Customer Reviews

Professional ASP.NET MVC 3 (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Got the Kindle version.

As someone who's already worked on a project with the first version of MVC a couple of years back, this was a good refresher and a quick way to get to know all the new MVC3 features. This includes: Razor for Views; Validation mechanisms are much easier now, there used to be way too many options to pick from; jQuery Templates; NuGet etc.

Favorite Chapters:
- Ch.7 on Security, it's very well written with quick and easy to use solutions. Great stuff! MVC 1 & 2 developers need to fix a security hole in the default authentication template if you've used it.
- Ch.12 on Testing, good examples and valuable tips towards the end.

Least favorite Chapters are:
- Ch. 11 on Dependency Injection, it's extremely abstract and that's perfectly fine for the first section given the design pattern discussion, but it becomes harder to follow subsequently with not even a single attempt to show an IoC container in action with some real code. It just doesn't seem to accomplish its intended goal, unfortunately this chapter is poorly done, needs better examples and better ways to describe the problem it's trying to solve. It's a shame since this is a key concept for building complex MVC solutions.
- Ch. 9 on Routing, it's definitely more of a "under the hood" reference type chapter, doesn't mean it isn't important, just boring to read through.

Some chapters are missing the full source code but you could just google/download the MVC Music Store application which has most of it. Also, some examples include NuGet packages which is pretty convenient to load and run within Visual Studio 2010. Another really minor issue is that chapters probably need a bit more accompanying graphics/images which help set the context than just code/text for long stretches such as the AJAX chapter.

Worth mentioning that the book feels more like a reference book rather than a walk-through with step-by-step instructions so some sections however essential can make you want to skip some pages.

Overall, the book does what it's supposed to as far as new MVC 3 features; it will not however prepare you enough for any Production ready solutions i.e. solution architecture is MIA.

I would've liked a chapter on how to structure enterprise applications which as you'll find out are quite different from a base application like MVC Music Store. A couple of sample approaches would go a long way. Yes, there are some on codeplex but it would be better to hear from the "MVC elite" how they would design real-world complex solutions.

Having used ASP.NET MVC since around the time 1.0 was released I was a little interested in what Professional ASP.NET MVC 3 would bring to someone like myself. Would this book provide enough new content to someone like me who's tried to keep up on the framework? So when I was contacted by someone at Wiley to receive a copy for review I was of course interested.

The following review will take into consideration my particular experience with the framework. For new users I highly recommend you stick with the music store tutorial available from the official ASP.NET MVC Web site. Unlike Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0 this book does not contain a full tutorial to get you started. Also, this is one of my longer reviews, so if you just want to skip ahead the last three chapters provide a summary of my thoughts.

Professional ASP.NET MVC 3 consists of 14 chapters and an index, over the course of 400 pages. There are significantly fewer images than one might expect, but don't worry, that's a good thing, as there's a good deal of text and code.

Speaking of code you'll find they've used NuGet to distribute some code examples, but this seems to be based on whether the author choose to use it than being something consistent throughout the book. (I think you too will know which author wrote particular chapters/sections based upon whether NuGet code is available.) Speaking of authors there are four who worked together on this book, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that each chapter's author was noted.

As is the case with Wrox books, the physical book itself is top notch.

Given that this version of the book isn't for beginners I was a little alarmed after reading chapters 1 and 2, as they contained a large amount of introductory content within. Chapter 3 finally started including some newer information within, but again there was still a lot of introductory content contained within. I've noted that chapter 4 seems to go back to the review of introductory topics, like chapter 1 and 2.

In fact, I would argue that it isn't until chapter 7 that we start getting into the more 'professional' topics, with information about securing your application (including a note about vulnerabilities with MVC 2 code, which I hadn't seen mentioned previously). I also found chapter 8, regarding AJAX, to be a rather great chapter.

Chapter 9 takes us back to more introductory topics when it discusses routing, but it does contain a deeper look into more advanced routing, and is written by Phil Haack, so you couldn't ask for much more.

Chapter 10 covers NuGet, but outside of creating and distributing packages (which most people won't do), the information can easily be found in introductory tutorials.

And now we get to the part where the more advanced topics are covered. Chapters 11 through 13 cover dependency injection, unit testing, and extending MVC. For the first two these are items which 'professional' developers should be using, according to some schools of thought. However, if you've already researched these items and made the decision not to go down this path (at this time or ever), these chapters won't sway you.

Chapter 11 could really benefit with a unified example, and chapter 12's shining point are the ASP.NET MVC-specific tips and tricks. Chapter 13 covers the extendability of MVC, but it is my opinion that the majority of people won't have to go down this route very often, if it all.

