Customer Reviews

Pro ASP.NET MVC V2 Framework (Expert's Voice in .NET)

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Every now and then you read a software development book that absolutely takes your breath away. This is one of those books.

This is an outstanding book for the professional developer who is looking to become an expert on ASP.NET MVC, and who wants to seriously "raise their game" when it comes to software development in general. Steve Sanderson (the author) has a fantastic writing style that is easy to read, and which flows very naturally.

The first 212 pages of the book are mostly spent building two applications (a party invite application and a sports e-commerce store) literally starting with File->New Project and walking you step-by-step through their creation (explaining all of the code keystrokes, C# language features, and Visual Studio steps required along the way). These provide a great set of tutorials that can help you understand how ASP.NET MVC works and can be applied to build common web scenarios.

Sanderson's book avoids simply showing "the basic path" when it comes to building ASP.NET MVC applications, and instead takes the much bolder approach of teaching ASP.NET MVC in conjunction with Unit Testing, Test Driven Development (TDD), Dependency Injection, and Mocking. What makes the book so great is that he is able to make these concepts (which most books consider "advanced topics") straight forward to comprehend and grasp. He introduces them early, explains the concepts behind them quickly, and then does a masterful job of immediately showing how you can apply and use them pragmatically within ASP.NET MVC applications. The result is that they feel natural, you really "get" the concepts behind them, and you are left knowing the exact mechanics and steps necessary to take advantage of them within your own ASP.NET MVC applications. He uses the free, open-source NUnit, Moq, and Ninject frameworks within the book - which work with all version of Visual Studio (including the free express editions).

The remaining 500 pages of the book then go into detail on all the core areas of ASP.NET MVC, and do a phenomenal job of explaining both all of the features - and more importantly how to take advantage of them. In addition to covering the built-in features of ASP.NET MVC, he covers how to implement common scenarios with it like implementing CAPTCHAs, how to take advantage of jQuery, use VS 2010's new web deployment features, and more.

This book is a tour de force and absolutely stunning. It is a must-have for the bookshelf of any professional ASP.NET MVC developer.

Scott Guthrie
Corporate Vice President - Developer Division
Microsoft Corporation

I see Scott Guthrie has already recommended the book and gave it five stars. What other recommendation do you need? You should purchase this book! In case you want additional validation to purchase this book, here is my review. I have been an ASP.NET Webform developer since the first release. I have been listening to the buzz at conferences and in Scott Guthrie's blogs about ASP.NET MVC and more recently MVC 2 and wanted to start my education so I purchased this book. This book is an excellent book for learning MVC 2.

The book starts off giving you an overview of what MVC is, how it's different than Webforms and why it's better. It also does a brief comparison to other similar products like Ruby on Rails and MonoRail. The next five chapters are dedicated to building a simple RSVP form and an eCommerce store using MVC 2. It doesn't just give you a simple demo of MVC features but builds an actual working application that could be the beginnings of a real application. Building these applications gives you a great feeling for the language. But Mr. Sanderson isn't content with just teaching you MVC, he also wants to teach you many of the best practices in software development. He covers test-driven (TDD) and behavior-driven development(BDD). I love the ShouldEqual() extension method for simplifying an assert. He covers Nunit, Moq and Specflow (Gherkin BDD language interpreter). He talks about unit testing versus integration testing. He uses Linq to SQL for database integration and Ninject for Dependency Injection. While you can download all of the source code for the applications from the apress.com web site, I typed in all of the samples from the book. I can honestly say I haven't found one sample that didn't work as expected. The book also uses CSS to keep the HTML clean.

Once you are done building the two applications and have a good understanding of how ASP.NET MVC actually works in practice, Part 2 of the book covers MVC features in detail. It covers URLs and URL routing, controllers and actions, extending controllers and the request processing pipeline, views, HTML helper methods, models with parameter binding and validation, user interface techniques and Ajax and client JavaScript including jQuery. The last few chapters deal with deployment strategies and understanding common security vulnerabilities and how to avoid them. There is also a section that talks about upgrading from webforms to MVC and even discusses how to combine the two technologies.

Even though I have a good understanding of many of the best practices introduced in the book, I found the book's coverage of these topics the appropriate length and depth. Mr. Sanderson goes to great lengths to support Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 as well as ASP.NET 3.5 and 4.0. At the beginning I was worried the author was going to duplicate examples in both versions but to his credit he quickly transitioned to using ASP.NET 4.0 syntax but with appropriate callouts to bring attention to the differences and warning that there would be no further warnings.

