I have spent a few hours searching around however I must be either searching for the wrong thing or doing something wrong because I can't seem to find what I am looking for.
This seems like a newbie question (and it probably is). I have created a C# file called dbconnect.cs and I am now trying to figure out how to connect everything together. My file structure is as follows...
-Controllers
-AcountController.cs
-dbconnect.cs (not sure if this should go here or in models folder)
-HomeController.cs
-Models
-AccountModels.cs
-Views
-Account
-Home
-About.cshtml
-Index.cshtml
-Reviews.cshtml
So basically what I am trying to figure out is a couple things.
The proper way to use databases with MVC3 (should my file be in Controllers or Models)
How to connect my dbconnect.cs folder with my View so I can troubleshoot it.
Any help / useful documentation sites is much appreciated. Thanks in advance.
EDIT:
I am not sure if this is relevant or not. I am using MySql and not SQL. Also I am assuming i need to use using dbconnect; but I am not sure how to integrate it with the HTML files.
For databases, you should use Entity Framework.
For views, each controller should have a views folder with the same name (eg, ~/Views/Home/ for HomeController), with one view file for each action.
You can also exlicitly pass a view name to return View().
You should really try to understand the functionality of Models, Views, and Controllers.
Start with understanding Controllers, then Views, and then Models and then everything else will be clear:
=================Controllers=================
Controllers are the middle-man between your User Interface (UI) and the "Back-end".
Inside of a controller, you define what happens when a user requests something from a certain URL.
Controllers usually are tied to the URL.
Meaning your HomeController function TestFunction will RUN (GET) when you go to the URL:
/Home/TestFunction
=================Views=================
Views is the User Interface. The HTML. The "What it will look like"
A view usually gets its "data" from the controller.
What is this "data" - well that's the model:
==============Models=================
The data between being transferred to the View (UI) from the Controller.
Your code should get data in the controller and should return as a model to the view
By the way, I would use EF (Entity Framework) to manipulate the data and make calls to the EF from the controller (usually via a HelperClass)
Good Luck!
Assuming dbconnect.cs contains class definitions within a namespace like this:
namespace MyProject.DbConnect
{
public class Repository
{
// ...
}
}
In your controller class files you can simply add using MyProject.DbConnect to reference anything from that namespace. And if you want to do that from the views, simply add #using MyProject.DbConnect
That being said. You really should be using a mature ORM like Entity Framework.
Related
I'm trying to understand how to do an Asp.Net Core application (3.0) looks like a Screaming Architecture folders and files conventions.
I read about it but and started with an empty project. The folders are:
Controllers
Views
Models
I want to make the web application working like
Customers/Controllers
Customers/Views
Customers/Models
Is it possible?
Thanks in advance.
Both controllers and models are referenced by namespace, so their physical file locations have no bearing on anything. Controllers are dynamically loaded regardless of where they are in the project or even if they're in the project at all (i.e. a controller from a referenced library will automatically be loaded). Models are entirely code-based, and you'd just add a using statement with the namespace of the model(s) to access them in any other piece of code.
Views, however, are very much based on the filesystem, and changing the main folder they're in from just Views or Pages directly in the project root will cause the convention-based view loading to fail completely. You can always add additional view search locations, such that it will look in /Foo/Views and /Bar/Views, etc. but that's really not recommended.
All that said, though, there is a concept of areas, and you can break down your controllers, models, and views that way. You'd simply have to have:
Areas/Customers/Controllers
Areas/Customers/Views
Areas/Customers/Models
In other words, the Areas prefix would be mandatory.
I have an ASP.NET application that was developed by "programmers". This application contains all things which you should not do:
Hardcoded settings
Copy/paste anywhere (code not re-used)
Make a lot of small SELECT requests to the DB for each row instead of doing JOIN
Model, view and controller in one function
Etc.
Now, my goal is not to throw everything away and start over, but I want to separate different aspects of the MVC of the application. I do not want to start a new MVC project, I would like to evolve the existing solution into something modular.
For the controller, there is no problem, I can create classes that will manage DB connections, send mails etc. On the other hand I do not know how to separate the view and the controller.
The problem that traditional ASP pages myPage.aspx have an associated file myPage.aspx.vb and in this vb file there are both view management part(page elements, like dropdowns) and also the Business part (controller) which is executed on the button click.
I thought about making a call to a myPageControl.vb class that will contain the business part from the file myPage.aspx.vb, which will call the Model (db, mail, other).
(View: myPage.aspx.vb) -> (Control: myPageControl.vb) -> (Model: Db.vb, Mail.vb)
The problem is: how should I do to modify the page content from the controller, for example change a list value or display a text on it. I have to make a call to the View (to the other direction) and pass by parameter the class MyPage (.asp.vb)
I have already tried to find an answer to my question, but I've found only answers taking about MVC projects.
