MVC – History & Folder Structure
MVC Framework
·
ASP.NET MVC is based on the MVC design
pattern that allows you to develop software solutions. For this, the MVC
pattern provides a reusable solution to resolve common problems that occurs
while developing a Web application.
·
You can use the MVC pattern to develop Web
application with loosely coupled components. It is very difficult to manage Web
applications that contain tightly coupled components.
·
This is because, updating one component
also requires updating the other components.
·
To overcome such problems, you can use the
MVC design pattern that enables separating data access, business, and presentation
logic from each other.
·
While using the MVC design pattern, a Web
application can be divided in the following three types:
o
Model: Represents
information about a
domain that can
be the application
data of a Web
application. In ASP.NET MVC applications, the model class represents this
model.
o
View:
Represents the presentation logic to provide the data of the model. There can
be multiple views for the same model. In
ASP.NET MVC application, the files within the View folder of the application
directory represent the view.
o
Controller: Represents
the logic responsible
for coordinating between
the view and
model classes. The controller classes in an ASP.NET MVC application
handles events thrown by the view and calls the corresponding model to be
processed.
·
As ASP.NET MVC is based on the MVC design
pattern, it helps in developing applications in a loosely coupled manner and
provides the following benefits:
o
Separation
of concerns: Enables you to ensure that various
application concerns into different and independent software components. Thus, it allows you to work on a single
component independently.
o
Simplified
testing and maintenance: Enables you to test each component
independently. This helps you in
ensuring that it
is working as
per the requirement
of the application
and then, simplifies the process
of testing, maintenance, and troubleshooting procedures
o
Extensibility:
Enables the model to include a set of independent components that you can
easily modify or replace based on the application requirement. Modifying or replacing these components does
not affect the functionality of the application.
·
ASP.NET MVC is a new Framework built on the
top of Microsoft .Net Framework to develop web application. This framework
implements the MVC pattern which helps to provides separation of code and also
provide better support for test-driven development (TDD).
·
ASP.NET MVC is a lightweight and highly
testable open source framework for building highly scalable and well-designed
web applications.
History
·
ASP.NET
MVC1
o
Released on Mar 13, 2009
o
Targets .NET Framework 3.5, Visual Studio
2008 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 provide support to develop ASP.NET MVC 1
applications
o
MVC pattern architecture with webform
engine
o
HTML Helpers (Lightweight helpers for
rendering HTML tags)
o
Concept of Routing
o
Ajax helpers to easily ajaxify links and
forms
o
Automatic binding of posted forms to .NET
objects and kind of model validation
o
Unit Testing
·
ASP.NET
MVC2
o
Released on Mar 10, 2010
o
Runs on .NET 3.5, 4.0 and with Visual
Studio 2008 & 2010
o
Strongly typed HTML helpers means lambda
expression based HTML Helpers (Html helper methods with lambda expression)
o
Model validation based on attributes, both
server and client side (Attribute based model validation on both client and
server)
o
Asynchronous Controllers
o
HTML templated helpers, to automatically
render edit forms and display pages based on the model and attributes applied
on it (Templated Helpers)
o
Data Annotations attributes, validation
attributes and validation logic (Support for Data Annotations Attribute)
o
Client side validation
o
UI helpers with automatic scaffolding &
customizable templates
o
Areas to partition bigger applications
o
Custom Templates
o
Overriding the HTTP Method Verb including
GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE
·
ASP.NET
MVC3
o
This version of ASP.NET MVC was released on
January 13, 2011 and targets .NET Framework 4.0. Visual Studio 2010 provides
support to develop ASP.NET MVC3 applications
o
Razor view engine
o
Improved support for data annotations
o
Remote Validation
o
Unobtrusive JavaScript validation and
general better JavaScript
o
Dependency Resolver
o
Global Filters
o
Dependency Resolver
o
Entity Framework Code First Support
o
ViewBag to pass data from controller to
view
o
JQuery validation
o
Compare Attribute
o
Sessionless Controller
o
Better JavaScript support with unobtrusive
JavaScript, jQuery Validation, and JSON binding
o
Use of NuGet to deliver software and manage
dependencies throughout the platform
o
Good Intellisense support for Razor into
Visual Studio
·
ASP.NET
MVC4
o
This version of ASP.NET MVC was released on
August 15, 2012 and targets .NET Framework 4.0 and 4.5. Visual Studio 2010 SP1
and Visual Studio 2012 provide support to develop ASP.NET MVC 4 applications.
