we all had the choice of exactly what platform, framework etc. to develop with.
I am currently working on a project in Asp.net MVC with jQuery and jQuery-ui, and it's a lot of fun.
If you're familiar with html and javascript (or other MVC frameworks like rails), MVC makes much more sense than the old webforms. And you control the output, not some vague control on a form, so if there is an error on the page or if you want to change the layout you can :).
MVC. We're going to redo an application that is SEO intensive and MVC seams to fit right in out of the box. Plus I want to hang out with the cool kids on the playground.
I just released a major public site on the MVC platform after using webforms for all previous projects. Without a doubt it is the way to go, IMO.
With webforms, I have found the sites tend to become a mess over time as you have blocks of code in the code-behind that handles both view logic and controller logic. As the site grows and the logic gets more complex it is difficult to trace what is happening and where.
I find that that MVC forces you to break things up in a more logical manner. Controller and model classes allow you to get a better control on the organization of the application. In addition, views are more flexible because there is a specific way of providing data to them, through models.
Also, like others have mentioned, you have more control over the markup and urls and it plays nicer with client libraries like mvc.
The only time I would use MVC is if I was building and intranet site that was focused on reporting data of some sort where the built in controls that come with asp.net would save development time and I wasn't as concerned with the look and feel. I would never use asp.net webforms again for a major public facing site.
Both!
I am making the long haul to MVC. I have too much code that readily works in Web Forms. MVC is fantasic, but it sill leaves a lot in the productivty areas such as templated grids and lists, basic UI controls (calender, autocomplete, etc.) and scafolding. These are all areas where Web Forms excels at, but comes off the rails if you want precise control and want to keep things simple.
MVC 3 and EF Code-Only could be a great marriage if they are willing to bridge the gaps between the two. Most people that use Ruby use it for Rails, and ActiveRecord makes that easy to work with.
Also I would love to see a parallel "Feature Pack" project for MVC with MS support, similar to the way they did the Microsoft Ajax Toolkit, that would say have quarterly updates. I find MVC Futures and MVCContrib both lacking. But I know they only have so much budget. So, here's to hoping that MVC 3 changes all that.
Just say NO to ASP.NET MVC if you are developing for Intranet. For Internet, sure.
Hmm.. At the moment I am confused like you are and about to start building a new site :). I was going to start with Webforms, but now I see where the crowd is heading and I think I am going to give MVC a whirl now.
Thanks for asking this question.
Now that it's RTMed and now that there are some very good resources on it I would say ASP.net MVC would be my strong preference, but it's not cut and dried.
Web forms hasn't gone though, it's still there, it's still supported and I've worked on several major sites and used Web Forms very successfully, so if there were other external factors such as a customer preference, or perhaps a team that had solid Web Forms experience then I'd still be happy to work with Web Forms. That said I have already worked on one project with MVC (while it was still in preview), and I much prefer it - my reasons are similar to those given above so I won't repeat them all. I will say that if testability isn't the best reason it's certainly in the top one:).
I would choose MVC since designers and developers can work in parallel on the same project. Designers can work on the view part (JavaScript, CSS, HTML) while backend developers can work on the controller code.
I would like to be doing ASP.Net MVC, even though I'm still very new to MVC. But it's not to be in the foreseeable future.
I'm actually going to be starting a rebuild of a web site in the next couple of weeks that was horribly written in ASP.NET 2.0 and I am going to be using ASP.NET MVC. For a lot of the same reasons as above. I would rather not use custom .NET controls and handle the HTML/JavaScript (using jQuery) myself. I do a lot of Java web development as well so having a good understanding of the underlying HTML/JavaScript/CSS is important to me.
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What are some of the advantages of using one over the other?
The main advantages of ASP.net MVC are:
Enables the full control over the rendered HTML.
Provides clean separation of concerns(SoC).
Enables Test Driven Development (TDD).
Easy integration with JavaScript frameworks.
Following the design of stateless nature of the web.
RESTful urls that enables SEO.
No ViewState and PostBack events
The main advantage of ASP.net Web Form are:
It provides RAD development
Easy development model for developers those coming from winform development.
ASP.NET Web Forms and MVC are two web frameworks developed by Microsoft - they are both good choices. Neither of the web frameworks are to be replaced by the other nor are there plans to have them 'merged' into a single framework. Continued support and development are done in parallel by Microsoft and neither will be 'going away'.
Each of these web frameworks offers advantages/disadvantages - some of which need to be considered when developing a web application. A web application can be developed using either technology - it might make development for a particular application easier selecting one technology versus the other and vice versa.
ASP.NET Web Forms:
Development supports state
• Gives the illusion that a web application is aware of what the user has been doing, similar to Windows applications. I.e. Makes 'wizard' functionality a little bit easier to implement. Web forms does a great job at hiding a lot of that complexity from the developer.
Rapid Application Development (RAD)
• The ability to just 'jump in' and start delivering web forms. This is disputed by some of the MVC community, but pushed by Microsoft. In the end, it comes down to the level of expertise of the developer and what they are comfortable with. The web forms model probably has less of a learning curve to less experienced developers.
