Today, I played around with the new ASP.NET MVC Framework. I have to admit it is quite intriguing. I created a small application in which the user can select a particular category and view all the articles related to that category. When the user clicks on a particular article the application redirect the user to the appropriate article. The first thing is to create a CategoriesController which managers the categories. Here is the implementation.
public class CategoriesController: Controller {
[ControllerAction] public void Index { }
[ControllerAction] public void List
{ var categories = CategoryRepository.GetAll; ViewData.Add("Categories", categories); RenderView("Categories", categories); }
}
The List action gets the categories list from the database and renders the "Categories" view display the categories. The Categories view looks something like the following:
public partial class Categories: ViewPage<IEnumerable<GridViewGuyWebApps.Models.Category>> {
}
The ViewPage accepts an IEnumerable which means we will be able to access the ViewData bag in the form of the IEnumerable. Now, let's take a look at the HTML part of the view:
<% foreach (var category in ViewData) { %>
The foreach loop simply iterated over the ViewData which in this case is IEnumerable and created links to navigate to the articles contained in that category. Some of the category titles contained "." so I just replaced them with the "_" no biggy deal there!
The second argument to the Html.ActionLink method is pretty cool! It allows you to write your own URL. The URL that I am interested is the following:
http://YourWebApplication/Articles/List/[Category]
This means if I have some articles which belong to the "Security" category then my URL will be something like:
For this to work correctly you will need to modify the Global.asax file and add a route.
protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Note: Change Url= to Url="[controller].mvc/[action]/[id]" to enable // automatic support on IIS6
RouteTable.Routes.Add(new Route { Url = "Articles/List/[category]", Defaults = new { controller = "Articles", action = "List", category = (string)null }, RouteHandler = typeof(MvcRouteHandler) });
RouteTable.Routes.Add(new Route { Url = "[controller]/[action]/[id]", Defaults = new { action = "Index", id = (string)null }, RouteHandler = typeof(MvcRouteHandler) });
RouteTable.Routes.Add(new Route { Url = "Default.aspx", Defaults = new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = (string)null }, RouteHandler = typeof(MvcRouteHandler) });
}
Url = "Articles/List/[category]" means that the List action of the Articles controller will take the "category" as the parameter. Now, let's take a look at the List action of the ArticlesController.
public class ArticlesController: Controller {
[ControllerAction] public void Index { //Add action logic here }
[ControllerAction] public void List(string category) { var articles = ArticleRepository.GetByCategoryName(category.Replace("_",".")); ViewData.Add("Articles", articles); RenderView("Articles",articles); }
[ControllerAction] public void Details(int id) { var article = ArticleRepository.GetById(id); ViewData.Add("Article", article); RenderView("Details", article); } }
That is pretty much it. I am in the process of writing a new article on ASP.NET MVC Framework in which I will cover the complete details.