Should I migrate to ASP.NET MVC?

Question

I just listened to the StackOverflow team's 17th podcast, and they talked so highly of ASP.NET MVC that I decided to check it out.

But first, I want to be sure it's worth it. I already created a base web application (for other developers to build on) for a project that's starting in a few days and wanted to know, based on your experience, if I should take the time to learn the basics of MVC and re-create the base web application with this model.

Are there really big pros that'd make it worthwhile?

EDIT: It's not an existing project, it's a project about to start, so if I'm going to do it it should be now...

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I just found this

It does not, however, use the existing post-back model for interactions back to the server. Instead, you'll route all end-user interactions to a Controller class instead - which helps ensure clean separation of concerns and testability (it also means no viewstate or page lifecycle with MVC based views).

How would that work? No viewstate? No events?

Answer 1

@Juan Manuel Did you ever work in classic ASP? When you had to program all of your own events and "viewstatish" items (like a dropdown recalling its selected value after form submission)?

If so, then ASP.NET MVC will not feel that awkward off the bat. I would check out Rob Conery's Awesome Series "MVC Storefront" where he has been walking through the framework and building each expected component for a storefront site. It's really impressive and easy to follow along (catching up is tough because Rob has been reall active and posted A LOT in that series).

Personally, and quite contrary to Jeff Atwood's feelings on the topic, I rather liked the webform model. It was totally different than the vbscript/classic ASP days for sure but keeping viewstate in check and writing your own CSS friendly controls was enjoyable, actually.

Then again, note that I said "liked". ASP.NET MVC is really awesome and more alike other web technologies out there. It certainly is easier to shift from ASP.NET MVC to RAILS if you like to or need to work on multiple platforms. And while, yes, it is very stable obviously (this very site), if your company disallows "beta" software of any color; implementing it into production at the this time might be an issue.

Answer 2

Is the fact that ASP.net MVC is only in 'Preview 5' be a cause for concern when looking into it?

I know that StackOverflow was created using it, but is there a chance that Microsoft could implement significant changes to the framework before it is officially out of beta/alpha/preview release?

Answer 3

Unless the developers you are working with are familiar with MVC pattern I wouldn't. At a minimum I'd talk with them first before making such a big change.

Answer 4

If you are dead set on using an MVC framework, then I would rather set out to use Castle project's one...

When that's said I personally think WebControls have a lot of advantages, like for instance being able to create event driven applications which have a stateful client and so on. Most of the arguments against WebControls are constructed because of lack of understanding the WebControl model etc. And not because they actually are truly bad...

MVC is not a Silver Bullet, especially not Microsoft MVC...

Answer 5

I have seen some implementation of MVC framework where for the sake of testability, someone rendered the whole HTML in code. In this case the view is also a testable code. But I said, my friend, putting HTML in code is a maintenance nightmare and he said well I like everything compiled and tested. I didn't argue, but later found that he did put this HTML into resource files and the craziness continued...

Little did he realized that the whole idea of separating View also solved the maintenance part. It outweighs the testability in some applications. We do not need to test the HTML design if we are using WYSWYG tool. WebForms are good for that reason.

I have often seen people abusing postback and viewstate and blaming it on the ASP .NET model.

Remember the best webpages are still the .HTMLs and that's where is the Power of ASP .NET MVC.

Answer 6

If you like to use server controls which do a lot of work for you, you will NOT like MVC because you will need to do a lot of hand coding in MVC. If you like the GridView, expect to write one yourself or use someone else's.

MVC is not for everyone, specially if you're not into unit testing the GUI part. If you're comfortable with web forms, stay with it. Web Forms 4.0 will fix some of the current shortcomings like the ID's which are automatically assigned by ASP.NET. You will have control of these in the next version.