I have been learning to develop websites using ASP.NET MVC 2 for work... and previous to this, I had never developed within an .NET environment before. Since I jumped right into using MVC, I honestly have no idea how else to develop websites with ASP.NET.
I've heard about "WebForms" here and there, but don't really get the difference. But, beyond that, what other means of web development is there with ASP.NET?
It's all very backwards, I know... but if you can just humor me and perhaps list the different ways of utilizing C# to develop great web applications, that would be extremely useful.
ASP.NET is the platform for developing .NET web applications.
Sitting on top of that platform is two technologies to choose from:
ASP.NET Web Forms
ASP.NET MVC
Web Forms uses WinForms-style development - drag/drop, event handlers, page lifecycle, statefulness with ViewState - all things evil in my opinion.
MVC as you know has no page lifecycle, no event handlers, no server controls (you can, but not recommended/required), no ViewState.
Don't really know what else i can say without going into too much detail.
Both technologies will be continued to be supported/enhanced.
But since your already versed in ASP.NET MVC - i seen no benefit in learning Web Forms. It would be a step back if anything.
As for this statement:
just humor me and perhaps list the different ways of utilizing C# to develop great web applications
That's a bit too broad/subjective.
What is "great"? Well performing? Looks good? Maintainable? All of the above?
No doubt - MVC will do a better job at most things than Web Forms.
Only feasible choice for a Web Forms app might be a intranet application where tons of complex grids/controls are required, and things like SEO/AJAX is not required.
Everything else should be done in MVC IMO.
Related
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 very new to web development, have many years background on the desktop, but nothing on web, only html. I want to make a simple dynamic webpage for a product I've been working on by myself, but I don't know which of the two, MVC or WebForms, would be easier for me.
The lessons at asp.net didn't help me much, I took the "first step" tutorials for both MVC and WebForms, but I still don't see any significant difference.
What I ask for is an examplanation for a person, who's not professional at web development, or better yet, for a desktop programmer.
If you're used to the desktop, and WinForms or WPF in particular, go with webforms to more easily grok what's going on. The server controls will appear to keep their state, and it'll more a more natural progression. You'll find that the server controls do a lot of work for you, and you should be able to spin up an application using the knowledge from the WinForms world.
If you're used with desktop programming paradigms winforms should be a lot easier to learn.
If you want to go more into web-programming "as it should be" I'd personally advice you to learn MVC (anyway this is my personal opinion ;) ).
If it's a quick application with limited pages, take a look at webmatrix, that might get you up and running quickly. I'd also recommend you going for webforms if you're from a desktop environment as this was developed to mimic the event driven approach and tries to abstract the stateless form of the web.
It depends what tools you have at your disposal
The latest Visual studio has great templates and scaffolding wizards for MVC, the guts of your site will be created for you so you can focus on your product.
The world is moving away from web forms to MVC
- so the experience will also have more value on your resume (if that means anything to you)
Webmatrix or wordpress are also good options if it’s more web ‘site’ than a web ‘application’.
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 am wanting to learn ASP.Net and am just a beginner. I have done some windows c# forms development before but have no experience of web development.
I have looked at the ASP.net website but beyond this, does anyone have any ideas as to good learning resources particulary in relation to the differences to windows development. For instance, It seems that the way events work is quite different under ASP to windows forms.
Thanks you all.
Thank you very much. I will have a look at MVC. It looks even more complicated but if this is the way things are going then I would be better maybe to invest my learning in this.
I would advise you at this stage in ASP.NETs life to instead direct your attention at ASP.NET-MVC. This url http://www.asp.net/mvc/ is a very good resource for learning.
ASP.NET Forms do a good job of hiding the nature of a connection-less HTTP/browser based technology and presenting a familiar Form with controls and lots of useful events environment that Windows Forms developers are used to.
However this approach comes with a price. For any serious project there is no avoiding getting under the hood of ASP.NET forms and properly understanding the underlying technology. At this point you start to realise the significant compromises the ASP.NET Forms has had to make in order to make Windows Forms developers feel at home.
ASP.NET-MVC, on the other, makes no such compromises. Learning MVC means learning how HTTP works up-front. It also has the advantage of being a much more test friendly approach which when used properly will save you days of debugging.
