Rebuilding imar.spaanjaars.com in ASP.NET MVC 2 - Part 1

UPDATE: Links to the MVC site on the URL mvc.spaanjaars.com are no longer active, now that the site is live at imar.spaanjaars.com.

I have finally decided to rebuild this web site - imar.spaanjaars.com in ASP.NET MVC 2.

The core of this web site pretty old. Some underlying code and concepts are from the time where ASP.NET was still called ASP Plus and other parts are from the 1.0 beta time frame. With each new major release of ASP.NET (1.1, 2.0 and 3.5) I rewrote parts of the application, taking advantage of new features offered by the platform, cleaning up or deleting code I no longer needed.

But now it's time for a complete rewrite in ASP.NET MVC 2. The structure and content of this site lends itself pretty well for this design pattern. By rebuilding in ASP.NET MVC, I can take advantage of cleaner URLs and routing mechanisms, hopefully increasing search engine rankings and indexability. Additionally, my site should be a lot easier to maintain and test from a coding perspective as currently the entire project has become quite messy.

I have the following features / ideas in mind:

  • I'll be using MVC 2 (currently in beta / release candidate state)
  • I'll use the ADO.NET Entity Framework 4 for most of my data access
  • I'll use a hybrid combination of ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Win Forms in order to reuse most, if not all of my current CMS and administration section.
  • I'll be using Castle Windsor for IoC / DI scenarios

You can follow my progress here: mvc.spaanjaars.com. Right now, all that's in place is the basic routing engine and the category and articles systems. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be adding features to the site, and blog about interesting issues I have ran into. Please don't link to articles on that site but use the main web site (imar.spaanjaars.com) instead as the mvc URL is only temporary.


Where to Next?

Wonder where to go next? You can read existing comments below or you can post a comment yourself on this article .


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Feedback by Other Visitors of Imar.Spaanjaars.Com

On Tuesday, March 09, 2010 12:59:36 PM Tom Kamphuis said:
Good luck with the MVC 2 implementation, I'll be starting to work on my own MVC 2 project pretty soon.
On Monday, March 22, 2010 2:42:55 PM Jing said:
It's good to see you decide to move to ASP.NET MVC.
One question for you, why you choose Entity Framework over LINQ in your project?
On Monday, March 22, 2010 2:46:26 PM Imar Spaanjaars said:
Hi Jing,

Do you mean "Linq to SQL" instead of just Linq? If so, I chose EF as it's recommended by Microsoft as the data access strategy for the future. L2S will still be supported but won't be developed as actively as EF is. In other words, EF is a more future-proof investment.

Cheers,

Imar
On Tuesday, March 23, 2010 10:11:44 AM Jing said:
Hi, Imar

Yes, I mean "Linq to SQL". I hope you can blog more technical details about the rebuild ASP.NET MVC, but not only what's new in your MVC project. :-)
On Tuesday, July 06, 2010 1:23:17 PM Alexey Tarasov said:
Hi, Imar

Currently Entity Framework 4 doesn't support enumerations, which is very inconvenient and considered a substantial demerit.

Do you know if MS are planning to address this issue and if yes in which release will this be fixed and how soon?
On Tuesday, July 06, 2010 1:29:28 PM Imar Spaanjaars said:
Hi Alexey,

No, I don't know. I guess you better ask Microsoft.... ;-)

Imar
On Tuesday, May 24, 2011 1:43:27 PM Pat Brown said:
Hey Imar just a word of thanks for the N-Layered Web Applications with ASP.Net 3.5 the book I bought a while back. The Validation piece is a thing of beauty. The whole thing was well thought out and I'm using it as a basis for my framework.

So have you written anywhere what you really like about MVC? Do you plan on doing the same for MVC as you did for ASP.Net 3.5?

Thanks

--Pat Brown
On Tuesday, May 24, 2011 2:13:10 PM Imar Spaanjaars said:
Hi Pat,

Thank you for your kind words, and thank you for your donation!

Yes, I have plans to do an MVC version, along with Entity Framework code first and repositories, but unfortunately I don't have the time to write about it now. I hope to do it before MVC 6, and EF Code First 8 though... ;-)

Cheers,

Imar

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QuickDocId 517
Full URL http://imar.spaanjaars.com/517/rebuilding-imarspaanjaarscom-in-aspnet-mvc-2-part-1
Short cut http://imar.spaanjaars.com/517/
Written by Imar Spaanjaars
Date Posted 03/09/2010 13:44