o
ASP.NET Web API
o
Enhancements to default project templates
o
Mobile project template using JQuery mobile
o
Display modes
o
Task support for Asynchronous Controllers
o
Bundling and Minification
o
Support for the Windows Azure SDK
·
ASP.NET
MVC5
o
This version of ASP.NET MVC was released on
October 17, 2013 and targets .NET Framework 4.5 and 4.5.1.
o
Visual Studio 2013 provides support to
develop ASP.NET MVC 5 applications.
o
ASP.NET identity
o
ASP.NET Scaffolding
o
Authentication filters - run prior to
authorization filters in the ASP.NET MVC pipeline
o
Bootstrap in the MVC template
o
ASP.NET Web API 2
·
ASP.NET
MVC6
o
This version of ASP.NET MVC was released on
18 November 2015 and targets .NET Framework 4.5.2
o
Visual Studio 2013 & 2015 provides
support to develop ASP.NET MVC 6 applications
o
ASP.NET MVC 6 now has single aligned web stack
for MVC 6 and Web API
o
Yes, now we can develop ASP.NET MVC 6 or
ASP.NET 5 against .NET core/ Full .NET and run in either Windows or Linux or
Mac.
o
The wwwroot folder represents the actual
root of the web app when running on a web server. Static files like
config.json, which are not in wwwroot will never be accessible, and there is no
need to create special rules to block access to sensitive files.
o
In addition to the security benefits, the
wwwroot folder also simplifies common tasks like bundling and minification,
which can now be more easily incorporated into a standard build process and
automated using tools like Grunt.
o
Client side dependency management is more
important because client side has more different packages from server side.
Client side will surely have jQuery, Bootstrap, grunt, any JavaScript
frameworks like AngularJS, Backbone etc, images, style files.
o
Client side package management in open
source community has two great names “Bower” and “NPM”. They are part of
“Dependencies”.
o
Dependency Injection (DI) achieves loosely
coupled, more testable code, it’s very important because it’s kind of coding
standard.
o
In ASP.NET MVC 5/4 or classic ASPX based
applications, we use to have separate DI containers used like Unity, AutoFac,
and StructureMap etc. We had to build up our project to use DI, its additional
effort.
o
Now in ASP.NET 5 or MVC 6 applications,
dependency injection is inbuilt i.e. no setup headache for DI. Just create some
services and get ready to use DI.
o
Infact sample MVC 6 application has DI
inbuilt in it, let’s open “StartUp.cs” and look for “ConfigureServices (IServiceCollection
services)” method. Its main purpose is configuration of services like EF,
Authentication, adding MVC and hand written custom services like IEmailServer
and ISmsSender.
|
MVC Version
|
Visual Studio
|
.Net Version
|
Release date
|
Features
|
|
MVC 1.0
|
VS2008
|
.Net 3.5
|
13-Mar-2009
|
|
|
MVC 2.0
|
VS 2008,
|
.Net 3.5/4.0
|
10-Mar-2010
|
|
|
MVC 3.0
|
VS 2010
|
.Net 4.0
|
13-Jan-2011
|
|
|
MVC 4.0
|
VS 2010 SP1,
VS 2012 |
.NET 4.0/4.5
|
15-Aug-2012
|
|
|
MVC 5.0
|
VS 2013
|
.NET 4.5
|
17-oct-2013
|
|
|
MVC 5.2
|
VS 2013
|
.NET 4.5
|
28-Aug-2014
|
|
MVC
Design Pattern
·
Trygve Reenskaug is attributed with the
formulation of the Model View Controller pattern in 1979 while working at
XEROX’ Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).
·
MVC was developed to solve the problem of
users controlling large and complex data sets. The following rather unique
image explains the main purpose of MVC – to bridge the gap between a User’s
mental Model and the digital model that exists in the computer.
·
Model:
Models represent data and thus knowledge. It could be a single object or a
hierarchy/tree of objects. However, they should only be dealing with only one
problem domain, for example data about appointments is not in the same problem
domain as the color of rectangle used to represent the appointment on the
screen.
·
View:
Views are the visual representation of their respective Models. It can
highlight certain Model attributes (properties) and suppress others.
·
Controllers:
The unit of interaction that serves as a link between the User and the System.
It presents data to User by arranging various Views appropriately. It also
provides means for user input such as mouse operations and keystrokes. A controller
should never supplement a View.
