Does adding a Web Service to my ASP.NET MVC project break the whole concept of MVC?
That Web Service (WCF) depends on the Model layer from my MVC project to communicate with the back-end (so it looks to me like it needs to be part of the MVC solution).
Should I add this to the Controller or Model layer?
It sounds like you should split out your model into its own assembly and reference it from your MVC-application and WCF-application.
YourApp.Data -- Shared model and data access maybe
YourApp.Web -- If you want to share more across your web-apps
YourApp.Web.Mvc
YourApp.Web.WebService
If you want to do WebServices MVC-style maybe you should use MVC to build your own REST-application.
Is there a specific reason you need to add web services to your MVC application? Unless there is a specific reason you should use your controllers in a RESTful manner just as you would a RESTful web service.
Check out this post from Rob Connery for more information:
ASP.Net MVC: Using RESTful architecture
Separating the Model into it's own project is not breaking the "MVC" pattern. First off, it is just that -- a pattern. The intention of the MVC pattern is to clearly delineate between your data, the data handlers, and the presenters and the way you interface between them. The best way to do it is how Seb suggested:
YourApp.Data
YourApp.Web.Mvc
YourApp.Web.WebService
Something that might help you out is the MVC Storefront that Rob Conery put together. Go watch the video's here:
MVC Storefront Video Series
And if you want to look at the actual code in your browser to quickly see how he did it, go here:
MVC Storefront Codeplex Code Browser
I don't think separating the model into it's own assembly has any bearing on whether or not you're using MVC, you still have a model. Where it is is irrelevant surely?
I've had a go at doing this.
See my result at my blog
ps: I don't believe that this will break the MVC concept so long as you think that a web service is the model of a repository because all a web service does is returning a XML dump.
I have added web services to my application and it works well. I don't believe it violates MVC because it is an alternative interface to your model. MVC is not appropriate for web services because web services don't have a view.
Think of web services and databases as one in the same. Under this analogy, I think it makes sense to place your web service ingteractions where you place your database logic.
Related
I've been doing some digging in the web but all i find is either incomplete guides to do it by yourself or guides for the first version of MVC.
Is there any framework for getting a RESTful API or not?
And if no, is there anyway to add a global solution for all models (extending the model or routing of MVC it self), because what i've read involves adding the REST logic to each model/ controller of the application (Which don't look like a good solution to adopt REST)
WCF Web API for MVC3
Add WebAPI support to MVC3 application
Both of these should give you an idea of what's involved.
Are you able to start using MVC4?
I have an existing Asp.Net MVC Website and I would also like to provide a Web Service from the same domain.
What is the best way to approach creating a web service in this scenerio?
Do I add to this project or...?
You should be able to add an WebService file directly to the MVC project.
Right click on solution and select add new item, then select the web category and att the bottom of the list there should be Web Service.
Just remember to check that the routes does not eat up the call to the webservice.
That way the webservice can get access to the same model classes as the MVC application.
You can add a web service to the project just as you do in regular ASP.NET web apps, however, MVC basically IS a web service. You could create a controller that handles all the requests that you want your web service to handle.
With the advent of MVC it is quite common to do applications that only ever load a view once, then use AJAX and client scripting almost the entire rest of the life of the application. Your AJAX calls just hit up action methods for their goods and then use the deliciousness that is JSON to parse the data and utilize it.
In my opinion designing a web service as a controller instead of using [WebMethods] is far simpler and a lot more fun!
First, the question is "what do we mean by web service?" This can mean anything from a MVC page that responds using XML, JSON or some other agreed upon format to full blown SOAP and WS-* encumbered nightmares.
Anyhow, perhaps the best place to start is the WCF restful services -- these play very nicely with MVC, including routing.
The cool kids are using openrasta.
We currently have a classic ASP.NET web application which serves as our API. It basically has a bunch of ASMX Web Services, but these are really cumbersome to work with from JavaScript. What I want is to expose a set of RESTful endpoints, but doing this in classis ASP.NET is not what I really want to do.
I'm considering to combine both classic ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC in one web app. Is this possible at all? If yes, what are the issues/problems I may encounter?
Aha! It seems that this is very much possible. Here's a comprehensive article which describes what should be done.
An ASP.NET Webforms application can become ASP.NET MVC enabled by following some simple steps,its quite easy infact see this link
if you want to go rest for mvc heres a article Rest for mvc by Phil Haack and Rest like nature of MVC heres a comparison Rest in asp net vs wcf
The whole goal of routing is to break
the one-to-one association between
URLs and files in the server’s file
system. However, the routing system
still does check the file system to
see if an incoming URL happens to
match a file or disk, and if so,
routing ignores the request (bypassing
any route entries that the URL might
also match) so that the file will be
served directly.
