MVC 3 + Sitefinity 4.0

Posted by Community Admin on 03-Aug-2018 16:22

MVC 3 + Sitefinity 4.0

All Replies

Posted by Community Admin on 23-Mar-2011 00:00

Hi,

I am about to embark on a journey to integrate MVC 3 view engine with Sitefinity 4.0...

Before I start, just wanted to check if anybody has done it before and if so, are there any issues that I need to be aware of...

Although Sitefinity is great, I would like to use MVC 3 Razor View engine for custom pages and from what I read online, using MVC 3 + WebForms in the same application is no big deal...

However, if there are any potential issues that I should be aware of, let me know...

Looking forward to get feedback....

Posted by Community Admin on 25-Mar-2011 00:00

Any thoughts on this?

Posted by Community Admin on 25-Mar-2011 00:00

Hi ,

We have not made tests and integration applications with MVC, so we cannot support this scenario officially for now.

All the best,
Ivan Dimitrov
the Telerik team

Posted by Community Admin on 18-Jun-2011 00:00

Has the Sitefinity team considered MVC for the architecture at all? Sitefinity 4 is embarrassingly slow and think MVC would be a better architecture than the bulky, messy one that was decided on. Orchard CMS is using MVC and is lightening fast. Umbraco is changing to MVC in their next major version. Sitefinity 5 maybe? Preetham, keep us posted on your progress. Sounds like an interesting project especially if you can bypassing the hundreds of bugged, bulky layers of Sitefinity 4.

Posted by Community Admin on 20-Jun-2011 00:00

Hi Truman,

Can you please list advantages of MVC over the architecture of Sitefinity right now? 
The layers that currently exists does not necessary slow the system down. The slowness and the bugs come from the implementation itself, but not from the architecture. Once you have the right architecture, it's a matter of time to make the right implementation, or fix the issues in the one you have.

I am looking forward for your feedback.

Greetings,
Georgi
the Telerik team
Do you want to have your say in the Sitefinity development roadmap? Do you want to know when a feature you requested is added or when a bug fixed? Explore the Telerik Public Issue Tracking system and vote to affect the priority of the items

Posted by Community Admin on 20-Jun-2011 00:00

I think it is also not a matter of architecture.
But what you see is that Microsoft is contributing much more on MVC and Razor as then WebForms.

Just see how quickly this Orchard CMS is growing! It is free, uses the clean MVC / Razor approach and has a big community. Even easier to explain to non .NET developers (PHP) because of MVC.

I think this is (going to be) a very serious concurrent for SF.

Regards,
Daniel

Posted by Community Admin on 21-Jun-2011 00:00

MVC is  proven pattern spanning decades and will attract more developers even from other languages. It is the future in relation to the dinosaur web forms (bulky, clunky, and old).

Really though from practical stand points:

1) SPEED, SPEED, SPEED! Sitefinity is so slow and MVC architecture would give it the speed it needs to be in a web 3.0 world.

2) TESTING, TESTING, TESTING! With MVC having a built in testing architecture, the Sitefinity team would not be introducing more bugs than it fixes. Seriously, you'd think the quality assurance of Sitefinity would be immaculate since Telerik offers testing tools, but Sitefinity has the worst QA I have seen. I'm embarrassed for you.

3) CONTROL, CONTROL, CONTROL! Developers of Sitefinity would have more control over the rendering of HTML, CSS, and Javascript that the MVC architecture provides.

Posted by Community Admin on 17-Sep-2011 00:00

Instead of outright replacing asp.net forms with MVC I would love to be able to use razor view syntax when rendering content widgets on the front end. Razor syntax has proven to be much more friendly for rendering frontend content and produces much cleaner html.

Here is an example of razor views being integrated in to SharePoint which is also based on asp.net forms.
http://tqcblog.com/2011/01/22/asp-net-mvc-3-razor-views-in-sharepoint/

Since Sitefinity 4.2 is already .net 4.0 this should be a much more straight forward implementation.

