If you want to stay up-to-date on the bleeding edge of ASP.NET MVC, you will no doubt be interested in downloading the just released ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview 1 from here.
A few features added to ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview 1 include:
- New Razor View Engine - This view engine made its debut as a part of WebMatrix and has now been added to ASP.NET MVC 3. Right now there is no intellisense or code highlighting, which will come in the future, but for those of you who have only used the WebForms View Engine with MVC, you will appreciate the code-centric and less verbose format.
- Global Filters - Many times you wanted to create various filters on all controllers and controller actions and thus created a base controller to hold those filters. An alternative is to use the new GlobalFilters.Filters Collection where you can add and remove filters globally in your application without burdening a base controller class with this information. This global facade isn't a new concept as you did the same thing when using multiple view engines within ASP.NET MVC using ViewEngines.Engines, etc.
- New ActionResults - You probably made these yourself, but a few new ActionResults will be in ASP.NET MVC 3, including HttpNotFoundResult, HttpRedirectResult with support for Permanent Redirects, and HttpStatusCodeResult.
- Model Binding to JSON - The DefaultModelBinder now supports JSON-encoded data which is great for ASP.NET MVC Web Applications using jQuery and other JavaScript Frameworks for a richer UI experience.
- Validation - .NET 4 introduced IValidatableObject and some enhancements in the ValidationAttribute to provide even better validation and ASP.NET MVC 3 will offer better support for them.
- Dependency Injection and Common Service Locator Enhancements - There will be lots of controversy on the best way to do it, but the concepts are sound. We need a better way to inject dependencies into not only the controllers, actions, and views that we have today, but also the harder to do modelbinders, value providers, validation providers, and other extensibility points in the ASP.NET MVC Framework. ASP.NET MVC 3 is looking at leveraging a common service locator to help pull dependencies from your IoC Container of choice, like Unity, Autofac, Windsor, Ninject, etc.
ASP.NET MVC 3 is still early and I wouldn't expect a release anytime soon for those of you just getting around to learning ASP.NET MVC 2 now that it is a part of Visual Studio 2010. Of course, I suspect ASP.NET MVC 3 will be another out-of-band release so get used to installing and using it outside the normal releases of Visual Studio.
Again, download ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview 1 here.
David Hayden
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Microsoft released the second version of the ASP.NET MVC Framework, ASP.NET MVC 2, earlier this year which includes a lot of good and necessary features for developing web application on ASP.NET using MVC. Pro ASP.NET MVC 2 Framework by Steve Sanderson and Apress updated their earlier book with all the goodness you would expect:
- Pluggable Validation - Out with IDataErrorInfo, which none of us used anyway, and pluggable validation where one can use System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations, Enterprise Validation Application Block, Fluent Validation, Castle Validation, or your own home grown validation framework to your hearts desire.
- Templated View Helpers and Model MetaData - Say hello to UI Scaffolding using temptates, template view helpers, and various model metadata in the form of attributes ( or whatever it's pluggable ) as inspired by ASP.NET Dynamic Data. Html.LabelFor, Html.DisplayFor, Html.EditorFor, etc. further complement the use of T4 Templates that we had with the exsting AddView and AddController Scenarios.
- Strongly-Typed Input Helpers - The strongly-typed input helpers, like HtmlTextBoxFor, that were previously in the ASP.NET MVC Futures Assembly are now in ASP.NET MVC and help provide intellisense and refactoring support using lambda expressions.
- Async Controllers - For those long running IO bound processes that may clean out your worker thread pool you have the option of using Async Controllers ( also once in ASP.NET MVC Futures ) to put those threads back in the pool quickly and handle more concurrent requests.
- Automatic HTML Encoding - For those using .NET 4, one can use Html Encoded Code Expressions backed by a smart IHtmlString to safely explicity encode all your output to avoid Script Injection and the underlying helpers have the smarts to encode that information or not.
- etc...
Per my previous book review on the earlier edition of the book, this is the best book on ASP.NET MVC Framework without a doubt. Whether you are completely new to ASP.NET MVC or an advanced ASP.NET MVC developer you will find lots of great introductory and advanced MVC coverage.
The author has an uncanny ability to write a book that not only walks you gently through creating an ASP.NET MVC Web Application but also explaining just what you want and need to know before moving on to the next subject. Later on, when you are ready, he then takes you into the depths of MVC and answers those questions again that are foremost on your mind. In addition, the examples in the book are exactly what you will find yourself doing in the real world and many of the helpers, filters, etc. are very useful for your own library. Whereas most books focus on certain features of ASP.NET MVC or a certain crowd, Pro ASP.NET MVC 2 Framework covers everything!!
Whether you want to learn ASP.NET MVC from scratch or just interested in understanding a particular feature in-depth, Pro ASP.NET MVC 2 Framework by Steve Sanderson is an incredible book and equally valuable when read cover-to-cover or as a reference book on your desk. Love this freakin' book :)
Check out the reviews on Amazon.
David Hayden