MVC Preview 4 with Phil Haack

Posted By: Adam Kinney | Aug 5th @ 10:00 AM

Phil Haack, one of the driving forces behind ASP.NET MVC, provides the lowdown on what MVC is, what's new in Preview 4 and how you can help shape the next version. He also takes a call from his wife, but its worth the wait.

Links mentioned in this video:

Tags: ASP.NET, MVC, Phil Haack

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stevo_
Casablanca != Manchester

Phht, whats he doing on here Tongue Out

, kidding.. nice to hear something from the asp.net guys, been a bit shady recently bar the new previews..

I know its a big topic but I still think theres place for a server side declarative language for asp.net (other than that of webforms).. I'm talking something more light weird.. a reall simple interface for rendering and then abstractions made from that.. doing inline code is ok but its going really far back in order to fix some gripes that isn't so much related to server side declarative code.. just more that the default one webforms uses isn't so well executed..

Plus, you guys need to push for deeper changes in asp.net, you're making a neat layer on top of a lot of crap (not all of it), but god theres a lot of messy stuff going on in asp.nets plumbing.. it would be nice if you guys had your own viewpage that didn't sit on top of the webforms page..

Also, I've gotta ask why routing forces you to return a http handler.. I've written route handlers that I ended up doing something like:

IHttpHandler GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext)
{
return new DummyHandler(x =>
{
.. code here to fire on ProcessRequest ..
};
}

Seems if you just let the route handle processing the request, then you could easily get the functionality to call a ihttphandler by writing a basic route handler that created the http handler and pushed the http context to it.. but you could also just run processing directly from the routehandler without needing to create a dummy http handler.

Anyway! cool to hear from you.

aL_
mm.. linq.. *arrggha*

great to get more info on mvc Smiley

ive got a tiny little nitpick though, and this applies to evertone in the asp.net mvc team:
please try and avoid saying things like "we're calling it an action" that could really really tick the rails folk (and open source folk in general) off.

now, i know you make absolutly no claim of invetning mvc (the structure) but alot of people have this notion thatmicrosft is always stealing stuff and taking credit for things and little things like that really puts gasonline on the fire Smiley

again i'd like to stress, i dont think that you think that you invented the mvc model and i am i huge fan on the asp.net mvc framework i think it brings alot to the table, its strongly typed (a good thing inmy book), its extensible and leverages alot of awsome things from regular asp.net such as caching.

im just saying this because i would hate if people start dissing asp.net mvc becase they feel that microsoft is taking credit for mvc architectures in general witch is NOT true. but people looove to missunderstand and misquote microsoft, i think its really unfair sometiems, but its true. so please try and be careful on how you phrase things Smiley

again, i love asp.net mvc, its a great product, keep up the good work Smiley

stevo_
Casablanca != Manchester

You'll be the first person I've heard even suggest that (about people thinking that ms are claiming the mvc pattern is their idea), I think its pretty well known Wink

aL_
mm.. linq.. *arrggha*

In reply to stevo_

#Aug 5th @ 2:54 PM

im not saying that people think that now but im saying that i belive alot of webdevs that use rails and php and stuff are a bit hostile towards microsoft and would take offence if microsoft inplies that they did invent mvc.. if they[the webdevs] did a litle research they'd discover the truth but if they are put off up front they wont bother.. and thats what i think is sad

i might be totaly wrong Smiley infact i hope i am.. but after reading sites like el reg for quite some time im still baffeld how they can find ways to warp microsofts words to make microsoft look bad..

one could ofcourse argue that it doesnt matter how careful microsoft is in its statemens, someone will always find an angle anyway.. Tongue Out

Cyonix
Me

In reply to stevo_

#Aug 5th @ 2:37 PM

stevo, you should check out the ProMesh.NET MVC Web Framework. I tried to go to ASP.Net MVC but ended up going back to ProMesh as i missed things in ProMesh. I really don't like how ASP.Net MVC still uses aspx files, i want pure html files with an expressive server-side language. ProMesh provides that, and the next version is taking that model and improving it by enabling a similar routing engine as ASP.NET MVC and giving you the option to define your own server-side language. Ajax support is also great.

I was really looking forward to ASP.NET MVC but I don’t think they have taken it far enough.

iparag
iParag.com

Cyonix, Thanks for the Link. It looks interesting however, most of my clients will be sceptical to adopt something that is open source and community may not be around when he needs it 2-3 years down the line. They expect their project to work and be maintained for years.

Unless an open source is massively supported like jQuery or nHibernate, I would generally stick to official Microsoft version.

Phil is there any showcase showing how many complex scenarios are handled ? for eg : In one of our project, we give an ability to generate whole Form by the User (Containing several complex controls like RadEditor etc). If we take out ViewState and Event based handling, will it still work ? Do I have retreive my Control values back in ASP Style (Request.Form) ? In short is it possible to Dynamically generate Control Tree and then Retrieve it back ?

JChung2006

Good to see ASP.NET MVC talk on 9. Time to go check out Preview 4.

I thought ASP.NET MVC supported multiple view engines, not just ASP.NET, e.g., NHaml, NVelocity, XSLT, your own if you felt like building one. Check out MVC-Contrib @ CodePlex for some community-driven, ASP.NET MVC-related projects.

Cyonix
Me

In reply to iparag

#Aug 5th @ 9:30 PM

Note that I’m not a developer on the ProMesh.Net project. I just think it’s a great framework that has worked well for my clients and I.

Regarding the open source issue, I totally agree. If you don’t have the ability to support any part of a project whether it is open source or not it shouldn’t be used.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how ASP.NET MVC develops

Haacked
Top of a Mountain in Alaska

If it helps any, I can go on record here categorically stating that Microsoft and the ASP.NET team did not invent the Model View Controller pattern.

In terms of view engines, we do support multiple view engines. It'd be interesting to see if someone implements a ProMesh view engine for MVC. MVC is designed for extensibility, allowing the swapping out of any part you don't like. My IronRuby sample is an extreme demonstration of this.