I'm completely new to C#, asp.net and asp.net mvc. I'm just starting and trying.
so here is my question: what's the difference between ASP.NET MVC Html.helpers and ASP.NET Controls? I know they both can be used to create forms in a page, but what's the difference? I mean, I can use ASP.NET Controls in my MVC project, so what's the point of using Html.helpers? It would be great if somebody explains the difference about Html tags too.
So,when I should use ASP.NET Controlls, when I should use ASP.NET MVC, and when I should use Html Tags?
by the way, I'm using ASP.NET MVC2 in Visual Web Developer 2008 Express.
sorry for my bad English thingy!
Big difference, basically an HTML Helper translates to HTML on the Server when it pushes back to the client.
Controls are not available in MVC (you are thinking web forms), but that's a personal preference whether you like this or not. The forms make it easy to create complicated HTML structures, but there's a lot of "Magic" in how they render, MVC gives you complete control.
Once you start using MVC more you will appreciate the flexibility and not miss controls one bit. Plus, a lot of Open Source stuff out there to give you powerful "Helpers"
To add to Mark's answer: Although both ASP.NET controls and HtmlHelpers emit HTML, that's where the similarities end.
ASP.NET controls are very heavy. Many of them maintain their own state across postbacks to give the illusion that you are programming a stateful Windows Forms application. These controls have strange and mangled ID's, add many bytes to your "viewstate" hidden form field, and often have difficult to control markup and CSS styling.
HtmlHelpers render HTML in a customizable way that is lightweight because you control the HTML that is emitted, ideally WITHOUT any state information littering your markup. You control the ID's, the styles, everything. But you lose the automatic state management that the controls give you.
Related
This might be the most trivial question asked, but I raise it again. Am planning to get started with asp.net MVC on a personal project and here am struck if it supports webparts or any other alternative to it is present. I intend to have a start page similar to igoogle or pageflakes, but my initial research pointed out that as there's no ViewState nor Postback concepts in ASP.NET MVC implementing web parts is not possible.
If that is the case, are there any resources which helps in building a start page as the one i wish to using MVC.
PS: Links I found in the initial research
Quick tips on asp.net MVC -
webparts framework
Building widgets using jquery in
asp.net MVC
You should use AJAX to create widgets that can interact with the server without reloading the page.
This way, the widgets will not affect each-other.
jQuery will be useful here.
Alternatively, you could put each widget in its own <iframe>.
I have been using jqGrid as my grid view to my data for some time now. It works well and it was easy to implement into my solution. However, due to some refactoring going on within the project right now, I have been looking into it again.
The project itself is built around ASP.NET MVC 2 (.NET 4.0). We need some extra functionality such as:
Being able to add columns.
Inline editing of columns.
Sorting
Filter
Paging
Searching
jqGrid does all of this (although, not all of this functionality is implemented yet - some of it is new based on new needs). But, given that I am using ASP.NET MVC, I was wondering if it would make more sense to switch to the Html.Grid helper. It looks just as easy to implement for the things I know it can do (Sorting/Filtering/Paging), but I do not know if it can even do the other tasks (in a fairly straightforward manner) - anything I have found seems somewhat "hackish."
Can anybody enlighten me on A.) the capabilities of Html.Grid to jqGrid and B.) if there is any reason I'd want to take Html.Grid.
I use jqGrid successfully with ASP.NET MVC 2 (.NET 4.0) and have all the features which you describe in your question. Moreover all pages having jqGrid looks like very simple.
I don't use Html.Grid or any MVC controls. I include just pure HTML fragment <table id="list"></table><div id="pager"></div> on the page. Additionally I include the JavaScript which initialize the "list" table and the "pager" div as the jqGrid. So the implementation is independent from MVC concept. The most important part of the jqGrid integrations is the actions which get back pure JSON output and which implement GET/PUT/POST/DELETE operations with the jqGrid. You can read more about the approach here (see also many links with code examples included in the answer).