One small criticism of the book was with the use of Linq to SQL. I would have preferred him covering the Entity Framework or nHibernate. Mr. Sanderson explained why he choose Linq to SQL and his reasons are valid. Another equally small criticism was with mixing CSS styles with HTML in the Shopping cart example. He took great pains in the rest of the application to use best practices but took the easy way on this sample. Obviously if these are the biggest criticisms I can give the book, the book is pretty amazing. I strongly recommend the book and is one of the best programming books I have purchased (and I have purchased many).

Scott Guthrie wrote a review with enthusiastic recommendation - so I realize that anything I add isn't going to be that helpful :) The first version of the book was my favorite on MVC1, and I couldn't wait to get MVC2 version. And it didn't disappoint!

So, all my comments below shouldn't dissuade you in any way from getting this book as soon as possible!

1. I read first version of this book after I went through Nerd Dinner tutorial. I think a "quicker-and-dirtier" example like Nerd Dinner would be helpful before you get into unit testing, dependency injection, and other advanced topics. Especially if your background is in WebForms! Unfortunately, Scott's team seem to have taken extended vacation after MVC2 and VS2010 went live in April. All the tutorials are still covering MVC1 (as of mid-July 2010).

2. Just like somebody else noted, I would prefer to use EF over LINQ to SQL. I understand author's arguments; I just disagree with them. Most developers are upgrading the tools very quickly (unlike OS or business applications the concern about backward compatibility just isn't there). There are a lot of issues that are at intersection of EF4 and MVC2 - having example that use both would be just awesome! More generally, I think there is too much concern (and space) dedicated to VS2008 issues.

3. Author chose Ninject for DI examples... It feels from conversations that I had that Castle Windsor is more popular.

4. It seems to me that every MVC project is using T4MVC (and for good reason... magic strings are EVIL). Would be nice to see it incorporated in the book!

5. As I said, this is one of the best (if not the best) books on the topic. Would be nice to have a forum where the readers can discuss some topics, help each other, and maybe make suggestions or enhancement requests. If such forum exists - I couldn't find it.

This is the book I have been waiting for. While it is easy to built simple applications in [...] MVC, there are many technologies that you need to understand to build real-world applcations. Sanderson's book covers [...]t MVC 2 in depth giving you the knowledge you need to build real apps. Some topics I found useful:

1. Using NInject as a DI container.
2. Building custom filters. Including authorization filters.
3. REST style programming in [...] MVC.
4. Areas and how Areas and namespaces interact.
5. Evaluation of the usefulness of HTML Helper methods in MVC Futures and how to use them.
6. Building your own HTML Helpers.
7. Templated View Helpers
8. Using Model Metadata with [...] MVC including how to create your own metadata.
9. How to explicitly call Model Binding (important for testing).
10. Custom Model Binders.
11. Custom Validators.
12. Building Wizards

I particularly like that Sanderson is willing to give advice on using MVC even when it is at odds with the current orthodoxy. For example, if you have most of your logic in the model, you may be better off building UI integration tests rather that Unit Test of your controllers. In general, I found his recommendations make alot of sense. Overall this is a great book, my only wish is that I had it four months ago.

Before I read this book I had no experience with ASP.NET MVC. After reading half of it, everyone at work considers ME the expert and I have not yet had a question I couldn't answer.

The 3 things I love about this book are Structure, Testing, and Details.

This book does an excellent job of conveying the proper structure of an MVC application. It presents the philosophy and then detailed examples. This book will teach you the best way to structure your application so you don't waste any effort doing it the wrong way.

Secondly, a huge emphasis is placed on how you can test all the parts of an MVC application. For every piece that you build, you are given an example of how you can test it. These tests are placed conveniently is Side-Bars so that the test-savvy can quickly skip over them if needed.

Finally, every feature, class, hook-in point is explored in sufficient detail that you know exactly how they work and when you want to use them. Cookbooks like to give you 3 examples of how to do the 3 most common things. This book provides you with the foundation to accomplish anything.

I like to read a book from cover to cover and am about half way through this one. I felt a bit overwhelmed when I read the chapter on Routing. But after playing with routing for a little why, I went back and reread it and said "Ah-ha! I get it now. Ahhhhh... so that's how that works. Cool!" I am experiencing the same feeling in the chapter on Models so I'm giving a little time to sink in and then I'll go back and read that one again.

This book answers every question I can think of. The only drawback is that at 600+ pages, sometimes it took a little while to find it.

When I saw Scott Guthrie was the first to review this book I immediately suspected the other reviews. I thought they might up vote it just because Scott did.

I've read it now, however, and it's one of the best tech books I've read. The material is well written and technically accurate. It's easy to follow along; The author knows which topics might cause trouble and provides sidebars with extra instruction.

