Monorail presentation at WebDevelopersCommunity, Feb 1, 2009

Monorail Complex Lifecycle MVC SoC IoC integration Unneeded Abstraction HTTP

About Me
Ken Egozi
BASIC > C > Turbo Pascal > VB > WebForms > RoR > Monorail
Blogs at http://www.kenegozi.com/blog/
Have created AspView, the C# View Engine for Monorail
Participates in Open Source projects, mainly Castle Project

FindControl(“tblData”).Rows[3].Cells[2].Text = … int age; var succeed = int.TryParse(txtAge.text, out age);

The web is simple
URLs have meaning – R for *Resource*
/item?id=32 refers to the item with id=32
/items?category=boots&page=2 refers to the second page of items, which belongs to ‘boots’ category
/boots/items/2, /item/32 same things

The web is simple
Request parameters:
Within the URL ( http://server/path?query )
Within the request body
The format for request parameters is: name1=value1 & name2=value2
Arrays can be passed using
name=value1 & name=value2 …

The web is simple
Common types of requests (http verbs)
GET  Retrieve data from a server. The data is identified by URL.
POST  Sending data to a server for storage or processing

The web is simple
Common response codes
2xx  Success 200 (OK), 201 (Created)
3xx  Redirects 301 (Moved), 307 (Temporarily redirected)
4xx  Errors 404 (Not found)
5xx  Server errors 500 (General error), 503 (Unavailable)

Monorail is a …
MVC Web Framework
Open source, with a thriving community
Built by the framework users
Built on top of ASP.NET
Caching
Session Management
Authorisation
Authentication
Http Modules
etc.
Mature, running many websites all around

Core Principles:
Simple
Maintainable
Convention over Configuration
Less code (as in: Less code, not as in: *.generated.cs) ‏
Testable, TDD friendly

Monorail Lingua
Action
corresponds to a group of resources (vary by query/form) In code: a plain old .NET method
Controller
A logical group of actions In code: a .NET class which implements IController
public void Login(string username, string password) { } public class UsersController : SmartDispatcherController { }

Monorail Lingua
View
A template for rendering markup to be sent to the client.
Layout
A view that acts as a container for the rendered view

Monorail Lingua
Sub View
A view that will be rendered within another view.
View Component
A component that can encapsulate presentational logic and view processing. Can have several views associated with it

Simple “ Hard work” Business decisions DB access Web Service Controller String manipulations View Common logic Filter Common logic Filter Page’s code-behind Page’s Markup Control’s code-behind Control’s Markup WebForms MonoRail

MVC
Sequence
View Controller Model GET Load() ‏ Render HTTP POST Update() ‏ Redirect Load() ‏ Render HTTP

Conventions
URL  Action
http://www.my-cool-domain.com/post/show.aspx?id=2 Nothing new Controller Action Aspnet_isapi.dll Nothing new

Conventions
URL  Action
http://www.my-cool-domain.com/post/show.aspx?id=2

Monorail vs. Webforms Impossible Easy View testing hacks/SOAP/.ashx Simple, REST like API Single huge form, viewstate, POST All aspect (VERBS, Multiple forms) ‏ HTTP/HTML __VIEWSTATE field in the form Easily (OSS), Conventions Extensible Complex Simple Lifecycle Everything is .Text Values, Classes Databinding Can be added Baked in, Simple conventions MVC WebForms Monorail

FUD
Cannot Use Third-Party CustomControls?
It’s easier to squeeze the designer’s markup into a foreach/if-else than into an OnItemDataBound
Can use Third-Party DHTML/JS client libraries
How Do I Hire Developers?
Decent WebForms developers should grasp the principles quickly
You actually gain access to seasoned PHP/RoR/ASP/ developers
There’s a learning curve anyway

View Engines
Official view engines:
Brail
AspView
NVelocity
Contributed view engines:
Xslt
StringTemplate
NHaml

Project Status
Version 1.0 is nearly out of the door
What’s missing?
Docs,
Samples,
Better Visual Studio integration
Can you help with that?

How To Get Monorail
Castle Official Releases
Pro:
Official
Documentation
Stable
Wizards
Cons:
Not cutting edge
A new release will be available in the near future

How To Get Monorail
Build Server
Pro:
Stable enough ‏
Cutting edge
Cons:
No wizards
Compilation target: Debug

How To Get Monorail
Build Yourself
Pro:
Cutting edge
Build options (Release? 1.1? Mono? Medium-Trust?) ‏
Apache license => can be tailored
Patches get applied => worldwide professional recognition
Cons:
Need tools (Subversion, NAnt) ‏
Must find a stable revision

Monorail vs. ASP.NET MVC
Both are great, and better than Webforms
ASP.NET MVC’s major pros:
Larger user community
Official support ?
Monorail’s major pros:
Mature
Built by the framework users
Open source with permissive license
WAY cooler …

Links
Website: http://www.castleproject.org
Mailing list: [email_address]
Wiki: http://using.castleproject.org/display/CASTLE/Home

Links
Blogs:
http://hammett.castleproject.org
http://ayende.com/Blog
http://www.kenegozi.com/blog
http://benl.wordpress.com
http://devlicio.us/blogs/mike_nichols
http://andypike.wordpress.com
http://jonorossi.com/blog

Monorail presentation at WebDevelopersCommunity, Feb 1, 2009

by ken.egozi

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Monorail presentation at WebDevelopersCommunity, Feb 1, 2009 Presentation Transcript