Larger control toolbox
• ASP.NET Web Forms offers a much greater and more robust toolbox (web controls) whereas MVC offers a more primitive control set relying more on rich client-side controls via jQuery (Javascript).
Mature
• It's been around since 2002 and there is an abundance of information with regards to questions, problems, etc. Offers more third-party control - need to consider your existing toolkits.
ASP.NET MVC:
Separation of concerns (SoC)
• From a technical standpoint, the organization of code within MVC is very clean, organized and granular, making it easier (hopefully) for a web application to scale in terms of functionality. Promotes great design from a development standpoint.
Easier integration with client side tools (rich user interface tools)
• More than ever, web applications are increasingly becoming as rich as the applications you see on your desktops. With MVC, it gives you the ability to integrate with such toolkits (such as jQuery) with greater ease and more seamless than in Web Forms.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Friendly / Stateless
• URL's are more friendly to search engines (i.e. mywebapplication.com/users/ 1 - retrieve user with an ID of 1 vs mywebapplication/users/getuser.aspx (id passed in session)). Similarly, since MVC is stateless, this removes the headache of users who spawn multiple web browsers from the same window (session collisions). Along those same lines, MVC adheres to the stateless web protocol rather than 'battling' against it.
Works well with developers who need high degree of control
• Many controls in ASP.NET web forms automatically generate much of the raw HTML you see when an page is rendered. This can cause headaches for developers. With MVC, it lends itself better towards having complete control with what is rendered and there are no surprises. Even more important, is that the HTML forms typically are much smaller than the Web forms which can equate to a performance boost - something to seriously consider.
Test Driven Development (TDD)
• With MVC, you can more easily create tests for the web side of things. An additional layer of testing will provide yet another layer of defense against unexpected behavior.
Authentication, authorization, configuration, compilation and deployment are all features that are shared between the two web frameworks.
Anyone old enough to remember classic ASP will remember the nightmare of opening a page with code mixed in with html and javascript - even the smallest page was a pain to figure out what the heck it was doing. I could be wrong, and I hope I am, but MVC looks like going back to those bad old days.
When ASP.Net came along it was hailed as the savior, separating code from content and allowing us to have web designers create the html and coders work on the code behind. If we didn't want to use ViewState, we turned it off. If we didn't want to use code behind for some reason, we could place our code inside the html just like classic ASP. If we didn't want to use PostBack we redirected to another page for processing. If we didn't want to use ASP.Net controls we used standard html controls. We could even interrogate the Response object if we didn't want to use ASP.Net runat="server" on our controls.
Now someone in their great wisdom (probably someone who never programmed classic ASP) has decided it's time to go back to the days of mixing code with content and call it "separation of concerns". Sure, you can create cleaner html, but you could with classic ASP. To say "you are not programming correctly if you have too much code inside your view" is like saying "if you wrote well structured and commented code in classic ASP it is far cleaner and better than ASP.NET"
If I wanted to go back to mixing code with content I'd look at developing using PHP which has a far more mature environment for that kind of development. If there are so many problems with ASP.NET then why not fix those issues?
Last but not least the new Razor engine means it is even harder to distinguish between html and code. At least we could look for opening and closing tags i.e. <% and %> in ASP but now the only indication will be the # symbol.
It might be time to move to PHP and wait another 10 years for someone to separate code from content once again.
If you're working with other developers, such as PHP or JSP (and i'm guessing rails) - you're going to have a much easier time converting or collaborating on pages because you wont have all those 'nasty' ASP.NET events and controls everywhere.
The problem with MVC is that even for "experts" it eats up a lot of valuable time and requires lot of effort. Businesses are driven by the basic thing "Quick Solution that works" regardless of technology behind it. WebForms is a RAD technology that saves time and money. Anything that requires more time is not acceptable by businesses.
Proper AJAX, e.g. JSONResults no
partial page postback nonsense.
no viewstate +1
No renaming of the HTML IDs.
Clean HTML = no bloat and having a decent shot at rendering XHTML or standards
compliant pages.
No more generated AXD javascript.
Biggest single advantage for me would be the clear-cut separation between your Model, View, and Controller layers. It helps promote good design from the start.
I have not seen ANY advantages in MVC over ASP.Net. 10 years ago Microsoft came up with UIP (User Interface Process) as the answer to MVC. It was a flop. We did a large project (4 developers, 2 designers, 1 tester) with UIP back then and it was a sheer nightmare.
Don't just jump in to bandwagon for the sake of Hype. All of the advantages listed above are already available in Asp.Net (With more great tweaks [ New features in Asp.Net 4 ] in Asp.Net 4).
If your development team or a single developer families with Asp.Net just stick to it and make beautiful products quickly to satisfy your clients (who pays for your work hours). MVC will eat up your valuable time and produce the same results as Asp.Net :-)
Francis Shanahan,
Why do you call partial postback as "nonsense"? This is the core feature of Ajax and has been utilized very well in Atlas framework and wonderful third party controls like Telerik
I agree to your point regarding the viewstate. But if developers are careful to disable viewstate, this can greatly reduce the size of the HTML which is rendered thus the page becomes light weight.