Razor has already been used to build a templating engine outside of MVC which is available on codeplex.
http://razorengine.codeplex.com/

DNN is another asp.net forms based CMS which has a Razor Host Module.
http://dnngallery.com/blog/id/266/razor-in-dotnetnuke
http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Resources/Blogs/EntryId/2858/WebMatrix-and-DNN-ndash-5-ndash-Hosting-the-Razor-Engine.aspx


Thanks,
Jason Chester

Posted by Community Admin on 16-May-2012 00:00

*Bump*
It seems as though this thread might need some kickstarting.  Has Telerik started to think about a MVC implementation?  I'm not sure Microsoft will be supporting WebForms for much longer as their focus seems to be MVC driven now.
Anyone from Telerik have an update?  ..Or has anyone taken a stab at implementing MVC + Sitefinity yet?

Thanks!

-Sean

Posted by Community Admin on 17-May-2012 00:00

I would love to have a conversation about what people who are requesting MVC are looking for.  What problem do you have today that MVC would remove?  

Furthermore, I reject the suggestion that performance or testing is fully addressed by MVC.  We've done extensive automated testing and unit testing for a long time.  Performance is also a nuanced topic and not one addressed by a simple switch to another framework.

Control is an interesting theme, but control over what?  I'm a big fan of Razor so I can relate to the desire to use Razor for templating.  However, MVC is much more than Razor.  When creating a new Sitefinity widget do you want to create it as a new Controller, View, Model?  Is this more desirable than an ASP.NET control?

I'm genuinely interested in what customers who are requesting MVC are looking for.  How do you think your Sitefinity workflow will change when MVC is an option?

Gabe Sumner
Telerik | Sitefinity CMS

Posted by Community Admin on 17-May-2012 00:00

One of the biggest reasons for MVC is that it decouples server and client side programming. We all know how limiting and obscure WebForms is with Javascript. It loads tons of HTML and Javascript just to wire things together. Javascript is a grown up language now and we need more control over the output of a page. No MS AJAX, no viewstate, no wrapper form, no hi-jacking html element. WebForms just combines these hacks to make it all work; packaged with a programmer’s ‘ignorance is bliss’ methodology. And worked great for awhile, but Javascript is making a come back as we can see with KendoUI, Windows Metro, and really across the board for web, mobile, AND desktop. A lighter output page also results in making it easy to read, debug, better for SEO, and performance.

Also MVC is much easier to manage since everything is split up into model, view, and controller folders. And if that is not enough, there are "areas" too which basically are nested MVC applications. Want to add more properties? Go to the model folder. Want to refactor your logic? Go to the controller folder. How about adjusting the user interface? Go to the view folder. This not only results in easier management by compartmentalizing tasks, but now you are testing is encapsulated into those respective spots without stepping on each other.

Allowing us to create widgets in MVC may help a bit, but with MVC's Web API, there are built in serializers in the controller that make it a snap to expose a REST service. So the full fruits are in the entire architecture and not just widgets. Maybe Sitefinity 6? MVC and KendoUI would be a killer combo! If we all agree that Javascript is something to be reckoned with, I suggest you have a discussion with your KendoUI team about ASP.NET MVC vs WebForms. My guess is that you will have a unanimous response for MVC.

Posted by Community Admin on 18-May-2012 00:00

Hi Basem,

Thanks for your reply.  I was beginning to worry I wouldn't get any replies.

I’m still processing your answer, however I wanted to reply to one point:

“I suggest you have a discussion with your KendoUI team about ASP.NET MVC vs WebForms. My guess is that you will have a unanimous response for MVC.”

I did and didn’t get the result you might expect.  However, it’s worth mentioning how I phrased it.  I started by reminding them that Sitefinity is a CMS.  Our customers aren’t starting from scratch.  In many cases they purchased a CMS because they don’t want to invent things from scratch.  The end-goal is to empower end-users (non-developers) to manage the website.  We do this by making website creation a drag & drop experience.