·
MVC has evolved really well and as ASP.NET
MVC has shown, it can be very easily adapted. In context of Web Applications,
MVC can be stated as follows:
o
Models:
Classes that represent the problem domain (the problem/requirement we are
trying to solve/accomplish). These classes also have code and logic to
serialize and de-serialize the data into dedicated data stores as well as do
validation and domain-specific logic. In ASP.NET MVC, this is the place for ORM
or Data Access frameworks to do their magic.
o
Views:
Views are essentially templates to generate the final HTML at runtime. Though,
we say HTML, we could potentially return other types of Views like PDFs etc.
o
Controller:
The class that manages the relationship between View and the Model. It is also
responsible for accepting requests from the User and deciding which View to
serve up if any.
·
The Model-View-Controller pattern was
introduced in 1970s. It is a software design pattern that splits an application
into three main aspects: Model, View and Controller. Moreover, MVC pattern
forces a separation of concerns within an application for example, separating
data access logic and business logic from the UI.
Model
– “M” in “MVC”
·
The Model represents a set of classes that describes
the business logic and data. It also defines business rules for how the data
can be changed and manipulated.
·
Moreover, models in Asp.Net MVC, handles
the Data Access Layer by using ORM tools like Entity Framework or NHibernate
etc. By default, models are stored in the Models folder of the project.
·
The Model can be broken down into several
different layers as given below:
o
Objects
or ViewModel Layer
§ This
layer contains simple objects or complex objects which are used to specify
strongly-typed view. These objects are used to pass data from controller to
strongly-typed view and vice versa. The classes for these objects can have
specific validation rules which are defined by using data annotations.
Typically, these classes have those properties which you want to display on
corresponding view/page.
o
Data
Access Layer
§ This
layer provides objects to access and manipulate the database of your
application. Typically, this layer is made by using ORM tools like Entity
Framework or NHibernate etc.
o
Business
Layer
§ This
layer helps you to implement your business logic and validations for your
application. This layer makes use of Data Access Layer for persisting data into
database. Also, this layer is directly invoked by the Controller to do
processing on input data and sent back to view.
View
– “V” in “MVC”
·
The View is responsible for transforming a
model or models into UI. The Model is responsible for providing all the
required business logic and validation to the view. The view is only
responsible for displaying the data, that is received from the controller as
the result.
·
Moreover, views in Asp.Net MVC, handles the
UI presentation of data as the result of a request received by a controller. By
default, views are stored in the Views folder of the project.
Controller
– “C” in “MVC”
·
The Controller is responsible for
controlling the application logic and acts as the coordinator between the View
and the Model. The Controller receives input from users via the View, then
process the user's data with the help of Model and passing the results back to
the View.
·
Moreover, controllers in Asp.Net MVC,
respond to HTTP requests and determine the action to take based upon the
content of the incoming request. By default, controllers are stored in the
Controllers folder of the project.
ASP.NET
MVC Folder Structure
·
Visual Studio creates the following folder
structure for MVC application by default.
·
App_Data
o
App_Data folder can contain application
data files like LocalDB, .mdf files, xml files and other data related files. IIS
will never serve files from App_Data folder.
·
App_Start
o
App_Start folder can contain class files
which will be executed when the application starts. Typically, these would be
config files like AuthConfig.cs, BundleConfig.cs, FilterConfig.cs, RouteConfig.cs
etc. MVC 5 includes BundleConfig.cs, FilterConfig.cs and RouteConfig.cs by
default.
·
Content
o
Content folder contains static files like
css files, images and icons files. MVC 5 application includes bootstrap.css,
bootstrap.min.css and Site.css by default.
·
Controllers
o
Controllers folder contains class files for
the controllers. Controllers handles users' request and returns a response. MVC
requires the name of all controller files to end with "Controller".
·
Fonts
o
Fonts folder contains custom font files for
your application.
·
Models
o
Models folder contains model class files.
Typically model class includes public properties, which will be used by
application to hold and manipulate application data.
·
Scripts
o
Scripts folder contains JavaScript or
VBScript files for the application. MVC 5 includes javascript files for
bootstrap, jquery 1.10 and modernizer by default.
·
Views
o
Views folder contains html files for the
application. Typically view file is a .cshtml file where you write html and C#
or VB.NET code.
o
Views folder includes separate folder for
each controllers. For example, all the .cshtml files, which will be rendered by
HomeController will be in View > Home folder.
o
Shared folder under View folder contains
all the views which will be shared among different controllers e.g. layout
files.
·
Global.asax
o
Global.asax allows you to write code that
runs in response to application level events, such as Application_BeginRequest,
application_start, application_error, session_start, session_end etc.
·
Packages.config
o
Packages.config file is managed by NuGet to
keep track of what packages and versions you have installed in the application.
·
Web.config
o
Web.config file contains application level
configurations.
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