MS Ships ASP.NET MVC Framework v1.0 RC1

By Barb Mosher (@barbmosher) Feb 2, 2009

The Model-View-Controller (MVC) concept has been around for quite awhile, but this is the first time Microsoft has provided robust support for it in the hugely popular ASP.NET web technology framework. Not designed to be a replacement for ASP.NET Web Forms, their MVC framework is simply an alternative approach that also enables test-driven development.

This first release candidate is expected to be the only release candidate, with the final, production build following close behind.

The ASP.NET MVC Framework

The MVC framework is both a design pattern and an architectural pattern. It was first seen in 1979 — so it's not that new. It's been used in a number of programming languages for quite awhile now.

Basic MVC Pattern Diagram

The MVC pattern is designed to separate the user interface from the business logic of an application, resulting in easier testing of the application. The three components of this pattern are defined as follows:

Model: Represents the state of an application, often mapping to a database table
View: Displays the UI for the application
Controller: Controls how the input into the UI is handled, manipulates the model and determines which UI to present to the user

You learn all you need to know about this pattern, including a number of tutorials and videos on the ASP.NET website.

ASP.NET MVC RC1

The first (and expected only) release candidate just came out and offers a number of new capabilities in addition to bug fixes. Five previews and one beta later, here are some of the new features for Visual Studio support included in the Release Candidate:

Visual Studio Tooling Improvements

Add Controller Command: Easily create new controller classes
Add View Command: Create new view templates to a controller action method (create empty views or generate/scaffold view templates based on the object passed). A number of built-in scaffold templates come with RC1: “Empty”, “List”, “Details”, “Edit” and “Create"
Adding and Customizing Scaffold Templates: The scaffolding architecture is built on Visual Studio’s built-in T4 templating architecture, so you can customize/override any of the scaffolds that comes with RC1 or create additional scaffold templates. This can be done at either the machine or project level.
Go To Controller / Go To View: Quickly navigate between controllers and views by right-click menus or CTRL-G, CTRL-M keyboard commands
MSBuild Task for Compiling Views: A new built-in MSBuild task that includes views in the project compilation process - recommended for staging and deployment activities.
View Refactoring Support: Using the Rename refactoring command in VS2008 will ensure that files and folders under the \Views application sub-folder get automatically updated when you rename controller classes or action methods.