{Programming} & Life

I have a few ASP.NET MVC links I’ve had for a bit for when people ask me where they should start from in learning ASP.NET MVC, so I thought today it would be good to get them out there and get them posted.  There is not a lot here, but just some hand-picked ones I’ve found to be excellent ranging from beginner to advanced techniques and explanations on the framework.

START HERE

What is ASP.NET MVC?
What Does it Do?
Why Should I Use It?

ASP.NET MVC enables you to build Model View Controller (MVC) applications by using the ASP.NET framework.

ASP.NET MVC is an alternative, not a replacement, for ASP.NET Web Forms that offers the following benefits:

• Clear separation of concerns
• Testability – support for Test-Driven Development
• Fine-grained control over HTML and JavaScript
• Intuitive URLs

But one of the best people to describe this is Scott Gu, one of the core developers on the ASP.NET MVC team.   He discusses this succinctly over on his blog post, I suggest you read this first before persusing the video and article tutorials.

• http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/10/14/asp-net-mvc-framework.aspx

OFFICIAL WEBSITE

The Official Microsoft ASP.NET MVC Website is over at:

• http://www.asp.net/mvc/ and contains videos and tutorials.

However all the video tutorials on that site are pretty slack, most of them, if not all of them are out of date as at Release Candidate 1, I’m really hoping they will update them on official release of ASP.NET MVC.

VIDEO TUTORIALS

Videos, videos, videos! I really love stumbling upon great video tutorials/presentations because if done right, I feel they can teach so much in so little time.

This is one of the most recent videos I could find over @ codeville.net.  It was published on the 26th January and explains why ASP.NET MVC is worth caring about, how to use it and some code demonstrations.

• http://blog.codeville.net/2009/01/26/video-aspnet-mvc-show-me-the-code/ (longer, 00:52:00)

This is one of the first videos I learnt from, and should give you great insight into using and understanding the MVC Framework and the MVC Pattern itself.  The video demonstrates creating a simple “Task List” program with ASP.NET MVC.  If you wish to follow this in series, I would suggest watching this (which will give you brief insight to MVC) and then watching the longer video underneath.

• http://www.asp.net/learn/mvc-videos/video-395.aspx (shorter, 00:38:25)

The second is one of my favourites and probably my #1 resource which shows a bit of everything from beginner to advanced and gives the greatest single understanding I believe in a video right now.  It goes for around an hour and was delivered at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference and is very well presented:

• http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/PC21 (longer, 01:16:40)

MVC StoreFront series.  I followed this series religiously up to around part 20, it taught me a great deal about ASP.NET MVC itself and using it in particular design patterns.

• http://www.asp.net/learn/mvc-videos/#MVCStorefrontStarterKit

Please Note: My concioncse is telling me to let you know some code constructs featured in these videos may be outdated, but it will be only slightly different in newer MVC releases, so don’t stress; all the videos are still worth watching.  As well as the code walkthru’s being quite good on these videos, both offer a good understanding on how the framework works, not just how to ‘use it’ and talks about the MVC pattern itself.

Dimecasts.net ASP.NET MVC video tutorials:

• http://www.dimecasts.net/Casts/ByTag/MVC

I would have liked to include a fifth but I don’t think the TechEd Australia talk with Scott Hanselman on ASP.NET MVC was recorded unfortunately; it was probably one of the best presentation on the topic I’ve seen.

ARTICLE TUTORIALS

Stephen Walther has published two excellent article/multi-part series on the topic of ASP.NET MVC, one only in the last few days based around a Contact Manager application.  This would probably be an excellent one to follow once you’ve watched the videos and would like to put an application into practice.

• http://stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2009/02/27/asp.net-mvc-sample-application-at-www.asp.netmvc.aspx

He also has documented some great excerpts from his latest ASP.NET MVC book – “ASP.NET MVC Framework Unleashed“.  Even from the excerpts, it is a must read, and gives you a great in depth understanding on the facets of ASP.NET MVC.

• http://stephenwalther.com/blog/category/11.aspx

And of course we couldn’t forget Scott Gu.  He is one of the core developers on the ASP.NET MVC team as mentioned above and blogs a lot about the mechanics of each up and coming release.  Go check out his content over at his blog.

• http://weblogs.asp.net/Scottgu/

He has done a stack of articles on MVC if you do a search, but the easiest way I have found to read his in order is to subscribe to his blog and start from the oldest and work your way upwards.

CHECKING OUT SOME CODE

Why not take a look at one of the ASP.NET MVC sample applications out there created by the community?
Some of the most popular ones are:

• http://www.codeplex.com/Kigg (Social news aggregator, one of my favourites as it’s continually being updated. Complexity: Medium)
• http://www.codeplex.com/oxite (MVC blogging platform released by Microsoft. Complexity: High)
• http://www.codeplex.com/nerddinner (Based from the eBook PDF released by WROX, discussed in a later article here.  Complexity: Low)
• http://blog.wekeroad.com/mvc-storefront/ (Rob Conery’s Storefront series, Complexity: Medium)

MVC BLOGGERS

Other big names blogging in the ASP.NET MVC space are:

• Phil Haack - http://haacked.com/
• Steven Sanderson - http://blog.codeville.net/
• Scott Hanselman - http://www.hanselman.com/blog/
• Rob Conery - http://blog.wekeroad.com/

That’s all.

Ok, one more for good measure: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/340858/looking-for-a-good-source-for-learning-asp-net-mvc