Finally we get to the last chapter, chapter 14. The title, "Advanced Topics," would work much better as a section. Instead we have a number of topics consolidated into one chapter instead of mini-chapters for each. What's really telling is the first chapter where we read that "[t]here are a lot of really cool advanced topics we glossed over to avoid getting lost in the weeds as we covered the fundamentals of ASP.NET MVC." Is this an ASP.NET MVC fundamentals, or professional book?

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but this really seems to suggest that this isn't so much a 'professional ASP.NET MVC' book, but rather a collection of really cool or advanced features of ASP.NET MVC. So this is not like their 'Beginning/Professional _' series of books, but rather another type altogether. So, unlike that series, just because you've read the music store tutorial does not necessarily mean that your next step is this book. Instead you're much more likely to find what you need next online, perhaps even on the blogs of the writers. Later, as you try to move closer to the metal you might find use for the techniques covered in this book, but once again you're more likely to find what you need already online (and rare is the need for more than one of the book's topics to be required at that particular moment in time).

As such, as much as I'd like to give this book 4 stars I find myself needing to give it only 3. I consider this much more of a reference book when you need to start digging in closer to the metal. Perhaps if the book took the music store application (something it starts with and then seems to forget as the book progresses) and built upon it with the more advanced information contained within the book would have a wider appeal. But as it is the content of the book ranges oddly between beginner topics and much more specific information.

For these reasons I give Professional ASP.NET MVC 3 3 of 5 stars.

When I received this book I was curious to understand how different the MVC pattern was adapted to work for asp.net considering how much tedium goes into making a normal asp.net web application. The book made things a lot easier to understand by providing me with that information such as how asp.net normally handles performing a certain task versus how the mvc and razor web engine handle it.

Coming from CakePHP and Ruby on Rails I'm used to the MVC pattern so I was glad the quick few opening chapters didn't drag on trying to encourage folks to join the MVC wagon but I also felt like in some respects I didn't get the feel the book was geared toward professionals. I think that most folks who would be interested in getting a 'professional' book would be willing for a shorter introduction to the model view controller pattern if it meant an increase in other areas of the book. I felt the first 100 pages were mostly fluff with some good mixed in between for someone new to the MVC itself not the concept of a MVC.

If you're new to the model view controller pattern then you'll likely find those first few chapters useful and well placed and if not you can likely just skim over them looking for gems in between.

Either way I'd recommend the book as it was a fairly easy read and helped me grasp how it was implemented for asp.net.