So, to answer on a part of your question "is this possible at all": Yes, because routing system will recognize the .asmx file on the file system and it will process it in classic asp.net web services manner.
For the second question I'm not sure because I haven't been doing anything complex with web service inside of the asp.net mvc application.
I know what MVC is and I work in webforms but I don't know how MVC will be that much different. I guess the code behind model will be different. So will it be like webforms minus the code behind and instead having it in a controller?
I see there are other related posts but I don't they address this.
For starters, MVC does not use the <asp:control> controls, in preference for good old standard <input>'s and the like. Thus, you don't attach "events" to a control that get executed in a code-behind like you would in ASP. It relies on the standard http POST to do that.
It does not use the viewstate object.
It allows for more intelligent url mapping, though now that the Routing namespace has been spun off, I wonder if it can be used for WebForms?
It is much easier to automate testing of web parts.
It allows for much easier separation of UI logic from the "backend" components.
The image says it all.
Update: Adding the original link for completeness.
http://forums.asp.net/t/1528396.aspx?MVC+vs+Web+Forms
The video tutorials here help describe the differences.
There is so much that can be said about your question.
MVC allows for clean separation of concerns, testability, and test driven development (TDD). It supports clean RESTful URLs and is very extensible... meaning you could swap out of the viewing engine, the routing mechanism, and many other things that you might not like out of the box.
For additional information I would suggest reading Dino Esposito's blog post entitled An Architectural View of the ASP.NET MVC Framework. Inside this post he compares many differences between the classic code behind approach with MVC.
Asp.Net Web Forms:
Asp.Net Web Form follows a traditional event driven development
model.
Asp.Net Web Form has server controls.
Asp.Net MVC model:
Asp.Net MVC is a lightweight and follow MVC (Model, View, and
Controller) pattern based development model.Asp.Net MVC does not
support view state.
See more..
I'm thinking about trying out MVC later today for a new app we're starting up, but I'm curious if it's an all or nothing thing or if I can still party like it's 2006 with viewstate and other crutches at the same time...
Yes you can have your webforms pages and MVC views mixed in a single web application project. This could be useful if you have an application that is already built and you want to migrate your app from webforms to mvc.
You need to make sure that none of your webforms pages go in the 'Views' directory in a standard ASP.NET MVC application though. Pages (or views) in the 'Views' directory can't be requested directly through the url.
If you are starting an application from scratch, there would be very little benefit to mixing the two.
Yes. MVC is just a different implementation of the IHttpHandler interface so both classic ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC pages can coexist in the same app.
As you've probably noticed with the above answers, yes this is very possible to do.
I've actually had to do this on my current project. I was able to get approval to add MVC to our application, but only in the administration section (to limit the risk of affecting current members coming to our site).
The biggest problem I had was converting my Web Site to a Web Application, but once that was done, things were pretty straight forward adding MVC side-by-side our classic code-behind web pages.
The trick for me was to make my MVC pages look as similar as possible to my code-behind pages so the transition looked as seamless as possible.
I am currently working on a new project. While I would like to go down the MVC route all the way, some of the project requirements don't allow me.
One of those requirements is to have a grouping grid from the client-side. Personally have chosen the Telerik Rad-Grid. While they may be in the process of supporting MVC they are not there as yet.
So this means that I have to have a hybrid solution. for the time being until RadGrid fully supports MVC.
While we are in this transition period I think that there will be may more hybrid projects out there until the support of the Third Party Controls catches up.
Regards
Nathan
You'll need to make sure your MVC routes don't conflict with your Web Forms pages so that requests for a .aspx page don't get routed to a controller action as a parameter etc.
See this blog post by Phil Haack for details on how to avoid this.
Yes, it is very much possible for MVC pages to coexist with asp.net web forms. I implemented that in my existing asp.net application for adding new features. We need to make sure of referring the MVC DLLs, registering routing tables for URL routing and configuring the assemblies and namespaces in Web.config file.
If you're mixing MVC with other methodologies you're not really getting the benefit out of it. The point of MVC is to allow you to decrease coupling and increase cohesion, and if only half of your code is doing that, then the other half is inevitably going to restrain your development cycle.
So, I guess while it's possible, I don't think it's worth it. Go all the way or don't go at all.