What setup in .Net would most resemble Django

Question

At work we are inte process of starting development on a new web-based product. Before doing so we need to establish what technology stack we are going to use. For this application my preference would have been to use Django but since the development- and management-team is soo heavily rooted with Microsoft the new product will have to be based on Microsoft technologies.

So my question is, what setup, with Microsoft technologies, would most resemble a django setup with its MVT-design?

Answer 1

I would suggest ASP.NET MVC and LINQ to SQL.

Answer 2

There isn't really anything that is like Django. Closest you could probably get is Castle Active Record, ASP.net MVC with the StringTemplate view engine.

Answer 3

I am not a Microsoft guy, but I hear that ASP.NET MVC is similar.

However, if Django is your framework of choice you can get it running in .NET using IronPython. I have not had to do this myself, and there seems to be some complications. This question has more information.

Answer 4

The two biggest MVC frameworks for .NET are Castle MonoRail, which is a complete MVC framework and ASP.NET MVC, but which only contains the Controller and View part, and you need a separate ORM framework for it. The latter is backed by Microsoft, but you should check one of the frameworks based on ASP.NET MVC for a streamlined quick start.

I'd suggest frameworks and examples based on S#arp Architecture (which is based on ASP.NET MVC 2 and uses Fluent NHibernate as the ORM). It has a fork named Shaml (made by me) which has a console based generator utility (resembling merb and rails), and a test application that shows how S#arp Architecture can be used to create a complete site.

You can also choose from other frameworks, or stick with the bare ASP.NET MVC using either Linq to SQL or Entity Framework, but coming from Django I'd advice you to check for a more complete framework.

EDIT: There is also the Bistro Frameworks which uses the NDjango templating language as default. I don't know much about this framework but it's view engine is clearly resembling Django.

Answer 5

The Django template engine was implemented in NDjango. You can plug it to ASP.NET MVC, Castle MonoRail or Bistro. I can't comment on other aspects of Django as I'm not very familiar with it, plus other answers have already mentioned the main MVC and ORMs frameworks available in .Net.