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

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.