Customer Reviews

ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Website Programming: Problem - Design - Solution (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)

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

 

 

This book builds on existing material from Marco Bellinaso's book, ASP.Net 2.0 Website Programming, migrating the implementation of the BeerHouse eCommerce web application to using more recently released Microsoft technologies such as ASP.Net MVC 1.0, LINQ to SQL, and SQL Server 2008, and updating the text to explain concepts behind the new implementation. As the authors indicated in their introduction to ASP.Net MVC, one thing developers will gain with using this newer technology instead of classic ASP.Net 2.0 is finer control over the web application's client-side code. The flip side to this is that .Net developers, who so far have been relatively shielded from having to know too much about html, css, or javascript because of conveniences offered by classic ASP.Net 2.0, may now have to know more about these technologies in order to develop the presentation logic for their web apps. It's not surprising, therefore, to see a lot more javascript code in the revamped BeerHouse web app. So if you're trying to get a feel for what a non-trivial ASP.Net MVC application might look like and you don't mind reading through the javascript code, the BeerHouse web app presented in this book might be useful to you.

In my opinion, however, despite its title, this book doesn't delve deeply into ASP.Net MVC per se. Compared to Steven Sanderson's book, Pro ASP.Net MVC Framework, this book only provides a superficial introduction to the new framework, and only demos a limited subset of features. With a little more effort and for pedagogic reasons, the authors could have worked into the BeerHouse application showcase examples of how to implement, say: server-side data validation (e.g., use of IDataErrorInfo), or security features such as more advanced model binding that prevents the editing of certain properties, and Cross-Site Request Forgery prevention through the use of the Html.AntiForgeryToken() helper, etc. For a more thorough but still accessible tutorial on ASP.Net MVC, you should get Sanderson's well-written book if you haven't.

I bought this book as a reference book for the MVC framework and was not disappointed. It has a ton of great examples such as building a forum, a store, articles, security, a content management system, integrating localization and more. The really nice part about the book is each chapter is a standalone how to guide for building a certain website feature. This is a great book to have on your shelf, I use it all the time.

The latest addition to the Problem - Design - Solution series updates TheBeerHouse personalized content site for the [...] MVC Framework. True to the the style of Problem - Design - Solution, the authors focus on a real set of solutions for real problems. The material doesn't dive too deep into the internals of MVC, nor do they assume too much about the user's knowledge.

If you are looking for a primer on MVC, this is not it, but if you are looking to jump into MVC with both feet and you would like to see the capabilities of the MVC Framework in action, this book is a great compliment to your learning process. I would not recommend this book for advanced MVC developers, but it is just right for those who are trying to make the leap from [...] 2.0/3.5 into MVC.

This book is not an MVC intro book. This book is building a non-trivial app MVC! In this book Nick Beradi and Al Katawazi is transferring Marco Bellinaso's classic The Beerhouse app to MVC. And they do an okay job. You need this book if you don't know how to build a non-trivial app MVC, at the time of writing there is no other books as extensive as this, building a non-trivial app MVC, around. It is true that some parts of this book has been copied and pasted from the previous edition in a non-intelligent fashion. It's mostly the parts laying out the design of the app. For example on page 260 you get informed about the SPROCs of the app, but this app doesn't use SPROCs, that was previous edition! Anyway as said this copy and paste thing goes on in the design parts and it actually doesn't mean too much in the understanding of the book. It didn't bother me very much. The important thing is about the MVC implementation and in that respect the app and the book has been totally rewritten from scratch, and you get the info you need. One thing I was a little puzzled about is why Nick and Al didn't use the ModelState for validation, it seems to me that that would have been easier, and you can thereby put the actual validation in the objects themselves. Instead Nick and Al writes a custom validation using jQuery. But all in all a fine book. You need this book if you are a newbie and you are heading the MVC way! But pick one of the MVC intro books up before you embark on this book!

This book is a great resource that I'm currently working my way through. The realistic scenario of setting up an e-comm site with several commonly used tasks (blogging, polls, forums, newsletters, etc...) offers a best practice approach, often given with insights into alternative methods and the reasons for using them. The foundational introduction and architecture of MVC, the code given within the book, and the complete site assets that are provided online are invaluable in giving the reader an understanding of MVC.