With only a bad taste in my mouth from a short time on MVC1 and I'd-rather-code-than-blackbox toe-dips into Entity Framework over the years, I went to all of the LA DotNet Saturday MVC deep dives presented by Scott Mitchell. I figured that maybe seeing someone with the faith and with release experience might turn my crusty old bent. It did. Mitchell got me pondering whether it was time to actually trust the MVC-EF product on a real application three versions before the blessing of "Version 6" release.
So I went looking for a guidebook and one of the first MVC3-EF4.1 releases with "Professional" in the title was this one from WROX; it's light (weight-wise) and at less than an inch thick it looked like a pamphlet on the shelf next to the C#4 in A Nutshell phonebook, but the chapter names appeared to cover the gamut that I'd need for starting something simple and most of the four authors are well known rock stars so I made the investment.
Well... I dunno, now that I'm committed to a project it's clear that life hasn't changed. There's a lot of coding and workarounds required to get a moderate MVC3-EF app out the door safely and that's fine, that's code. The point of this review isn't with the realities of the product, it's that this book says "Professional" but doesn't cover those workarounds or tend to mention some of the basic `Typically Annoying' tidbits of the product. It's all happy path and rainbows and unicorns.
The first chapter is a typical "Getting Started", with a historical overview and description of how some ASP.Net developers were tired of "the lie" of the event-driven metaphor and how MVC is a huge boon to the lovers of complete separation of layers (you have to wait for the first page of chapter two to get the admission that the separation of Ms, Vs and Cs is more philosophical than physical).
I laughed out loud in the section of bullet points for the things version 3 brings to the table (there were a whopping six of them) because every one had an exclamation point and the last one had four ("!!!!"). Spoiler alert: that super fantastic feature that made the author squeal with delight? "Now With NuGet!!!!" That bullet is foreshadowing.
Chapter Two is titled "Controllers" and don't ask why they started with the last letter of the product name, they tell you right up that it was a chicken and egg problem no matter what they chose. No matter, it gives the definition of what a Controller is as compared to the WebForm event-driven metaphor and covers the basics.
A small thing that jumped out of this chapter was a half page sidebar about why Cassini uses random port numbers. It just seemed weird at this point in ASP.Net's ten years, and that grey box kept coming to mind all through the book when the authors would say that the reason they weren't going to show some example or another was `because this book is targeted at Professionals we don't think we have to go into detail on [fill in your unclear issue here].' Great guys, but thanks so much for the cutting edge info on that new Cassini thingie ;-).
Chapter Three is Views, basically. As an MVC noob, I thought that at least a tiny bit of time in this chapter was going to be spent on some small background on tweaking the UI, at least enough to change the default fat-tabbed blue layout or to get rid of the tab for the default anyone-can-sign-up LogIn system. Instead right up front we are told: "we won't show you how to make a pretty view, because our own aesthetic skills are lacking"... and they mean it, there is not a single mention of any ties to CSS or even of the folder areas related to look and feel of an MVC3 application. How much would it have hurt to put one more author on the payroll, for just a five page chapter on what's where and how to start making an app look like your own. I mean, when all is said and done, MVC is fundamentally a GUI platform, isn't it? Maybe UI information was left out to save trees, if so then it would have been an even swap to use that Cassini random port space for a url or two here relating to modifying the looks and feels.
Aside from that, Views gives a lot of comparisons between WebForms and MVC (always with MVC being the winner) so I was looking forward to finally seeing a discussion of how - or IF - partial views relate to ASCX/User Controls. User Controls and componentizing is so near the heart of WebForms that showing how MVC3 gets the same result or telling why it doesn't was expected, but alas. Partial Views are mentioned as being an option on the Add View dialog with a definition straight from MSDN that assumes you already knew exactly what they were and how they relate to Layouts... but remember that they never talk about Layouts in the book so it's less than helpful.
Views does have some good moments, there's lots of talk of RAZOR, nice descriptions and several side by side examples of the new syntax versus ASP.Net styles. A few of the example snippets made me think "that's an interesting bit of code, why would I want to use that?" but these were all just comparisons with no context. Next...
Chapter Four: Models. Here is where we are told that you can use anything for your models, EF is not required and databases are not required "you can use a comma-delimited files or web services using the full complement of WS-* protocols if you want!" Exciting!
Too bad the only Model basing topic covered in this chapter is Entity Framework Code First. Code First is really neat but in a "Professional" MVC3 chapter on Models you'd think that you'd get maybe an example of Database First or (pushing it here) Model First... or tweaking anywhere in the data layers for efficiency. Nope. Code First right clicking is the brunt and you get it really fast (so fast that they forget to mention that anyone who thinks enums are useful in object models is going to be sadly surprised by the database columns - and Views - that are created). There is a sidebar to tell us all that you can get around any autocreation issues or cranky DBAs by changing the mapping between the models and the database and it gives an MSDN url for that.
The Models chapter moves on to describe what Scoffolding is and how if you don't like the defaults you can just hit NuGet and download loads of other scaffolding libraries (Why? Any common reasons? No.) or you can handcraft your own (Can I get a fast basic example? No.). To be fair, there is an "Advanced Scoffolding" section is the book's last chapter... it tells you the blog urls you can use to find practical information ;-(.
A nice teaser was at the end of the chapter four, a heads up about the dangers of the "aggressive search behavior" of Model Binding specifically related to over-posting. It got me pumped for what was ahead in the security sections and, honestly, I got a lot of juice out of Chapter 7 but, like so much of the book, that too was a lot of buildup then a quick wrap that told you to use NuGet ("!!!!") to get a library that takes care of every little problem you could ever come up.
I think you're getting the idea by now. The book has a lot of great chapter titles and each chapter does generally stay related to the title. It's just that most every chapter reads like it is starting off deep then gives you a url or advises you to poke your way around NuGet ("!!!!").
Hey, I know what this book is; it's a bunch of conference sessions transcribed and printed out. The authors did their shows and were really rolling strong but then they got the word that they only had two minutes left so they had to bail. That's what the chapters feel like.
Yes, you can quickly find tutorials showing Code First, Model First and Database First MVC demos online (Julia Lerman has excellent ones doing them all side by side quick as a bunny). You can find everything online. But there are still valid reasons that the book could have spent a few extra pages doing the same thing: 1) "Professional" is in the title, 2) it's a book. People are paying $49.99 retail so that when they are in a non-wired book-reading environment they can get the full story. I think folks put those two points together and they deserve to get more than just a single way of doing things with no warnings of gotchas and a lot of urls to use "for the details".
I am new to MVC3-EF so my issue isn't author envy. I know that I'm not smarter than any of the writers by any means. I just felt like if the title had been "An Overview..." or "An Introduction To MVC3 for ASP.Net Intermediates" it would have fit better.
I almost tore up this review after writing the last paragraph because perhaps they were trying to warn folks that it was an Overview with the blurb on the back cover, but fact is they imply that it is going to be the end-all reference to this release. I can't give them the benefit of the doubt when I see the bullet: "Uncovers tips for making use of membership, authorization and security features" and I know that while Chapter Seven has a lot of starting point tidbits and security vectors to watch out for... the extent of information on using the Membership And Role Providers in MVC is limited to three bullets telling you "You can use your existing code skills based on working with the ASP.Net Membership system", "You can extend the default AccountController" and "You can leverage the provider system to create your own Membership, Role and Profile providers" but then stops without any words on How you can do any of these things. Not even a url.
To wrap: There is a short chapter on TDD, one on Patterns and DI and two short "advanced topics" chapters featuring both quick context-free examples that made me ask "but why would I need that?" and some actual code stuff. One of the best sections in the whole book was the very last topic where we finally see asynchronous controller code (yay!), ending with a mention that while you can get into this yourself, you should just download a library from NuGet that does it for you.
My gosh, how could I have forgotten the longest chapter in the book? Chapter 10 is every single possible thing you could ever want to know about the "package management system for .Net and Visual Studio that lessens the difficulty of adding external libraries to your application." NuGet, in complete and absolute loving detail. Four exclamation points for NuGet ;-).
I hated the book right? Actually, I liked it a lot. It's like the "Hope And Change" platform; when I didn't know any of the details it all sounded great and that got me behind it. I think it would have been more satisfying in the end if it was $29 instead of $49.99 and if it had mentioned even once in all the Code First stuff that enums still aren't available in an official Entity Framework release (or at least one way to work around the ongoing limitation) but it did the job for Microsoft, it got me excited about taking the plunge.
This book is not going to be anyone's go-to desk reference, but when a coder hits those inevitable times when they hate coding in the MVC product, pulling this book out for a refresh of the original naive excitement might help. That benefit is worth something... maybe fifteen bucks used.