In this context, the choice becomes less obvious.  I understand the preference of a room full of Javascript-gurus, but they are only one stakeholder in my world.  ;)

Please understand I’m partially playing devil’s advocate.  I actually love ASP.NET MVC, but I’m also mindful of what Sitefinity is.  I often say “our goal with Sitefinity is to address 90% of the project's requirements and then equip you with the tools to address the last 10%”.

It sounds like sales BS, but it’s how I view our role.  We’re building this stuff so you don’t have to.  How it works shouldn't really matter.  If it works, it works.  That being said, that last 10% is the CORE of the project.  These are the things that are unique to the project and organization.  This is why extensibility, Sitefinity Thunder and our developer story is so damn important.

So what we’re talking about (in my mind) is whether MVC can help address that last 10%.  You’ve touched on some key points (importance of Javascript and control of the markup) that are certainly worth pondering.  I'd welcome additional perspectives.

Thanks again for your reply.  

Gabe Sumner
Telerik | Sitefinity CMS

Posted by Community Admin on 18-May-2012 00:00

I see Sitefinity a bit differently. I see it more as a business solution than a Content Management System. Something that is the heart of enterprises... with veins, nerves, and muscles reaching every aspect of the business. Because of this, I have found enterprises choosing CMS's based on the last 10% you mention.

It is impossible for CMS's to address 90% of enterprise needs without creating verticals, such as hospitality, education, automotive, financial, real estate, retail, communications, government, furniture, etc flavors. This is where 3rd party developers come in. That 10% helps the CMS organically grow for the other 90%. Just an extra 2 cents.

Thanks for your engagement on a controversial subject :)

Posted by Community Admin on 13-Jul-2012 00:00

Hello guys,

So, to conclude, should we be MVC or WebForms... or should we provide you with a choice and support BOTH? :)

Just a little bit more polishing, and you'll enjoy the Sitefinity 5.1 release with the MVC support in place.

All the best,
Georgi
the Telerik team
Do you want to have your say in the Sitefinity development roadmap? Do you want to know when a feature you requested is added or when a bug fixed? Explore the Telerik Public Issue Tracking system and vote to affect the priority of the items

Posted by Community Admin on 13-Jul-2012 00:00

Any word yet if we can introduce MVC into our existing Web Forms sites (or convert them?), or will we have to start completely from scratch?

We're not looking to jump 100% into a 1.0 version of MVC support, but it so happens that a number of our other apps are already MVC, so we have a lot of helpers available for use.

Posted by Community Admin on 13-Jul-2012 00:00

Hey Dan,

This is actually something that makes our implementation of MVC special.  You don't need to decide on MVC or Web Forms for an entire project.  Both technologies can be used side-by-side in the same project.  We'll be releasing a lot more details about this next week, but your scenario is something that we have fully covered.  In the meantime, check out the teaser video on YouTube and be sure to register for the webinar.

Gabe Sumner
Telerik | Sitefinity CMS

Posted by Community Admin on 16-Jul-2012 00:00

Congrats on the new release! The release notes look promising. Looking forward to the webinar. I would love to see some documentation as soon as it is up as well.

Posted by Community Admin on 16-Jul-2012 00:00

Hello Don,

The documentation is currently being rolled out. We have documentation for all the new features, so you will find it on the web site pretty soon.

Kind regards,
Georgi
the Telerik team
Do you want to have your say in the Sitefinity development roadmap? Do you want to know when a feature you requested is added or when a bug fixed? Explore the Telerik Public Issue Tracking system and vote to affect the priority of the items

Posted by Community Admin on 18-Jul-2012 00:00

Wow - this truly is remarkable addition! It is clean, slick and native. I know because we released the first Sitefinity MVC widget into the marketplace ;) I also wrote about my take on it and go over it a bit:

http://blog.falafel.com/Blogs/basem-emara/2012/07/18/mvc-comes-to-sitefinity-5.1!

Congrats to the Sitefinity team for an excellent release!

This thread is closed