ASP.NET MVC

Training – Part 2AN ASP.NET MVC INTRODUCTION

Lee Englestone (@LeeEnglestone)

Tech Lead @ Kitbag.com

www.ManchesterDeveloper.com

Areas

Areas group related Models, Views and

Controllers

By default no Areas exists

They appear in the route like so

http://www.website.com/Area/Controller/Action/Id

You can try adding an Area to your application and you’ll see

it creates a new folder and sub-folders for Models, Views and

Controllers and the code to register the Area itself

We don’t use Areas

HtmlHelpers

HtmlHelpers are methods that can be executed

within Razor views to generate HTML

They are actually just extension methods and

therefore you can write your own HtmlHelper

methods

The @Html.Action Helper method can be used to

generate links given controller, actions names

and id values

We’ve already encountered @Html.LabelFor()

and @Html.TextBoxFor() in Part 1

Partial Views

A view that can be rendered in another view

Conceptually similar to WebForms UserControls

By convention located in the Views/Shared folder

By convention prefixed with an underscore

Can be returned from Controller Actions with a

Model

Next we’ll create a partial view

that returns a picture of a cat

Exercise : Create and use

a simple Partial View

Create a new PartialView at

Views/Shared/_FunnyCat.cshtml

Put an image of a funny cat in /Images

Update _FunnyCat.cshtml

Add @Html.Partial(“FunnyCat”, “Steve”) to

Index.html

Run

Custom Mobile Views

using DisplayModes

Rules can be put into place to serve different

views with different extensions in different

circumstances

A popular method is that if a user has requested a

page on a mobile device and there are 2 versions

of a View in the View folder

Index.cshtml

Index.mobile.cshtml

Then the relevant view will be returned

There is a built in DisplayMode for *.mobile.cshtml

views

Exercise : Create Mobile View

Create a new View called

Views\Index.mobile.cshtml

Make it obvious it is the Mobile View

Run the application and emulate a Mobile

device

CSS Boostrap Framework

Bootstrap is a popular CSS and JavaScript

framework that now is included in / used by new

ASP.NET MVC Application projects

http://getbootstrap.com/

It warrants a training course in itself (so check it out) but some of main things it gives are

Browser reset

Grid system

Glyphicons

Popovers, tooltips, tabs, modals, pagination

Dependency Injection A way of objecting dependencies

Generally speaking we use Constructor Injection

Constructor Injection

Exercise : Dependency Injection

Add Ninject to MVC Application using NuGet

Creates App_Start/NinjectWebCommon.cs

Mappings can be put here in the format

kernel.Bind<ISomeInterface>().To(SomeClass);

TDD/Unit Testing

Controllers can be easily Unit Tested

Can mock dependencies

A few things you could Unit Test

The View (or result) returned from an Action is of the

correct type

The Model returned from an Action is correct

Exercise : Unit Testing Controllers

Create a new ClassLibrary called Tests and

Reference NUnit using NuGet

Add a reference in the class library to the Web

Application

Create a new File called HomeControllerTests.cs

Assert that the Type of Model returned from the Index View on the controller is HomeViewModel

Bundling

The merging together and serving of multiple files

Instead of a request for each javascript/css file,

files are ‘merged together’ to reduce number of

requests

Bundles defined in App_Start/BundleConfig.cs

Can be turned off whilst debugging / working locally

Bundling

Minification

The removing of whitespace in served javascript

and css files

Is done automatically to styles and scripts in a

Bundle

Can be turned off whilst debugging / working

locally

Scaffolding Views

It is possible to auto-generate the input fields for a

Views Model properties

@Html.EditorForModel()

May have to ignore unwanted Model properties

with [ScaffoldColumn(false)]

Exercise : Scaffolding View

using Model Change the save form on

the Index View to use

@Html.EditorForModel() and

run

You should see most of the

properties are provided

with relevant inputs

To tell the ‘auto-scaffolder’

to ignore certain properties,

give the properties the

[ScaffoldColumn(false)]

attribute

Model Attributes

Model properties can be given attributes to provide additional information about them

This is especially useful in validation

Attributes include

[Required]

Marks the property as non-optional

[DisplayName]

Overrides the default label of a property in the view

[StringLength(50), MinimumLength=3]

Sets a max length for a string property

[Range(0,5]

Provided value must be within a range

ModelState

Once a Model has been posted back to an

action we can check it’s ‘State’ and whether it is

in a valid state

Discussed in next slide

Exercise : Model Attributes

for Validation

Add some validation attributes to the

HomeViewModelIf the Model is Invalid we pass it back to the calling Action

Continued..

Exercise : Model Attributes

for Validation continued..

You can alter the Index View to use

@Html.ValidationSummary() which will list all the

errors on the Model

Else by default validation messages will appear

next to the relevant input controls

@Html.ValidationSummary()Model property validation messages

Async Actions in Controllers

Helps avoid HttpRequests from blocking requests

Uses new async and await keywords in C#5

The return type is wrapped in Task<Something>

Use on long Actions i.e.

That call external apis

That do file IO operations

Actions on Controllers calling long running operations should be asynchronous

Described well here..http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19087513/what-is-the-advantage-of-using-async-with-mvc5