New to Me: ASP.NET MVC

ASP.NET MVC was New 18 Months Ago
I first heard about ASP.NET MVC in October 2008 (at the VSLive! conference).  Scott Hanselman gave a keynote that presented an overview and announced the beta release.  At that point, it looked interesting, but with all of the new technologies that have been thrown at us over the last several years, I couldn't devote any time to look into it.  Plus, I was comfortable with WebForms, having spent the previous 3 years developing fairly significant web apps.

So, here we are a year and a half later.  I was struggling with a project at work.  I knew that I could accomplish the task with WebForms, but all of my UI designs that I had worked through on the whiteboard seemed to come out as a mess.  I had a nagging feeling that ASP.NET MVC was the solution to this problem.  I took some time to look into it some more, and it turns out that it was the right direction.

Why ASP.NET MVC was the Answer
My main problem is that I needed to present data to the user in a different format depending on the record type.  And I wouldn't know the record type until run time.  ASP.NET WebForms is a "page first" model.  This means that the user requests a particular page (through a URL).  The page is then processed on the server which then presents the output to the user.  ASP.NET MVC is an "action first" model.  This means that instead of requesting a physical page, the user requests an action (also through a URL).  This action is processed by a Controller.  In my situation, the Controller can instantiate the Model (from my business layer) and then, based on the record type, can present the specific View (aspx page) that is appropriate.

So, I've taken a crash course in ASP.NET MVC.  After going through some on-line training and working through a simple test app, I'm convinced that this is the right solution for this particular project.  The design is much cleaner and will be easier to maintain.

Resources
I was fortunate enough to win a 1-year subscription to the Pluralsight OnDemand! library.  In the library is a 10 hour on-line course for ASP.NET MVC, and I took a couple of days last week to go through it.  This was an excellent resource.  (If you are interested in trying Pluralsight OnDemand! yourself, just stop by the website; they offer 7-day trial subscriptions if you drop them a note.)

In addition, I picked up "ASP.NET MVC Framework Unleashed" by Stephen Walther as a printed reference.  I'm still working my way through the book, but I've found a lot of useful information so far.

More to Come
Stay tuned for more to come.  My project at work is still in progress.  I'll have a lot of learnings from it (as I do with most of my projects).  When I run across interesting items, good tips, and pitfalls, I'll be sure to post them here.

Happy Coding!