ASP.NET website - seriously, it's a really good resource.
I'd seriously consider starting with ASP.NET MVC. You'll end up learning what you need from ASP.NET "classic" but you'll pick up all the goodness of MVC (testability, seperation of concerns in your code etc) instead of learning bad habits.
Google for "ASP.NET MVC", check out ScottGu's blog, Scott Hanselmans's blog, or search StackOverflow for ASP.NET MVC (use the ASP.NET MVC tag too).
One good place to start...
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/04/01/asp-net-mvc-1-0.aspx
I know they are a bit out of date, but I still think the two Fritz Onion books give a great look at what's happening in ASP.NET under the hood.
Some resources:
asp.net (as you mentioned)
channel9
scott hanselman's blog (some useful entries)
Windows Client Homepage
W3Schools Tutorials (Useful for more than just .NET, but this is the .NET page)
I've been a .NET Windows Forms (not Web forms) developer for 1 and a half years. Then I switched jobs and started using WebForms for like... 2 years. Then I discovered ASP.NET MVC (January 2008) and since then although I still master ASP.NET WebForms I will always prefer ASP.NET MVC.
My recommendation also goes into ASP.NET MVC. You will have to learn HTTP, HTML and a bit of Javascript but after these you will master web development on ALL PLATFORMS.
A great alternative to ASP.NET MVC is ASP.NET Web Pages with Razor syntax. In fact, the latest release of ASP.NET MVC and the latest release of ASP.NET Web Pages both use the same view engine.
Here is a link to the complete ASP.NET Web Pages book:
Getting Started with WebMatrix and ASP.NET Web Pages
Also, here is the complete WebMatrix Content Guide:
WebMatrix Content Guide
Here's the description:
WebMatrix is a free, lightweight set of web development tools that provides the easiest way to build websites. It includes IIS Express (a development web server), ASP.NET (a web framework), and SQL Server Compact (an embedded database). It also includes a simple tool that streamlines website development and makes it easy to start websites from popular open source apps. The skills and code you develop with WebMatrix transition seamlessly to Visual Studio and SQL Server.
We are about to embark on a large enterprise application. I am seriously considering using ASP.NET MVC because:
We need to use Microsoft technology (biz logic is all C#)
Performance is critical
I'd like to test as much as possible
My team has only used PHP for web development, but are very experienced with .NET winforms (so either way we have a learning curve). My concern is that some people have expressed concerns about ASP.NET MVC's scalability to large apps. But from what I read webforms have their own problems as well.
Should I be reconsidering webforms, or stick with my gut and use ASP.NET MVC?
Related:
Should I build my next web app in ASP.NET MVC?
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/521388/from-webforms-to-asp-net-mvc
ASP.NET webforms are heavyweight and drop a crapton of stuff on your webpages, both in html/javascript and serialized viewstate. I remember my first ASP.NET website causing the GC to blowed up because of all the short-lived objects being rehydrated from that godawful viewstate. Oh, when I was young and naive (i.e., 2 years ago)... You have to have a very good understanding of webforms to build scalable websites from them. Possible? Definitely. Easy? Not.
ASP.NET MVC is harder to code initially, but is SO much easier to develop than webforms. The hardest things to learn are 1) the conventions aka "magic strings", 2) Html + inline code aka ASP and 3) html forms.
With MVC, you can't get away with the state nightmare that is so common to webforms development, which means that means your webpages are meth-addict slim. It also means you have to code your state a little smarter. The code is also MUCH simpler and scales MUCH better than traditional webforms, imho.
Also, testing with ASP.NET is near impossible, due to the hard-coded and unmockable dependencies baked into the framework. ASP.NET MVC replaced all of these with System.Web.Abstractions members that are mockable wrappers around these badly-designed and untestable objects.
Run, don't walk, to MVC.
For the obvious-impared, if you use a framework that sits ontop of the ASP.NET framework, such as MVC or any other that you wrote or that somebody else wrote, OBVIOUSLY some of these remarks don't apply.
If, on the other hand, you code as early man did against the ASP.NET webforms model (e.g., Response.Write() in Page_Load), my comments apply.
Can you write code that's testable against ASP.NET? Sure. Can you do it without including special testing code you or somebody else wrote? Sure. If you have TypeMock.