I know that feathers have just been ruffled; I know that to many great and smart coders MVC3-EF is the new God. I have tried to put myself back into the days when my C++ friends talked down VB3456 and then all of .Net as being toys and tried to put on the old coat of blind faith and determination that I used to have for products that also had some early imperfections... and while that may be all fitting for MVC3-EF, this book ain't like the "Professional" books where you got the dirt along with the hype, and got the workarounds you needed to get solid stuff out the door to paying customers.

Does it mean the book is garbage? No, actually. It's like Obama's Hope And Change platform... it's a great uplifting book, a super fast read that seems like it has substance. You can feel mostly good about passing it to folks who are sitting on the sidelines, maybe those who are getting a little bored with traditional ASP.Net or to a team tasked to finally rewrite everything from scratch and looking at the options but who don't know where to start with the MVC3-EF product. It's just that it is more than anything an advertisement for the product, part of the big push to lock you into reliance on Visual Studio right-clicking and the black box of the Entity Framework.

I've recently started working with MVC 3 about a month ago and not longer after started reading this book.

I really liked the style of the book in that it is meant to get you up and running in short time without dwelling on things you probably generally know. The chapters are written by different people so you can really take advantage of different expertise.

Though the most important thing is that the book was instantly useful and I was able to apply what I was learning immediately and since it had enough advanced tips I was aware of some MVC 3 capabilities others on my team were not aware of. The chapter on security was exceptional with lots of good information. The last chapter of the book covers advanced topics in extending MVC 3 Controllers, Views, etc

One thing I really appreciated is that all the code examples are available via Nuget and this is something I would like to see with any coding book involving net programming. Plus there is even a chapter on Nuget and how to create your own packages for distribution.

Very worthwhile.

First, a disclaimer. I work for Microsoft, and know several of the authors personally.

That said, I purchased this book out with my own money, as a means to fill in any gaps in my MVC3 knowledge, and to get the authors' perspective on the most recent release of ASP.NET MVC. I am about halfway through the book, and I'm very pleased with it.

Unlike many multi-author books, it's very clear that Allen, Galloway, Haack, and Wilson coordinated closely on the content and code for the book. By using the MVC Music Store application consistently as the example for code samples, the reader gains more understanding of how the many pieces of an MVC 3 application fit together. One major step forward for this book (speaking as someone who's written books, and had to maintain the code samples that go along with them) is the use of the NuGet package manager to provide code samples for the book. This ensures that the authors can update the code samples easily, and that readers will always get the latest version of the code, without having to search for a URL, or browse around unnecessarily, or download and unzip a bunch of stuff to who knows where.