Review of Book titled: "ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Website Programming"

MVC, or rather, Model-View-Controller is a programming concept that has been around for a while and isn't easy to understand, in my opinion, without a lot of reading and applying the concepts. I am using the book titled, "ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Website Programming", to assist me in a free 10-week course of instruction I am receiving through my .NET User Group. In my opinion, this book is no easy tool for a programmer who has had no introduction to ASP, ASP.NET or MVC concepts, nor was it intended to be. You need some prior knowledge before using this book. This is not a beginner book to learn ASP.NET, but is intense, containing sufficient knowledge and examples for building dynamic websites, all within its 5oo+ pages. If you are an ASP.NET developer already, it may take you a bit of thinking and re-thinking to get your head around (grasp) this new way of doing website development.

Now, what I like about the book is that you actually walk through a complete website project called the "TheBeerHouse Project" and learn concepts as you go through the book that are intended to teach you about MVC from the Microsoft ASP.NET point of view. If you will persist through this book, you will build a completely functional website, implementing the Model-View-Controller concepts; you can then use this as a foundational model for websites you will create for your clients.

Because this book is not a beginner book, I plan on buying the book titled, "Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework", to use as a companion reference and to get more in-depth information on the MVC framework.

One of the most important things I've wanted to learn using .NET, and which is found in this book in Chapter 10, is how to build an e-commerce store, in which a catalog of products is presented, orders are made, a shopping cart is persisted, and payment using credit cards is implemented. Not only the previous things are implemented, but also product ratings, whether or not the items are in stock , rich formatting of a product's descriptions, setup of shipping methods, order statuses and more is also implemented. This book is worth its list price alone for the valuable information and examples contained within this one chapter.

This book was exactly what I was looking for in an MVC Framework book. I had projects that needed to be done with the MVC Framework and TheBeerHouse project that comes with this book actually had a module that already did what I was looking for. Everything is very well organized and each chapter discusses a different web module that you will probably have to build on the web.

I totally disagree with the other reviewer recommending Sanderson's book over this one. I found Sanderson's book was geared for people starting at the very beginning. This book on the other hand is made for people going from ASP.NET Web-forms to MVC Framework. I don't have time to relearn what a class is. This book covers topics that are important to me such as using jQuery in my applications (an awesome lightweight javascript framework), and using LINQ. I would highly recommend this book.

This book lives up to its title. It is one of the best books for designing mvc websites. If you want a book to hold your hand through every step using impractical examples, get any of the other books available. This book shows how to get your hooks into the important parts of a working website. If you get hung up on the cursory explanation of the ISO codes and Link to SQL DataContext creation, your missing the overall purpose of the book.
Mvc makes it so easy to create DataContexts and DataSets that it becomes trivial. What the "Three Heads" do in this book is to put all these MVC pieces together into a well designed practical web site.

This is not the right book to use to learn MVC. In Marco's ASP.NET 2.0 version of this book he actually teaches the reader ASP.NET 2.0 web forms using what was the current method of building a full functioning web app. This book simply recreates that web app in MVC, but doesn't really teach MVC in the process, it is more of here's how we implemented TheBeerHouse app in MVC. If you want to learn MVC I highly recommend Sanderson's book, or the other Wrox book by Conery, Hansleman, Hack & Gutherie, much better books for getting up to speed on the MVC Framework.

This is also one of the poorest edited books I've read in quite some time, partly because much of it was lifted directly from the 2.0 version (this is why Marco is listed as an Author). As an example there are numerous references to stored procedures, but there are zero stored procedures in this implementation; it exclusively uses LINQ to SQL (could have used Marco's stored procedures and LINQ toSQL), but once again, provides next to zero teaching of LINQ to SQL. There are several copy and paste errors where the same chunk of code is used for similar but different objects. And, the numerous proclamations that the 'Admin' role has access to everything is flat wrong, since every Role authorization is specified for a single role (editor, contributor, etc.), rather than a delimited list including the 'Admin' role. this is easily corrected, if you know MVC, but this isn't mentioned so the reader will have to figure it out with information from somewhere else.

