ASP.NET MVC Framework Unleashed

MVC (Model View Controller) Frameworks are all the rage these days. Ruby has quite a few (Rails being the most famous), PHP, Perl and Python have some. And now Microsoft’s ASP has one too...

For those of you who may have missed out on this trend, I suppose I should try to explain (briefly) what MVC means. In simple terms MVC describes a way of creating applications formed from three more or less independent pieces: the application ‘state’ is defined by its data or ‘Model’; its visual ‘front end’ is called its ‘View’ and the programming code that controls the flow of information between the Model and the View is called the ‘Controller’. Now, I’d be the first to admit that this is a very simplified description of MVC and if you want a more in-depth account, there are quite a few books on the subject... including Stephen Walther’s ‘ASP .NET MVC Framework Unleashed’.

If you are an existing ASP developer you are no doubt familiar with using the ASP .NET framework to create applications designed using Web Forms. ASP .NET MVC also uses the ASP .NET framework but it offers its own alternative to the Web Forms layer.

In just over 700 pages this book explains what is new and different about the MVC framework. It assumes that the reader is familiar with Visual Studio and either the C# or VB .NET languages (the code examples are given in both). However, it does not assume any pre-existing knowledge of MVC methodology. Accordingly, the early chapters explain the fundamental principles of MVC and there are also sections on elements of the development process which it facilitates such as unit testing.

The book is clearly divided into thematic sections explaining, for example, ‘routing’ (mapping browser requests to controllers) and authentication. It also has a long ‘walkthrough’ (six whole chapters) explaining how to create a fairly complex Blog application.

For users with an ASP background, this would be a great book to get up to speed with the new ASP MVC framework. It’s not so good for anyone migrating from some other language with its own MVC framework, however. If it there are any mentions in this book of PHP MVC frameworks or Ruby On Rails I couldn’t find them. Apart from that minor quibble, however, I have to say that this book provides an excellent introduction, with lots of useful hands-on examples, to ASP .NET MVC.