ASP.NET MVC in Delphi Prism – Introduction

ASP.NET 396 Views 4 Min Read

ASP.NET MVC is a web development framework from Microsoft that combines the effectiveness of the model-view-controller architecture .

It is an alternative to the WebForms that was and is still mostly used one in ASP.NET .

What is a Model View Controller (MVC) Framework?

MVC is a framework methodology that divides an application into 3 components: models,views, and controllers.

  • Models are responsible for maintaining state. This can be be the database access methods etc.
  • Views are responsible for displaying the application’s user interface.
  • Controllers are responsible for handling end user interaction, manipulating the model, and selecting a view to render to display UI.

Requirements to build the ASP.NET MVC Application

  • Visual Studio 2008
  • The ASP.NET MVC Framework.

Note : I will be using Delphi prism 2010 to demonstrate . Delphi prism is based on the Oxygene language and compiler, integrated within the Microsoft Visual Studio. It is one of the fast way to build .NET, ASP.NET, data-driven and cross-platform Mono applications .

For more details visit :http://embarcadero.com/products/delphi-prism

Creating a New ASP.NET MVC Project

To create a new ASP.NET MVC project, open Visual Studio and go to File ->New ->Project.

Make sure the framework selector reads .NET Framework 3.5, and select ASP.NET MVC Web Application, as shown below . Set the Project name and click ok .

1

Visual Studio will now set up a default project structure for you.Press F5 ,Immediately we see something working.

2

Visual studio by default creates the user login and the Registration module too .we can delete them and make necessary changes if required so that we can start fresh .

3

ASP.NET MVC Project Folders

  • Models — Contains model classes.
  • Views — Contains ASP.NET MVC views .
  • Controllers —Contains controller classes.
  • Scripts — Contains JavaScript and JQuery Files .
  • Content — Contains files like CSS etc.
  • App_Data — Contains any database files that needs to be included in the Application.

How it works ?

In ASP.NET MVC, controllers are just simple classes (Delphi / C# ) derived from System.Web.Mvc.Controller .

The public methods in a controller class is the action method, which can be invoked via URL.

type 
[HandleError]
HomeController =publicclass(Controller)
{ Methods }
publicmethod About: ActionResult;
method _Index: ActionResult;
end;
implementation
method
HomeController.About: ActionResult;
begin
result := View
end;
method
HomeController._Index: ActionResult;
begin
ViewData['Message'] := 'Welcome to Senthil Kumar's ASP.NET MVC App';
result := View
end;


In the above sourcecode sample , About and _Index are action methods.

The routing system, decides how URLs map onto particular controllers and actions .When a new Application is created , the default URL is configured .
This can be specified in the Global.asax file too.

Example :

type
Global_asax =publicclass(System.Web.HttpApplication)
public
method RegisterRoutes(routes : RouteCollection);
protected
method Application_Start(sender: object; e: EventArgs);
end;
implementation
method
Global_Asax.Application_Start(sender: object; e: EventArgs);
begin
RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);
end;
method
Global_asax.RegisterRoutes(routes: RouteCollection);
begin
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
routes.MapRoute("Default", // Route name
"{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
newclass (controller := 'Home', action := 'ViewPage1', id := '' ) // Parameter defaults);
end;


When an MVC application starts, the Application_Start() method is called. This method,calls the RegisterRoutes() method. The RegisterRoutes() method creates the route table.

As you can see the MapRoute method , here the 1st part is the Controller name ({Controller}) ,2nd part is the controller action method ({action}) and 3rd segment id the id .if you don’t supply an id, the id parameter defaults to an empty string.

In the above example , if the URL Path is
/HomeController/_Index/ it goes to the page _Index .

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