To be exactly I prefer to use WCF as a part on my ASP.NET MVC solution and the WCF methods provide the data needed for jqGrid (see here more details), but you can implement all as pure ASP.NET MVC actions.
If you use Unit testes for you ASP.NET MVC site you can successfully write tests for WFC methods or controller actions used by jqGrid. In the way you will test the most parts of jqGrid implementation.
After looking at both approach, I decided the jqGrid was a far easier (and simpler) approach for what I was attempting to do.
I want to start migrating a WebForms App to MVC. The process will be gradual, so both systems must co-exist.
The question is: Should I have two MasterPages, one for the WebForms pages and other for the MVC views? Is there a way to have only one?
In ASP.NET MVC the master page should derive from System.Web.Mvc.ViewMasterPage while in classic WebForms from System.Web.UI.MasterPage. If in MVC you use the latter you won't have access to any helpers. Although you could use ViewMasterPage in classic webforms because it derives from MasterPage (once again you won't have access to helpers in the web forms application but who cares).
So to answer your question, yes, you could have a common master page assuming it derives from ViewMasterPage.
This being said you probably won't be able to make this work as in an MVC master page you would use HTML helpers to render partial views like Html.RenderPartial which doesn't make much sense in a classic WebForms application and vice versa in a classic WebForms application you would probably be using some server side controls like <asp:xxx runat="server" /> or have a single form tag (again with runat="server") polluted with ViewState, etc... which hardly makes any sense in MVC. So my recommendation would be not to do like this.
I need to re-write a businesss InfoPath / SharePoint application that has a fair bit of logic associated the operations a user performs - such as enable / disable controls; show / hide controls (complex tab controls); retrieve different data nad display differenty - as determined by user activity.
In trying to decide whether to use ASP.Net Web forms or ASP.Net MVC. As such I have been hunting around for a good realworld ASP.Net MVC sample business application (with Source code).
Does anyone know of anything that can demonstrate to me how to achieve the 'richness' of user interactions and responses in ASP.Net MVC that one can achieve using Web Forms?
I am know the Dinner Nerd application; and have checked out the offerings on CodePlex. So far most of the sample applications I have found do not have much of the complexity we have become used to dealing with in Web forms; and that I need to try and achieve. I posiibly have have to rethink the presentation & flow of the application in response to user actions in an MVC application (as compared to how one migh structure the flow in InfoPath / Winforms and Web forms). This might shift me more to what the existing sample applications might be indicating to me -'change the focus of the Views to be of presentational bias'. As such one would end up with many views each only permitting a reduced set of use interactions.
Thanks for any comments in advance.
Grant
There is exactly the same question asked here (ok, it is not about business apps) - Real World ASP.NET MVC Applications with Source Code?
just keep in mind that asp.net-mvc makes it really easy to write unit tests, which is the most important thing when coding applications.
If you have complex interaction scenarios you might be interested in performance too, asp-net.mvc performance is a way better...
Asp.net-mvc 2 (I haven't looked at 3 yet) makes the validation really easy and you can choose at which level you want it.
Will be starting a web app that will have to provide many different HTML forms for data entry, so I was wondering if there is a web framework out there that does this in a clever way. generally when you have forms you have many considerations like navigation, validation, etc. that are not handled very efficiently by he frameworks I've seen so far.
Has someone taken the pain out of forms?
Have you tried looking at Grails? It can take your domain classes and dynamically scaffold them into web forms and apply server-side validation. The default scaffolding provides navigation, pagination, validation, and all kinds of other -ations that are pretty good!
Here's a good tutorial.
Try Qcodo.com, It is written in PHP (but fully OOP). It manages both database layer with nice Form templating system.
I think forms are handled pretty cleverly in Ruby on Rails. And also in .Net. The latter goes pretty far in letting you reuse the database logic for validating data and also has "automatic" handling of security issues like XSS and XSRF.