Are there add-on libraries or tools available for ASP.NET MVC development?

Question

My first experience with ASP.NET MVC and the Entity Framework has raised my interest in this framework and I would like to implement some basic applications, covering the basic requirements of real-world web applications. So far the support given by VS 2008 is already impressive. For some areas however, it might be a time saver to use existing add-ons or libraries of all kind. Are there already commercial or open solutions which I should take a look at?

Answer 1

Some of them:

• S#arp architecture
• MVCContrib

Be sure to check out example projects.

Telerik has made some UI stuff too (haven't checked out yet).

You might be interested to check out other view engines like:

• Spark (this one kicks a$$)
• NHaml

Haack recently posted about .less - might be worth checking out for managing css

T4MVC by David Ebbo library is a nice solution how to make your asp.net mvc app more strongly typed.

For UI testing - Watin framework.
Here's Jimmy talking about implementation and solution of common problems when doing UI testing. Seems to me that he prefers Gallio + NBehave + MbUnit combo but i personally like BehaveN (it doesn't need test runner, is not tied with particular unit test framework).

HtmlAgilityPack is a nice tool if working with raw html is necessary.

MvcTurbine might simplify technical part of your asp.net-mvc project.

To abstract away IoC framework, you can use CommonServiceLocator.

Found useful System.Web.Mvc.Extensibility extension made by Kazi Manzur Rashid.

Answer 2

There are some useful links at the bottom of this post.

Including:

• MVC HtmlHelper for Gravatar
• Paging HtmlHelper for ASP.NET MVC
• Marquee and GridView HtmlHelpers for ASP.NET MVC
• ReCAPTCHA HtmlHelper (and also a solution to use ReCAPTCHA in ASP.NET MVC)
• ASP.Net MVC Extension method to create a Security Aware Html.ActionLink
• CheckboxList Helper

Also, keep an eye on some of the big component developers. Telerik has a demo of some MVC components and I hear DeveloperExpress has some on the way too.

Answer 3

Not necessarily MVC specific, but:

MVC lends itself to take advantage of all the jQuery UI controls and pretty things.

There's also Elmah, and StructureMap for DI/IOC.

Answer 4

Nothing much else to add here except that xVal is a really nice validation library, utilising jQuery. My company is currently in the process of moving from a 'roll-your-own' solution to this.

Answer 5

Just to add details to Telerik's MVC support:

We just kicked-off our official support for ASP.NET MVC with last week's CTP. Our new UI Extensions for MVC will aim to bring the productivity of WebForms to MVC without violating any MVC concepts. Our new extensions are built from the ground-up specifically for MVC and they will leverage jQuery on the client for all behaviors and Ajax.

Further, the Extensions are completely open source, licensed under the Microsoft Public License (MS-PL) - the same license that the ASP.NET MVC framework ships under. You can find the CTP source today on Telerik.com or on CodePlex:

http://telerikaspnetmvc.codeplex.com/

All of that said, this is our early support. We will ship the first 3 UI Extensions in November and build from there in 2010. The first planned Extensions are:

• Grid
• Menu
• TabStrip

You can find more details, demos, and downloads on Telerik.com:

www.telerik.com/mvc

Hope that helps.

Answer 6

SharpDOM is another option as a view engine for asp.net mvc.