Does anyone have any idea how I should do it?
Seperation of Concerns was one of the main problems with webforms, and one of the advantages of MVC. In my opinion the best you could probably do is seperate the business logic into classes like you are doing now so code could be reused throughout the application, but completely "seperating" everything may require rebuilding the application as an MVC app.
The only answer I've found to this is to have the controller send the "data to bind to" to the page as XML. then all the page has is its page_load of course, and then a method to receive the XML and update itself from it. You can use smart naming structures so that you can do reflection and autobind from the xml to page elements.
Then on an action, have the page generate an xml of all the elements on it and their values, and send that through a "ProcessAction" method that determines the correct controller and calls the right method on the controller.
But as suggested, doing it over as an MVC project probably makes the most sense if that's the pattern you are going for. What I suggested works, but it will be as much or more work than just starting from scratch with MVC. Besides, remember that "support" for web forms is disappearing soon. It's not in (and won't be in) .NetCore, so it's days are numbered.
Where is the best place in the project directory for the controllers for Shared partial views?
I have found similar question to: ASP.NET MVC: Correct place for Partial Views?
I can't decide if it is better to do something like /Controller/Shared/CONTROLLER_FOR_PARTIAL_VIEW or just create its separate folder like /Controller/CONTROLLER_FOR_PARTIAL_VIEW
The partial view is specifically for dropdownlistfor, and the model wont be used for anything other than to populate the dropdown. So if a site has many dropdown lists or just partial views in general, a shared folder seems to be the best option. If the preferred way it the Shared folder, do you use one controller for each partial view, or one controller for all partials? I appreciate any thoughts or feedback, thanks!
EDIT: To be clear, I m specifically asking about the directory for the CONTROLLERS not the VIEWS. Thanks!
In one sense, it doesn't matter. There is no true standard or convention for this, so you have the freedom to do it however it makes the most sense to you and your application.
Having it under something like Controllers/Shared could make sense, if there's enough of these that that is worthwhile and it adds value to keep them separate from regular controllers. However, in terms of a project, everything is essentially shared, so there's no true distinction here. Personally, simply having it named something distinctive is probably the best route. For example, I have a number of child actions in one of my projects that are used in various parts of my layout. As a result, I created a LayoutController to house these.
The one thing to keep in mind is that, if you're using standard routing, any controller will be available to the routing infrastructure, regardless of where it's located in your project tree. You'd have to pretty much just know how to get to it, but if you named your shared controller something like SharedController, then with standard routing, its actions would be available via /shared/action. For things like child actions, this is easily solved by using [ChildActionOnly]. By adding that attribute to your child action, it will be divorced from the routing infrastructure for URL requests. Internally, MVC will still be able to get to it for the purposes of rendering it for a view, though.
Projects I've been on it was at /Area/Controllers/SharedPartialController.cs and with that naming the view was at /Area/Views/SharedPartial/_MenuDropdown.cshtml
Hopefully you're using "areas" in your MVC project, in which case I would suggest doing one shared controller per Area.
I.e. /Order/Controllers/TabsPartialController.cs for one that relates to Order area, and then /User/Controllers/NavTabsPartialController.cs etc.
So I am reading about building MVC3 projects and there is one thing that seriously bugs me. The folder structure of the project in no way corresponds to the path of the HTTP request. There is a bunch of things I like and would want to use, but having a flat folder structure is not one of them.
Why is this a problem? Well, I see it becoming a problem when building a site with a heavy mix of content pages and various forms/dynamic pages (most of our sites are like that), which would typically be done by different people. It seem it would be too complicated for client-side developers to follow routing rules of dynamic pages and/or creating new ones.
What I would like to understand is if there is way to configure MVC3 application in such a way that:
it follows directory structure for finding controllers without explicit route map for each one
views live in the same folder as corresponding controller
routing magic still works for actions and parameters
For instance I'd like to have a request /fus/ro/dah/ to try to find DahController in the \webroot\fus\ro\dah\ folder and execute its Index action. If not found it would look for RoController with Dah action in the \webroot\fus\ro\ folder, etc.
It is entirely possible that MVC was not meant to be working this way at all and I am just trying to force a square peg into a round hole.
UPDATE:
Looks like I can drop a view file into the desired folder structure, and it will be executed. However layout would not work apparently because it is expecting a controller. Does this mean I have to create a controller for pure content pages? That is a pretty crappy design...
UPDATE 2:
Main issue right now is that creating "fus" folder means that MVC will not even attempt to look for FusController... not under "fus" folder, nor anywhere else. Is it possible to get around that?
