Microsoft patterns and Practices, Anyone?

Question

I happend to go through the below site from one of the Stack over flow Questions.

http://webclientguidance.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Getting_Started_Feb_2008

Is this "One of the" way to create our web app from VS?

I can create a Website,Web App,MVC web apps. now one more? man, its getting confusing.

Answer 1

Creating a "Website" in Visual Studio uses ASP.Net WebForms, using a method that means the pages are compiled on-the-fly - there's no DLLs created. This method is not really encouraged, and is no longer the default in Visual Studio 2010.

Creating a "Web App" in Visual Studio also uses ASP.Net WebForms, but compiles the site, so the code-behind and any class files are compiled into a DLL.

MVC is an alternative framework to WebForms that also uses ASP.Net.

As for the Web Client Software Factory, this is a toolkit to help you create a Web App project in a "patterns and practices" way. I've only just looked at the site, but it seems to be using WebForms as opposed to MVC.

So there's essentially a choice between WebForms and MVC in terms of ASP.Net frameworks, but after making that choice, there's several other sub-paths you can go down.

Answer 2

I have interpreted the question as being related to project templates and the process of starting a new project in Visual Studio.

Visual Studio allows anyone to create a project template. It comes loaded with things like "Windows Forms Application" and "Web Application" and you can load other templates that suit your needs, such as the "ASP.NET MVC Website" template, or the template you note above.

The idea of the template is that it lays out all of the boilerplate stuff that you are likely to use in a particular scenario. For example, if you write an application that has a plugin architecture, you might create a project template for a plugin, which has the code all laid out ready to be implemented, so each time you write a plugin, you start writing code straight away - rather than spending time laying out the structure of the plugin.

So don't be confused by new templates. Choose the templates that suit what you need to do and stick to those!