This book could have been so much more. One of the unfortunate holdovers from the previous book is the use of the provider model. In chapter 4 a couple of pages go into the importance of being able to easily switch data providers should the need arise and the value of isolating the DAL from the rest of the app. Well, the Controllers are not part of the DAL, but the DataContext is sprinkled throughout the Controllers, too tightly coupling the DAL and the Controllers. A much better solution would have been to use the Repository pattern and program against an interface (as shown in detail in the Sanderson book). But, if you don't know these things you will assume that what is being provided in this book is the way to go; it isn't, there are better patterns and practices to follow. One other key for switching to MVC is testing (TDD),other than to mention it in passing,this isn't even covered in this book. Another example is Routing, routing is a very big thing in MVC and it isn't mentioned in the book.

If you have gone through some of the other books and have a working knowledge of the MVC framework, then this book can be used to get some ideas and approaches, but you will be armed with the knowledge to know when to follow it and when not to. As I stated, this book could have been so much more, but it isn't, all that it is is a rewrite of TheBeerHouse app in MVC without teaching the reader, in any depth, about MVC, LINQ to SQL, TDD, the repository pattern, IOC or DI. The authors took the easier path producing a book that shows what they can do with MVC, but not teaching the reader how to learn to do it too, and not showing how to use MVC with a better architecture, for these reasons, and all the editing errors, this book only warrants two stars and my recommendation to get Sanderson's book instead.

Well, yet another big disappointment from Wrox.

The subtitle of this book is "Problem, Design, Solution", of which this book is very little of any of these. The editor of this book shouldn't be editing books. The content is very disorganized, and some of it is just plain missing.

For instance, a lot of people (including myself) have trouble with chapter 5. That's because not once does the book mention that a 3rd party DLL needs to be referenced in the project. Therefore, there are attributes that are used in the code that are not recognized because they are not part of the .NET Framework nor MVC. Instead of describing, step-by-step the design and solution, the authors leave a lot to the imagination and expect you to learn through telepathy. The response to this on the forum for this book is: "download the code from codeplex". Sorry, but that doesn't cut it. I'm the type who has to "do it" to make the connections, not just "look at it" and "read code".

In the design section of the chapters, which explains how the application is being designed, but not necessarily the steps to do it (which one would presume would be in the solution section of the chapters), the opposite sometimes occurs. But, like I said, the steps aren't explicitly stated, nor is it explicitly stated that "Hey, you need to do this to have a working sample application". So often times, I'm left to wonder, do I need to do this, or will this be explained later?

Also, the book doesn't use semantic XHTML markup, which is a big no-no today. In addition, that's what MVC is all about, taking back control of your markup. If you don't take advantage of this power, then what's the point of MVC? Sure, the URLs might be SEO friendly, but you also need the content to be SEO friendly, too.

Another fault is that the book re-creates the AccountController provided by the default MVC 1.0/2.0 application template. Now, to the author's credit, while writing the book, they were working off changing builds (MVC was still in CTP/RC development stage); however, they should've mentioned that--because: the UserController they created did most of what the default AccountController does. However, they missed validating certain fields which could lead to a much less secure (or at least error-prone) site. This is a clear violation of the "don't re-create the wheel" principle, which often leads to square wheels being developed, which are pretty much useless. It also violates a core tenant of the MVC pattern: keep it DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself).

*** [EDIT 2010-07-10] *** Indeed, the author was working off of a very early Customer Technology Preview (CTP) build which did not include an AccountController as part of the default project items that are created. In fact, IIRC, the Membership and profile classes didn't exist at the time, either.

To WROX Publishing House:

How about actually trying to edit your books before printing them? I see a lot of mistakes, omissions, and just poor writing in general. While most books being published in the last 5 years have really not been that great compared to books published +5 years ago, Wrox books are consistently not good. I don't know why I keep buying these things. I do try to stay away from you guys though, and try to stick with APress titles, as theirs are much better, generally speaking. The one thing I like about this book compared to many of the Wrox titles to date, is that "most" of the code is in the book. A lot of times, your books are: go download the code, leaving critical sections of the code omitted from the book and therefore, the samples not working. For people who like typing in the code (because it helps them learn better), this is critical; and I for one, am willing to pay more for a book (because it has more pages) that has all the code in it to make the sample work.

To everyone else:

I passed up Steve Sanderson's Apress title because at the time, it did not have many ratings, and the ones that existed were bad. Since that time, it has received numerous positive ratings. He has a second edition coming out later this month on MVC 2.0. I think I'm going to purchase that title when it gets released.