First Thoughts On MVC.NET
Finally some time for .net.
Since Scott and Phil started writing about is I wanted to read and try out the MVC framework. So last night I managed to read a few blog posts on the topic, namely Scott's expectedly great series of posts and Phil's REST like post and Testing Routes. I wrapped my evening of MVC with Scott's (this time Hanselman) MVC How-To Screencast.
The Screencast
It is a really good place to start. Not to mention that I really enjoyed the production value it brought to the table.
First of all the small screen capturing his face as he talked and worked was a great idea. I really thought it would bring nothing to the presentation, but it did. And it was small enough, and not present at all times, so it didn't overdo it or get in the way. The worse thing about it was that I kept thinking how he looked like a hockey player.
Comments were useful for us (grab a few notes while watching) and him (not recording parts again), and sometimes funny. They helped set a nice casual tone.
The only thing I have a minor issue with is the zooming which was sometimes too fast. There were times when I thought I was watching a car chase on TV.
The MVC
So far I really like the idea behind the model. And there are a few things I really want to try for myself.
Routing my way - I am pretty sure that I can do all of the following out of the box:
Add more stuff to the routing rules to get more parameters in. Should be simple enough and a brilliant way to make multi-language sites.
Setting default actions to get prettier URLs. So site.com/category/product/productID would show the product details; but site.com/category/product/edit/productID will take me to the update page. The simplicity of making a end-user site and an administrative portion of a site is present (and you can then move the admin bit into a subdomain or something like that).
Or even downsize it more: there has to be a way to make site.com/Green_Tea understand that it is looking at Green_Tea category and then list all the needed items.
The thing I want to test the most is building routes dynamically, and cheating with the displayed URLs. For example: site.com/category/id should display a list of records. But what if the end user wanted a site in German? Why should his German speaking users need to read category? I should be able to map the category display dynamically and get site.com/kategorie/ that routes to the controller listing the category.
I hope to try it out a bit this Sunday. And I'll keep you posted.