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08.10.07
ASP.NET MVC Framework
[Update]: Scott Hanselman has posted the videos of the ASP.NET MVC Framework talks.
Scott Guthrie announces ASP.NET MVC Framework at ALT.NET conference. There have been rumors about an MVC Framework for ASP.NET in March 2007, already. Jeffrey Palermo wrote about a special meeting with Scott Guthrie on the MVP Summit. Now Scott officially announces the framework and claims that we might expect a first CTP within the next two months and a V1 in Spring 2008. Jeffrey has the details.
He names some of the goals:
- Natively support TDD model for controllers.
- Provide ASPX (without viewstate or postbacks) as a view engine
- Provide a hook for other view engines from MonoRail, etc.
- Support IoC containers for controller creation and DI on the controllers
- Provide complete control over URLs and navigation
- Be pluggable throughout
- Separation of concerns
- Integrate nicely within ASP.NET
- Support static as well as dynamic languages
Nima Dilmaghani provides further details on Scott’s talk and the integration points for existing ASP.NET technology and other frameworks such as Castle’s MonoRail and Windsor. Even Roy Osherove praises the new MVP Framework for ASP.NET:
My take away - finally they get it. I wish there were more guthries out there in the b0rg.
Regarding the impact on MonoRail Jeffrey says:
MonoRail is MVC. This is MVC, so yes, it’s very similar but different. This gives us a controller that executes before a view ever comes into play, and it simplifies ASPX as a view engine by getting rid of viewstate and server-side postbacks with the event lifecycle. That’s about it. MonoRail is much more. MonoRail has tight integration with Windsor, ActiveRecord and several view engines. MonoRail is more than just the MVC part. I wouldn’t be surprised if MonoRail were refactored to take advantage of the ASP.NET MVC HttpHandler just as a means to reduce the codebase a bit. I think it would be a very easy move, and it would probably encourage MonoRail adoption (even beyond its current popularity).
The Castle PMC has a similar take on the issue:
We also believe that MonoRail has been providing the same thing for the past two and half years, and will continue to do so. We’re grateful that MS has chosen to offer integration points for Monorail and the Castle stack and as soon as it’s available we will be working to integrate it with the rest of our projects.
Is MS’ MVC better? Worse? Only once we have used both will we be able to tell.
I would like to agree with Jeffrey that this might encourage MonoRail adoption. At least both frameworks would share some common concepts and the programming models won’t differ that much anymore. But common sense tells me that MSFT might try to do business as usual, i.e. make a (bad) copy of a good concept and get rid of the competing framework/tool along the way. I’ll have to put my faith in Scott ;-) (who’s proven to deserve as much several times).
Posted by Hartmut Wilms at 08.10.07 21:27