For instance I'd like to have a request /fus/ro/dah/ to try to find
DahController in the \webroot\fus\ro\dah\ folder and execute its Index
action. If not found it would look for RoController with Dah action in
the \webroot\fus\ro\ folder, etc.
MVC is not designed for a particular need like this, it is a general framework for building applications using model-view-controller pattern.
If you can't bend the application for the framework you can bend the framework for the application and honestly MVC is very customizable. [As a proof, in the current project (migration from ASP to MVC) that I'm working we have models as xml and no classes also we are using XSLTs for rendering. With a little work we have created custom components like custom view engine, custom validation provider, custom model binder... to make the framework best fit for the application and it does]
MVC is not designed and not forces to use it as it is and you can customize/extend as much you want. In your case you may have to create a
custom controller factory (because you want to customize the way in which the controller is seleced),
custom view engine (because you want to customize where the view is placed)
and may be others.
For custom controller factory you have to extend the DefaultControllerFactory class. There are lot of articles you can find through Google that explains about how to create custom controller factories.
Depending upon the view engine you are using you have to extend the respective one. For ex. if you are using web forms then you have to extend the WebFormsViewEngine and it razor then RazorViewEngine.
For more info. check this link
http://codeclimber.net.nz/archive/2009/04/08/13-asp.net-mvc-extensibility-points-you-have-to-know.aspx
you can mixup Asp.net and Asp.net MVC. as LukLed said, MVC is convention over configuration pattern. if you follow the convention. you dont need to configure. you can check this link for mixing up the asp.net content with MVC3
Mixing Asp.net and Razor
I believe ASP.NET MVC is not meant to be used that way. While you can configure MVC to do it, it is better to keep standard /controller/action/parameters URL format. If you have complex website with many different functionalities, areas may be helpful http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee671793.aspx. Every area get its own set of controllers, models and views, so teams working on different parts of website won't disturb each other.
While it may sound convenient, that framework first searches for DahController and executes Index action, then searches for another one, I find it bad idea. URLs should be clearly defined and Fus controller with Ro action shouldn't just stop working, because someone created RoController with Index action.
Look into using Areas as well. I think that helped me get over my folder structure issues with MVC honestly. So i could use the base folder as my Home details, then i could have a 'Admin' area which was a separate folder, things like that.
How "regular ASP.net" do you want it to be? If you want to do "legacy" ASP.Net Web Forms mixed in with MVC, you certainly can - re: mixing MVC with "file based aspx" - aka "hybrid". At the end of the day, it's all ASP.Net.
This is a standard MVC Application generated by Visual Studio. I've added a folder somedirectory where I want to use the legacy folder/file.ext paradigm and have a default.aspx Web Forms file:
Can I navigate to it via http://foo.com/somedirectory? Yes.
Can I use "pretty urls" too? Yes
Vanilla Global.asax generated by VS, just added MapPageRoute:
....
public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
//using "pretty urls" - ordering your routes matter.
routes.MapPageRoute("theWebForm", "legacy", "~/somedirectory/default.aspx");
routes.MapRoute(
"Default",
"{controller}/{action}/{id}",
new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
);
}
so now I can navigate to it via http://foo.com/legacy
Just check the order of your routes, and perhaps plan on your naming conventions so you don't have "collisions"...
Hth....
In the MVC folder structure, where should general class files reside? For example, I have a class that determines the right DataContext to use, so I'm not reinventing the wheel in each of my controllers. Should it live in the Controllers folder even though it's not a controller? Should it be with the Models because it's database related, even though it's not a model? Possibly the Views\Shared folder? Or is Content the catch-all folder for that kind of stuff? I'm sure I could put it anywhere, but I was wondering where the "right" place is.
It's not a controller, content or a view, so don't use those. It sounds most closely related to your model, so you could put it in model under a subfolder called "Helpers" or "Utility" or some such. Or you can add another top level folder called Services and put it there. That's where I put all my app logic, the middle man between the controllers and the model.
If you look at Rob's MVC Storefront: Separate class library project (like Commerce.MVC.Data)
If it could be useful by itself (think of a command line tool built around it), put it in the Models folder. If it is used only as a helper for controllers, put it in Controllers folder.
It really depends on what it does, if it accesses data it should be in the Data Access Layer, otherwise you can put it in the controller folder.
Have a separate DataAccess assembly, make that class internal and call it DataContextFactory.
dmajkic,
Why separate it out into its own area? If its BLL code it should be in the controller folder, if its DAL related item it should be in the Model. I can understand if a project gets huge and you want to create some subfolders, that shouldn't be an issue. But placing code in another tier really defeats the purpose of MVC don't you think?