ASP.NET WebForms is very much like Winforms and allows for RAD (rapid application development). It's very fast to get something in no-time. Problem with this is testing can be a major pain and if used for anything public facing can mean some major issues with ViewState. WebForms can hold state making things like a wizard a breeze to use.
ASP.NET MVC on the other hand can take a little longer to develop with and requires that devs understand how HTTP works. It's a stateless architecture meaning each request is it's own little world and usually has no knowledge of previous requests. The framework also allows for high testability.
As far as performance goes they're probably the same because ASP.NET MVC is just a framework built on top of the existing ASP.NET architecture. Though for client-side experience I'd say MVC is a bit faster.
As far as scalability I would say they're about the same as far as technical goes. How as for using the API and integrating it MVC would probably be a bit easier.
The website you're using right now to ask this version question is built on ASP.NET MVC and they have 2 web servers and a beefy db server.
ASP.NET MVC is not a problem for Enterprise, but neither is ASP.NET, Silverlight, etc. They are all UI technologies. The majority of your application logic should exist in libraries beneath the UI layer anyway, so pretty much any UI can be used.
We need to use Microsoft technology
Performance is critical
I'd like to test as much as possible
Based on the above, ASP.NET MVC will work. But, you can move the code down below the UI and test. If your algorithms are below the UI, you can tune them without altering the UI. And, if the UI layer is very thin, the perf hit for the UI is negligible.
No. One thing that the ASP.NET MVC has over ASP.NET Web Forms in terms of performance is that it doesn't make use of a control tree. The control tree consumes a lot of server side memory and keeps the garbage collector very busy on pages with many controls. I would argue that you would get superior performance from the ASP.NET MVC. The unit testing aspects of it are a real win to.
The flip side of this is that you can't use all of the handy out of the box controls that you get with ASP.NET Web Forms and you'll probably end up doing more client side JavaScript development so the initial development budget would probably need to be greater if you choose ASP.NET MVC over Web Forms, but you would have a superior solution for the long term.
Stick with your gut. ASP.NET MVC helps facilitate testing because almost the entire API derives from interfaces.
Have used WebForms for years and never liked them. Now use Asp.Net MVC for some years and this is so much better. Certainly woud recommend MVC.
Asp.Net MVC has an excellent architecture and is open source. So if you would identify bottelnecks in the http processing chain you could fix it. Most time you would be able to fix performance issues using one of the many extension points provided by Asp.Net MVC, like Binders as an example.
I would say go with MVC if you need or want its features . If you are building a line-of-business application such as an ERP or CRM system, I would use Webforms; if you are building a portal or community wiki type site I would go with MVC hands down. Ultimately it comes down to preference and what exactly your enterprise application needs to accomplish.
"With MVC, you can't get away with the state nightmare that is so common to webforms development, which means that means your webpages are meth-addict slim"
Upmodded for that quote!
My opinion: use ASP.NET Webforms.
Disable ViewState in the Web.Config.
There is no need to preserve state because everything you really need is in the Request object.
Use Javascript in conjunction with AJAX for data retrieval to render your UI controls client-side.
Create serverside wrappers in the form of control tags for your client-side component renderer.
This is how I've been working for ages now, and it's fast, reliable, testable and organized.
It does take some time to setup a decent framework for this working method, but eventually it will rule.
I rather have no spaghetti code like MVC. Been there with PERL/PHP and classic ASP.
Everything I've read about asp.net MVC says that it is able to serve up more page requests than asp.net webforms.
I have some doubts about its stability and security though. Both of these stem from the fact that it's not even released and even with the RC we saw some changes to the framework. I am sure there will be more changes as time goes on and things are found. It's new so there are not really "best practices" out for it and there is a not a wealth of experience out there detailing the small issues or gotchas that you might run into.
I've been using it and it does result in smaller pages and faster performance. But there are so many things I can do in webforms that I have no idea how to do with mvc because mvc does not promote the use of the webforms controls.
If you're able to use stored procedures then you don't need a big middle-tier like those generated by MVC. All you have to do is pass XML to your stored procs through a simple HTTP handler, get results back from a stored proc, and convert the results to JSON. MVC and other middle-tier stuff only serves to make money for companies that sell IDEs like VS.