cruizer : MonoRail

Makes me cringe...

cruizer — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 22:37:00 GMT

It makes me cringe to think that I used to espouse a write-code-first-test-them-later approach that I mistakenly called "TDD." Ugh. (see the latter part of the post)

I haven't been doing MonoRail lately too. Maybe because MonoRail hasn't seen much in the way of progress or innovation since ASP.NET 2.0 came out? I saw some issues with ASP.NET 1.0/1.1 that led me to explore alternatives, but most of those issues were addressed somewhat satisfactorily by ASP.NET 2.0. So somehow, the motivation for going with an alternative web framework is gone...

Hammett says MonoRail scaffolding is OK

cruizer — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 13:56:00 GMT

Hammett of the Castle Project says the MonoRail scaffolding support is OK; maybe you can get it to work. In my case I wasn't [:(]

For those who don't know, scaffolding is a great way to quickly prototype web sites. You simply code the model (e.g. using ActiveRecord) then all you have to do in the controller is to:

[Scaffolding(typeof(Blog))]
public class BlogController : Controller
{
   public BlogController()
   {
   }
}

no kidding! and it will instantly supply create-update-delete (CRUD) functionality for your model class (in this case, it's the "Blog" class). Anyway I'll give it another go when I find time.

Getting on the MonoRail presentation slides and demo videos

cruizer — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 12:42:00 GMT

you can download them here:

PowerPoint presentation

Demo Video 1 (basic view/controller)
Demo Video 2 (with basic model c/o ActiveRecord)
Demo Video 3 (filters, UserController)
Demo Video 4 (CRUD)

it's on rapidshare.de's free repository, so the files will get deleted if no one downloads them in 30 days. in case the 30 days pass and you still wish to download them, please inform me so i can send them to you or reupload them.

Why MVC

cruizer — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 12:27:00 GMT

rodel posted some counter-arguments to using MonoRail in his blog post, and i guess i just can't resist responding.

basically MVC is not a feature, but a way to do apps. in the end the main concern is separation of concerns. users don't care if the software they're using is MVC or not. as long as it works and it works well, it's fine with them. MVC is for programmers, since it can help make systems more maintainable for them.

my opinion is that web MVC is not MVC in the truest sense of the concept but it's more like adapting what's in MVC to web application development in general. my impression is that MVC uses patterns like observer to make the view respond automatically to changes made to the model, which obviously isn't possible with the pull-based web.

i agree though that it really depends on the programmer's preference. some programmers would prefer using something like ASP.NET web forms. some, like me, would like to get down to the HTML. the bottom line here is making software development easier for us; what may be easy for us may not be easy for others.

by the way, MonoRail is not the only MVC game in town for web-based .NET development. there's also maverick.net, spring.web MVC and NStrut s. i'm sure there are others i am still not aware of.