Only HTML Server controls are renamed in ASP.NET Web Form model and not pure html controls. Whatever it may be, why are you so worried if the renaming is done? I know you want to deal with lot of javascript events on the client side but if you design your web pages smartly, you can definitely get all the id's you want
Even ASP.NET Web Forms meets XHTML Standards and I don't see any bloating. This is not a justification of why we need an MVC pattern
Again, why are you bothered with AXD Javascript? Why does it hurts you? This is not a valid justification again
So far, i am a fan of developing applications using classic ASP.NET Web forms. For eg: If you want to bind a dropdownlist or a gridview, you need a maximum of 30 minutes and not more than 20 lines of code (minimal of course). But in case of MVC, talk to the developers how pain it is.
The biggest downside of MVC is we are going back to the days of ASP. Remember the spaghetti code of mixing up Server code and HTML??? Oh my god, try to read an MVC aspx page mixed with javascript, HTML, JQuery, CSS, Server tags and what not....Any body can answer this question?
Web forms also gain from greater maturity and support from third party control providers like Telerik.
In webforms you could also render almost whole html by hand, except few tags like viewstate, eventvalidation and similar, which can be removed with PageAdapters. Nobody force you to use GridView or some other server side control that has bad html rendering output.
I would say that biggest advantage of MVC is SPEED!
Next is forced separation of concern. But it doesn't forbid you to put whole BL and DAL logic inside Controller/Action! It's just separation of view, which can be done also in webforms (MVP pattern for example). A lot of things that people mentions for mvc can be done in webforms, but with some additional effort.
Main difference is that request comes to controller, not view, and those two layers are separated, not connected via partial class like in webforms (aspx + code behind)
My 2 cents:
ASP.net forms is great for Rapid application Development and adding business value quickly. I still use it for most intranet applications.
MVC is great for Search Engine Optimization as you control the URL and the HTML to a greater extent
MVC generally produces a much leaner page - no viewstate and cleaner HTML = quick loading times
MVC easy to cache portions of the page.
-MVC is fun to write :- personal opinion ;-)
MVC lets you have more than one form on a page, A small feature I know but it is handy!
Also the MVC pattern I feel make the code easier to maintain, esp. when you revisiting it after a few months.
MVC Controller:
[HttpGet]
public ActionResult DetailList(ImportDetailSearchModel model)
{
Data.ImportDataAccess ida = new Data.ImportDataAccess();
List<Data.ImportDetailData> data = ida.GetImportDetails(model.FileId, model.FailuresOnly);
return PartialView("ImportSummaryDetailPartial", data);
}
MVC View:
<table class="sortable">
<thead>
<tr><th>Unique Id</th><th class="left">Error Type</th><th class="left">Field</th><th class="left">Message</th><th class="left">State</th></tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
#foreach (Data.ImportDetailData detail in Model)
{
<tr><th>#detail.UniqueID</th><th class="left">#detail.ErrorType</th><th class="left">#detail.FieldName</th><th class="left">#detail.Message</th><th class="left">#detail.ItemState</th></tr>
}
</tbody></table>
How hard is that? No ViewState, No BS Page life-cycle...Just pure efficient code.
I can see the only two advantages for smaller sites being:
6) RESTful urls that enables SEO.
7) No ViewState and PostBack events (and greater performance in general)
Testing for small sites is not an issue, neither are the design advantages when a site is coded properly anyway, MVC in many ways obfuscates and makes changes harder to make. I'm still deciding whether these advantages are worth it.
I can clearly see the advantage of MVC in larger multi-developer sites.
Main benefit i find is it forces the project into a more testable strcuture.
This can pretty easily be done with webforms as well (MVP pattern), but requires the developer to have an understanding of this, many dont.
Webforms and MVC are both viable tools, both excel in different areas.
I personally use web forms as we primarily develop B2B/ LOB apps.
But we always do it with an MVP pattern with wich we can achieve 95+% code coverage for our unit tests.
This also alows us to automate testing on properties of webcontrols
property value is exposed through the view eg
bool IMyView.IsAdminSectionVisible{
get{return pnlAdmin.Visible;}
get{pnlAdmin.Visible=value;}
}
)
I dont think this level of testing is as easily achived in MVC, without poluting my model.
You don't feel bad about using 'non post-back controls' anymore - and figuring how to smush them into a traditional asp.net environment.
This means that modern (free to use) javascript controls such this or this or this can all be used without that trying to fit a round peg in a square hole feel.
Modern javascript controls as well as JSON requests can be handled much easily using MVC. There we can use a lot of other mechanisms to post data from one action to another action. That's why we prefer MVC over web forms. Also we can build light weight pages.
My personal opinion is that,
Biggest dis-advantage to using ASP.Net MVC is that CODE BLOCKS mixed with HTML...
html hell for the developers who maintain it...