How can I implement a site with ASP.NET MVC without using Visual Studio?

asp.net, asp.net-mvc

Solution

ok, I examined Walther's tutorial and got a basic MVC site running.

The files required were:

Global.asax
App_Code\Global.asax.cs
App_Code\Controller.cs
Views\HelloWorld\Sample.aspx
web.config

That's it.

Inside the Global.asax, I provide this boilerplate:

<%@ Application Inherits="MvcApplication1.MvcApplication" Language="C#" %>

And that `MvcApplication` class is defined in a module called Global.asax.cs which must be placed into the App_Code directory. The contents are like this:

using System.Web.Mvc;
using System.Web.Routing;

public class MvcApplication : System.Web.HttpApplication
{
    public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
    {
        routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");

        routes.MapRoute(
            "Default",                      // Route name
            "{controller}/{action}/{arg}",  // URL with parameters
            new {                           // Parameter defaults
              controller = "HelloWorld",
              action = "Index", 
              arg = "" }                 );
    }

    protected void Application_Start()
    {
        RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);
    }
}

The Controller.cs provides the logic to handle the various requests. In this simple example, the controller class is like this:

using System.Web.Mvc;
namespace MvcApplication1.Controllers
{
    public class HelloWorldController : Controller
    {
        public string Index()
        {
            return "Hmmmmm...."; // coerced to ActionResult
        }

        public ActionResult English()
        {
            return Content("<h2>Hi!</h2>");
        }

        public ActionResult Italiano()
        {
            return Content("<h2>Ciao!</h2>");
        }

        public ViewResult Sample()
        {
            return View();  // requires \Views\HelloWorld\Sample.aspx
        }
    }
}

The Controller class must be named `XxxxxController`, where the Xxxxx portion defines the segment in the URL path. For a controller called `HelloWorldController`, the URL path segment is `HelloWorld`. Each public method in the Controller class is an action; the method is called when that method name is included in another segment in the url path . So for the above controller, these URLs would result in invoking the various methods:

- http:/ /server/root/HelloWorld (the default "action")

- http:/ /server/root/HelloWorld/Index (same as above)

- http:/ /server/root/HelloWorld/English

- http:/ /server/root/HelloWorld/Italiano

- http:/ /server/root/HelloWorld/Sample (a view, implemented as Sample.aspx)

Each method returns an Action result, one of the following: View (aspx page), Redirect, Empty, File (various options), Json, Content (arbitrary text), and Javascript.

The View pages, such as Sample.aspx in this case, must derive from `System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage`.

<%@ Page Language="C#"
  Debug="true"
  Trace="false"
  Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage"
 %>

That's it! Dropping the above content into an IIS vdir gives me a working ASPNET MVC site.

(Well, I also need the web.config file, which has 8k of configuration in it. All this source code and configuration is available to browse or download.)

And then I can add other static content: js, css, images and whatever else I like.

Problem

Original source

Related problems

• Developing for ASP.NET-MVC without Visual Studio