ASP.NET MVC 2 in Action [Paperback]

Although you can read this book with just a bit of MVC understanding, it would definitely be a struggle. That's because although it does explain MVC2 concepts, I would say that the book has a strong "recipe flavor". The main emphasis is applying and extending MVC2. For example, the first chapter on Areas introduces the concept and shows how it works. A second chapter is devoted to creating "Portable Areas" that can be placed outside of the main MVC project, including completely separate solutions.. Very cool, and fills a hole in MVC2. A large site with all of its views and controllers in one project can be quite cumbersome in Visual Studio, even with areas.

The authors' association with MvcContrib shows throughout the book. Besides the already-mentioned portable areas, they cover the mvc grid, fluent interfaces, test helpers, Bus, and so on. But they also use AutoMapper, NHibernate, unit test frameworks, StructureMap and other common libraries and frameworks in their examples.

The writing is clear and flows well. The examples are many, extended and practical. No "hello world" here. Instead you get items such as how to add a diagnostic capability for displaying routing information on pages. Some of these sample projects also appear on MvcContrib-linked videos or blogs, but book presentation gives a lot more room for explanation.

Code is a big fraction of the text, which in this case is a Good Thing. Along with each section of code, cueballs are attached that are then explained in the text (a standard Manning thing). For some projects, not all of the code is in the book. The full code, organized by chapter, is a download.

By the end, almost everything in MVC2 has been thoroughly examined, as well as supporting subjects such as deployment and testing. This is a book that is also a coding companion, reinforcing its "recipe" aspect. I have already incorporated some of the covered tools and techniques into my own projects. This book is a must-have for the serious mvc2 developer. I don't write many reviews. This book merited the effort. Very highly recommended.

Any complaints? No. But like anything excellent, you want more. For instance, I would like to have seen Entity Framework 4 covered in addition to NHibernate.

This review is based on the eBook version. The presence of color in the pdf is a nice addition, though most of my reading was on the Kindle DX.

I've read more than a dozen Manning books and have found them generally very reliable, but this one is just a mess. I have to assume that the problem is because it has five credited authors, and in fact it reads like a collection of magazine articles or conference presentations written by a bunch of different people. Other Manning books with multiple authors manage to sound like one person guided the organization of the book, and that should be the lead author or editor's responsibility, but with five authors this one just seems to have gone off the rails.

There are 27 chapters in 385 pages of text so all the chapters are very short even when this doesn't make any sense. There are four chapters on controllers (the C in MVC) and they are chapters 4, 9, 13, and 19. Why not at least put them next to each other? It's so bad that two chapters have nearly identical sidebars explaining the use of Inversion of Control / Dependency Injection in controller factories. Not only does this make things difficult for the reader, but the editor apparently had problems with it too. In an early chapter discussing deployment and hosting you see the statement, "Later in this chapter, we'll look at taking advantage of NAnt to perform deployment tasks..." Nothing about NAnt in that chapter, but in a separate chapter (11 chapters later!) NAnt does finally get discussed.

Other than the disjointed organization, the small chapters don't allow for a very substantial look into any of the technologies discussed. The technologies are selected arbitrarily based on the authors' experience. Many of them have a direct relationship to MvcContrib, and they are into other mature OSS frameworks such as NAnt and NHibernate. There is almost no mention of Microsoft's competing offerings, MSBuild and Entity Framework. Not that it really matters. In 10 pages you're not even going to get the tip if the iceberg of AutoMapper, maybe just some flakes.

All in all, there are some interesting ideas presented, but they are more alluded to than covered in any real detail. This book could have been a decent overview of MVC with a different organization, so I struggled with whether to give it one or two stars. But my hope is that Manning will see the more negative than normal (for them) feedback and make sure this doesn't happen again.

Finally, the writing itself should have been edited to be more clear. This sentence, "In this book, we eschewed the value of embracing strongly typed views and expression-based HTML helpers." appears after 300 pages of advocating strongly typed views and so on. I know it's a tech book, but clear, high-quality writing is still necessary to make it an effective resource.

Having read the author's 5-star "auto-review" I was initially of a low opinion. Then I bought the book (I started to like Manning after "C# In Depth") and I am currently on Chapter 13. Wow - the book is fast (literally, in a good way) - exactly what I need to know just how to use and just when to extend the Microsoft's flavor of MVC.

I guess it is a matter of personal preference, but I do _not_ like a lot of [obvious] code and output that would clutter the book and convert it into a 'XXX in 21 days' play-by-play. But I acknowledge that I have been previously exposed to RoR and very familiar with the MVC concept.

Why not 5-stars? The authors have not mentioned Enterprise Library or at least a stand-alone Unity2 IoC container, which is weird since it is an open extensible framework. It is a book on the Microsoft's MVC implementation so Enterprise Library would seem to be a perfect fit (I am hoping to find a reference after Chapter 13).

Summary: if you need to participate in an MVC project very soon and are not a beginner this is a very nice book.