I noticed one review mentioned this book isn't for the beginner or even intermediate developer. I would think the "Pro" part of the book's title would imply that. It does cover some fairly advanced ground, though, even compared to other "Pro xxx" books.

It was challenging but rewarding.

P.S.: I was a stubborn web forms developer who didn't "get" why I should switch to MVC. I do now. If you are an advanced web forms developer who is still holding back, don't. MVC will be very refreshing for you.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is an advanced expert.

This book is for advanced programmer who already know the concepts like TDD, BDD, DDD, Dependency Injection etc. The book also explains these terminologies so that beginners can understand the technologies but kind of difficult to grasp if starting anew without any prior exposure to these technologies.

This book must be there in every serious programmer book shelf and anyone who does MVC programming should have read this book once. But if you are a begineer then you are better off starting with one of the other book which does a better job of introducing the concepts. Having said that I would recommend you buy this book and keep it aside. After some exposure you will see how valable this book is.

PROS : Depth coverage of various concepts.

CONS : Expert book (not for begineers)

This is one of the best programming books that I have ever read.

The depth and breadth of the author's knowledge is very evident in this book. Unlike many other programming books that cam be written by one specialized in a certain topic, this book encompasses so much that only people like Sanderson who knows in depth of every aspect of delivering a complex real life applications are able to write.
Yes, this is a book devoted to ASP.Net MVC2, but it teaches you everything needed to deliver a commercial web application - from setting up the development environment to application deployment and fine tuning. This book has a very good balance between focus and breadth.

The flow of the book is very well thought out. It begins with some background and quickly provides a teaser MVC project from which you can get a good sense of what MVC is all about. If it does not appeal to you, you can stop there. Then it spends 100+ pages on a complete project touching essentially all aspects of a web application. Though following this project is different from developing your own which usually is the best way to learn a new language or platform, but it is as close as you can get from reading a book. An experienced web programmer can relate to the project easily and see the differences and similarities between MVC and web forms.

Following the project is Part 2: ASP.NET MVC in Details. This is the best part of the book. I have gone back to this part again and again and will do many more times. I have never seen any source explaining MVC nearly as well as this part. This is a better reference for MVC than MSDN though it cannot completely replace MSDN. The book always uses very practical examples to explain concepts. It is a combination of systematic tutoring, practical recipes and elucidating reference.

Part 3: Delivering Successful ASP.NET MVC2 Project is the practical utility of a book at its best. Security, server configuration, performance tuning, etc. may not be the favorite activities of developers but they have to be handled and asking IT staff to help with these tasks usually turns out to be futile. This part offers plenty of useful tips to accomplish them.
The only significant drawback of this book is its shunning Entity Framework as pointed out by another reviewer. EF would fit in the SportsStore project so naturally that it would further its elegance.

The occasional humors add more pleasure to the reading. I personally prefer less assertive language in a few places. MVC is great and I love it, but I still use web forms for many situations where I think they are most appropriate. Please do not forget that SharePoint and some large commercial banks' web sites (including some large banks) are web form applications. The author's passion for MVC appears to be almost emotional in its introduction.

In case it is useful for some readers, I want to quickly point out that the book is either incorrect of confusing regarding converting a web site project to an MVC web application project. It says to follow the instructions of MSDN to convert it to a web application then proceed to other steps. Actually one only needs to follow the MSDN instructions to convert the web site project directly to an MVC web application and no other steps in the book are needed.

For people desiring to learn MVC, I believe, this is the only book they need to have to have. Armed with the solid understanding of the topic, one can obtain any other MVC related information not covered by the book online with a simple and appropriately constructed search.

My office wall is covered with computer books, floor to ceiling. I say this only to provide the context for my next remark -- this has got to be one of the very best I've read in over 15 years of programming. I'm tired of books that rehash online documentation and say little about those lessons learned while in the trenches. This book is different; not only does it clearly explain the topic, but the author provides those tips and tricks along the way that will save you hours of spinning your wheels. I purchased a second copy for another developer...he loves it, and he can barely read ;) I never write reviews - this is my first on Amazon - but I have to give this guy credit where credit is due. Don't take my word for it; Guthrie's glowing review should tell you all you need to know. As far as the two reviews I read that gave this book poor marks, I am at a loss for words. It really couldn't be any more clearly explained.

Scott Sanderson does it again with his book on [...] MVC 2. Easy to follow along, and adds value to the subject matter by explaining best practices including TDD and DI. Would recommend this book to anyone interested in learning the ins and outs of Microsoft's MVC framework. A real tech page turner!