An Introduction to ASP.NET MVC

Since we have come to the conclusion to pursue development of our application using C# and ASP.NET MVC (Wikipedia article) framework, I thought that I should post a little getting started guide to help introduce the concepts to those they may be new to.

The Model-view-controller design pattern is used as an architectural guideline for designing software. It's main goal is to separate the concerns of an application by splitting the different aspects of the application into different areas. The model aspect of the application is responsible for handling the data and business logic rules. The view is used to present the data sent from the model to the user over a UI or structured data output. The controller is for directing input from the user into the model.


To get started with ASP.NET MVC, the following requirements must be met:

• Visual Studio 2008 (Visual Web Developer Express can be used too)


• The .NET 3.5 Framework (SmallestDotNet will help)
  
• The latest ASP.NET MVC release (Beta Download)
  

Once the requirements are met, you can quickly create a blank MVC application through Visual Studio by creating a ASP.NET MVC Web Application. The MVC Beta install creates a nice starter application that can be browsed through to understand how it is working.

There are many screen casts and tutorials on the ASP.NET MVC website that are helpful in getting an overview of how it works. The walk through and tutorial for building a task list application go through the steps of starting a new application and building it up.