Introduction to ASP.NET MVC

ASP.NET MVC is a new web application framework from Microsoft. MVC stands for Model-View-Controller, a pattern that’s becoming increasingly popular with web development frameworks. ASP.NET MVC is an alternative and a complement to Web Forms, which means you won’t be dealing with pages and controls, postbacks or view state, or complicated ASP.NET event life cycle.

Basically, MVC is a framework methodology that divides an application's implementation into three component roles: models, views, and controllers. Hence in Asp.net MVC you need to play with controllers, actions, and views.

MVC Pattern

The Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern is an adaptation of a pattern generated from the Smalltalk community in the 1970s by Trygve Reenskaug. It was popularized for use on the web with the advent of Ruby on Rails in 2003.

1. Model

   Models in a MVC based application are the components of the application that are responsible for maintaining state. Often this state is persisted inside a database for example: we might have a Product class that is used to represent order data from the Products table inside SQL.

2. View

   Views in a MVC based application are the components responsible for displaying the application's user interface. Typically this UI is created off of the model data for example: we might create an Product "Edit" view that surfaces textboxes, dropdowns and checkboxes based on the current state of a Product object.

3. Controller

   Controllers in a MVC based application are the components responsible for handling end user interaction, manipulating the model, and ultimately choosing a view to render to display UI. In a MVC application the view is only about displaying information - it is the controller that handles and responds to user input and interaction.

ASP.NET MVC Web Application Advantages

The ASP.NET MVC Framework is a new framework and have the following advantages over Web Forms approach (means over ASP.Net):

1. Separation of concern

   In ASP.NET MVC the application is divided to Model, View and Controller parts which make it easier to manage the application complexity.

2. TDD

   The ASP.NET MVC framework brings better support to test-driven development.

3. Extensible and pluggable

   ASP.NET MVC framework components were designed to be pluggable and extensible and therefore can be replaced or customized easier then Web Forms.

4. Full control over application behavior

   ASP.NET MVC framework doesn’t use View State or server based forms like Web Forms. This gives the application developer more control over the behaviors of the application and also reduces the bandwidth of requests to the server.

5. ASP.NET features are supported

   ASP.NET MVC framework is built on top of ASP.NET and therefore can use most of the features that ASP.NET include such as the providers architecture, authentication and authorization scenarios, membership and roles, caching, session and more.

6. URL routing mechanism

   ASP.NET MVC framework supports a powerful URL routing mechanism that helps to build a more comprehensible and searchable URLs in your application. This mechanism helps to the application to be more addressable from the eyes of search engines and clients and can help in search engine optimization.

The ASP.NET MVC simplifies the complex parts of ASP.net Web Forms without any compromise of the power and flexibility of ASP.NET platform. ASP.net MVC implements Model-View-Controller UI pattern for web application development that lets you allows to develop applications in a loosely couples manner. MVC pattern is separating the application in three parts- Model, View and Controller.