8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Terrific starting point, January 8, 2010
This review is from: ASP.NET MVC Framework Unleashed (Paperback)
Disclosure: I do not own this book, but the review is based on reading the first 4 chapters from my Safari subscription.
This book is a really, really great starting point for learning ASP .NET MVC. An important caveat is that you need to do the NERD DINNER tutorial first before ANYTHING! I'm real particular about my learning style and had baulked at the mere 10 reviews the book had received, but really, don't let that dissuade. This is a great book and the author breaks things down into easy to understand chunks. I will say that he isn't as detailed as the Nerddinner tutorial in explaining the Visual Studio features for adding Views & Controllers, but the description's for doing so should suffice.
Some people may not like that the code examples are in both C# & VB .NET; however, I don't mind this. It certainly adds to the size of the book, but I haven't found many books going through this stuff and showing VB .NET code, so that can only be a plus. Another gotcha is the book uses the Entity Framework for data access. I don't mind this since I haven't had exposure to it, but I think that might turn off some people. To be perfectly honest, I don't think there's a book that explains the basics of ASP .NET MVC in conjunction with NHibernate or ORM's outside of LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework. I did look at ASP.Net MVC in Action on Safari and I can tell you that it is definitely not a starter book; however, if you want exposure to using third party frameworks with ASP .NET MVC, that might be your book.
Okay after making to about chapter 19, I've come back to this review and bumped it down to 4 stars. My main bother here is that there isn't a published errata and their needs to be one. Thankfully, this doesn't come into play until Chapter's 17 & 19. The mistake made in both chapters is they start using classes without A) defining the code for the class b) without mentioning the class anywhere outside of a code example that assumes their prior creation C) a & b.
This isn't a huge deal, just download the book code and know that you will have to copy the code for the following classes:
UnleashedBlog.Models.BlogEntry (Chapter 17)
UnleashedBlog.Models.BlogServiceBase (Chapter 19)
UnleashedBlog.Tests.Factories.ControllerFactory (Chapter 19)
The last 2 really ticked me off because there is absolutely zero mention of their creation until they are magically used in code. Despite this, they aren't complicated classes and you can still understand what they are doing without the book having to elaborate.
Despite it all, I still recommend this book. I've gone through most of the chapters at this point and have found it a really good jumping off point for learning ASP .NET MVC.
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10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great ASP.NET MVC Book with Nice Detail, August 15, 2009
This review is from: ASP.NET MVC Framework Unleashed (Paperback)
I've always been a fan of Stephen Walther's [...]Unleashed book (arguably one of the most popular[...]books ever) and his latest [...]Unleashed book doesn't disappoint. As with his previous book, Stephen takes the time to walk through a lot of nice details that other books tend to skip over such as creating data repository classes and interfaces, integrating data repositories into controllers, tips and tricks that can be used during unit testing, building custom HTML helper classes, [...]using caching, adding jQuery into the mix, plus much more.
If you're interested in a book written by someone who really understands how to explain technology and who knows the [...]framework inside and out then I'd highly recommend getting this book. Stephen Walther knows his stuff and explains the technology in a way that's easy to digest. Code samples are provided in both C# and Visual Basic.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
best one out there, December 21, 2009
This review is from: ASP.NET MVC Framework Unleashed (Paperback)
I own asp.net mvc in action as well as this book but I have to say this is much more organised in terms of flow and explanation. Small pieces of code to illustrate each concept works great for me. On contrary, asp.net mvc in action talks of a code camp app and might not be the first book you want to read since you might get lost if you are new to MVC. Nothing against asp.net mvc in action since it is a good book as well but you will grasp much more if you read this first and then dive into "in action".
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