This may not be the right book for someone who's new to web development, as it does not purport to be for beginners. For those folks, there are lots of great resources at [...]to get you started. But if you have a basic grounding in ASP.NET MVC, or are an experienced Web Forms developer with a desire to learn what MVC3 is all about, this book is a good place to get solid information from folks who are building the product (Phil Haack and Brad Wilson) and those with a great deal of hands on experience writing code with it (Jon Galloway and K. Scott Allen).

Downloaded the kindle version of this book so I can read it on my iPad2 and I really enjoyed it. While there could be some more in depth coverage on application architecture rather than wizards I still think this is a great place to start.

As a Microsoft Certified Trainer I will definitely recommend this to my students. Not everyone are high end/senior developers and in fact I find quite the opposite in most of my courses. Most students who look for "advanced topics" tend to need something like this first but then again that is the persona of most developers.

This is great supplimental material for anyone looking to get an understanding of what MVC is without really having to work their way up the ranks understaning MVC 2. MVC is something that most PHP, classic ASP and ASP.NET Web Forms developers typically have trouble understanding and Jon and Phil definitely do well with some of their concepts. I obviously recommend taking a course as well. #shamelessPlug

In my opinion, this book provides comparable coverage of topics as, but is better organized than, Sanderson and Freeman's Pro ASP.NET MVC 3 Framework. It gives readers a good tour of the new features (e.g., new view engine, improved data validation mechanisms, etc.) in this latest iteration of the web framework, and several pointers on how to develop secure applications, extend the framework, and testing issues to be aware of.

The writing is pretty good, and the pacing is just right for readers who already have some familiarity with MVC concepts or have worked with previous versions of the framework. Readers who lack one or both of these recommended prerequisites would probably have an easier time following along if they download the lead author's fuller and easier-to-follow tutorial for the sample MVCMusicStore application (see link provided in the book) used intermittently in the book to illustrate certain concepts, and work through that beginner-friendlier tutorial first because the book goes through the basics fairly quickly.

The book is written fairly well. The chapters that deal with more advanced concepts tend to stay abstract more than I like, and could be improved with the inclusion of more concrete or substantial examples. But in my opinion, the book does have sufficient breadth and depth to help beginner- and intermediate-level developers gain a better understanding of how to use the framework.

I had long ago read the original Professional ASP.NET MVC book by Haack, Hanselman, Conery, and Hanselman. This book has a similar marquee of influential writers in Galloway, Haack, Brad Wilson, and K. Scott (I skipped the second book).

Compared to that first book though, this book represents a much much deeper dive into ASP.NET MVC development, and web development in general. Chapter 7 on Security (by Galloway) almost makes the book worthwhile on its own, and certainly contains a lot of information applicable to *anyone* developing web apps, not just ASP.NET developers.

My only disappointment in this book was the lack of a "sequel" to the NerdDinner tutorial in the first book. NerdDinner itself has been substantially updated for MVC3/Razor/etc () but NerdDinner is only briefly touched on in this book. This book is a fantastic reference, and if that's the goal, they've accomplished it admirably. But I don't think it compares to the first book in terms of being a book that I'd recommend as an introduction to someone new to web development or new to ASP.NET.

I found this book to be comprehensive and well organized. The examples are excellent. Descriptions of the nuts are bolts is excellent. I held back one star because information to introduce a new concept as it comes up is a bit sketchy. If you are brand new to the concepts covered in this book, it can leave you a little cross eyed when you first start reading about a new facility (like, say, "Helpers"). However, if you go through it comprehensively and work through the examples as you do, this is less of a problem.

For someone trying to learn this, I don't think you'll get much by just reading the book. You'll get to really go step by step because of the situation I mentioned above. If you just find an interesting looking chapter and dive into the middle of the book you'll likely wind up becoming quickly lost.

For someone who has even moderately used the language structures covered, you'll probably find that a read of the book will fill in the gaps, and possibly add information that you were missing and possibly working around.

The authors start out with a firm foundation, telling you exactly what software you need and where to get it, installation requirements on servers, and going thru the interface. Useful basic details like that are often left out of these books when authors assume that the reader knows these things already when they may not.

For anyone who doesn't know, the tools covered by this book help to build web applications in a more structured and less cumbersome way than us old guys used when writing ASP Classic, for example. Using these tools or others like them are going be essential skills for web application developers.