Book Review: ASP.NET MVC in Action

One Minute Bottom Line

This is my favorite book on the ASP.NET MVC Framework so far. The authors thoroughly cover each topic and it is obvious they have a deep knowledge of web development and the MVC framework. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to bend ASP.NET MVC to their will.

Review

This book is aimed at experienced web developers with a solid background. It covers advanced topics and does not try to hold the reader's hand.

It covers ASP.NET MVC Framework v1.0. This is the current version of the framework, however version 2.0 will be released this spring. The new version will mostly build on the 1.0 framework, so anything learned in this book will not become obsolete.

I really enjoyed reading this book. Unlike a lot of programming books, I actually sat down and read it cover to cover before diving into code samples and trying some of the material for myself. The authors wrote this book with senior web developers in mind. You will not find a lot of background on core ASP.NET concepts and the introduction to the MVC framework itself is relatively brief when compared to other titles. However, after introducing the framework, each of its components is examined in detail to provide a thorough understanding of ASP.NET MVC.

Extending the framework is also explained in depth. Phil Haack and his team at Microsoft built the MVC Framework with the idea that developers should be able to extend it in places where the built-in features do not meet their needs. There are already community efforts that extend the framework available, including MVCContrib on CodePlex and the Spark and NHaml view engines.

Like the Wrox title I reviewed a couple of weeks ago, ASP.NET MVC in Action emphasizes best practices and building maintainable applications. Some of the tools used in the book are NHibernate for data persistence and Castle Windsor and StructureMap for dependency injection. An entire chapter is devoted to best practices in MVC. The authors break down these best practices into those aimed at controllers, views, routes and testing.

Finally, the last chapter ties it all together by providing some MVC Framework 'recipes' for development. Here you can see some practical applications of the framework and tools that can be used in conjunction with the framework.

I highly recommend this book to experienced developers interested in building solid, maintainable web applications on the Microsoft stack. If you do not feel you are experience enough for this title, then I recommend getting up to speed and then buying a copy of this book to really understand ASP.NET MVC.