ASP.Net MVC in Action

The Model-View-Controller pattern—universally known as MVC—provides a stable, testable approach to web application development by separating the major functions—or concerns—of an application into independently defined roles.

ASP.NET MVC in Action is a comprehensive guide to MVC-based development using this powerful framework. It offers a clearly-written introduction both to the ASP.NET MVC Framework and to the MVC approach. The focus is on creating real, maintainable web applications—so don’t expect toy examples and short snippets. The authors lead you from first-use through real-life scenarios.

One of the key benefits of the MVC approach is introducing a high degree of testability to your applications and process. ASP.NET MVC in Action shows you how to test each piece of your ASP.NET application and how to introduce principles of test-driven development into your process.

Because the framework is completely pluggable, you’ll learn how to work with external Inversion of Control containers like StructureMap, Windsor, and Spring.NET and open-source persistence layers like NHibernate. Throughout the book, the authors sprinkle in MvcContrib, an extremely useful tool that provides common extensions so you don’t have to write them yourself.

Along the way, you’ll benefit from the wide-ranging experience of the authors, who have extensive experience with ASP.NET, Monorail, and Ruby on Rails. This book assumes that you already know how to build a standard ASP.NET application and presents most examples in C#.

What reviewers are saying

“Shows how to put all the features of ASP.NET MVC together to build a great application.”

-From the Foreword by Phil Haack, Senior Program Manager, ASP.NET MVC Team, Microsoft

“This book put me in control of ASP.NET MVC.”

-Mark Monster, Software Engineer, Rubicon

“Highly recommended for those switching from Web Forms to MVC.”

-Frank Wang, Chief Software Architect, DigitalVelocity LLC

“I’d highly recommend this to anyone who is serious about building web applications with ASP.NET MVC.”

—Jeremy Skinner, ASP.NET developer and technical proofreader of the book

“…does a good job of not only showing you what to do, but also provides cautionary words to avoid poor practices that may lead to maintenance issues on non-trivial applications.”

—Venkat Subramanian, NoFluffJustStuff Blogs

“I really enjoyed ASP.NET MVC in Action and highly recommend it for a fresh look at the ASP.NET MVC Framework.”

—David Hayden, MVP

“In the end [the authors] not only did an excellent job of putting together a great practical guide to ASP.NET MVC they also successfully embedded some subversive ALT.NET concepts that will hopeful make us all better developers. And at the end of the day that is a damn fine accomplishment.”

—Bobby Johnson

“ASP.NET MVC in Action will guide you from your first project through advanced topics such as AJAX and deploying on suboptimal hosting environments. The writing style is clear and concise. Diagrams and code examples are abundant. I recommend it for anyone looking for a great resource for learning about or becoming a better user of the ASP.NET MVC framework.”

—Nathan Stott, Partner and Software Engineer at Whiteboard-IT

“I’m very happy with this book. I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in ASP.NET MVC. Getting the ‘beyond the text’ that comes with the CodeCampServer is just icing on the cake, truly.”

—Chris Stewart, CompiledMonkey.com

“ASP.NET MVC in Action is a true masterpiece…The authors, Jeffrey Palermo, Ben Scheirman and Jimmy Bogard are all considered rock stars in the ASP.NET community and they have opened up the doors to their concert with ASP.NET MVC in Action.”

—Mohammad Azam, Microsoft MVP

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Getting started with the ASP.NET MVC Framework
Chapter 2. The model in depth
Chapter 3. The controller in depth
Chapter 4. The view in depth
Chapter 5. Routing
Chapter 6. Customizing and extending the ASP.NET MVC Framework
Chapter 7. Scaling the architecture for complex sites
Chapter 8. Leveraging existing ASP.NET features
Chapter 9. AJAX in ASP.NET MVC
Chapter 10. Hosting and deployment
Chapter 11. Exploring MonoRail and Ruby on Rails
Chapter 12. Best practices
Chapter 13. Recipes