Comments on: ASP.Net MVC Portable Areas via MvcContrib

By: Saeed Neamati

Saeed Neamati — Mon, 28 May 2012 08:20:00 +0000

I think you do need to explain a little more about the way of achieving this “Portable Area” thing. I downloaded the code, but reverse-engineering a code is really harder than somebody explaining it to you. Your article is valuable in concept and idea, but lacks the necessary description. Thanks.

By: Nilesh Hirapra

Nilesh Hirapra — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 04:23:00 +0000

Look here for solution. Putting detailed steps very soon.
http://nileshhirapra.blogspot.in/2012/02/aspnet-mvc-pluggable-application.html

By: Randy H

Randy H — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:53:02 +0000

Is there a problem with the latest version of ASP.Net MVC 2 Beta (released 11/17/2009)? When running your MvcContrib.Samples.PortableAreas sample I am getting this error:
The view ‘index’ or its master was not found. The following locations were searched:
~/Areas/Login/Views/login/index.aspx
~/Areas/Login/Views/login/index.ascx
~/Areas/Login/Views/Shared/index.aspx
~/Areas/Login/Views/Shared/index.ascx
~/Views/login/index.aspx
~/Views/Shared/index.aspx
~/Views/InputBuilders/index.aspx
~/Views/login/index.ascx
~/Views/Shared/index.ascx

By: erichexter

erichexter — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:26:21 +0000

@HarryM I am not sure I follow you on the Hosting Application owning the routes. I was thining that if a single area was a multi-tenant than it could add its instance to its routes.. like /{Area}/{Instance}/{Controller}/{Action}

Right now if the Portable Apps use the same master page name this will all work out but realistically that becomes a little difficult to manage, so I was thinking that there should be a way for the application to tell the Portable Area what it should use as its master page, then the PA would be responsible for specifiing that whenever it creates a ViewResult from an action.

@Caladin, glad to hear.. I think it has a lot of potential.

By: Caladin

Caladin — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:11:46 +0000

I have to say this solves my biggest complaint about MVC.
Too much copy and paste of common code and all the headaches that it generates.

Thanks!

By: Harry M

Harry M — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:48:00 +0000

We’re starting a new feature soon, and I’ve been pushing feature-based application partitioning. I don’t think the powers that be will allow us to go live on a beta or CTP unfortunately, so it would be great to get this into MVC1.

There’s a couple of other things I’d love to see with this, which I’m not sure this solution handles, but I would be cool if it did.

Firstly, when the parent app registers the areas, it would be nice if it could modify the routes, maybe applying a prefix to them. i.e. this means two independent areas could both use the /settings url, but the host app could choose to make the routes something like area1name/settings and area2name/settings.

The other thing is related to master pages/visual inheritance/subcontroller routing. It would be extremely neat if a master application could intercept routes registered in child areas, run them through a master controller and action in the parent, which would output containing html with a ContentPanel (like a master page), maybe register a couple of request scoped services, and then call the child area with a slightly rewritten request to produce the html to go inside the ContentPanel.

Hmm. I may need to explain myself better.

By: erichexter

erichexter — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:19:29 +0000

@TJ, this is correct you do not get a drop in area. But part of that reason is the way that the default area registration occurs. In Preview 2 the area registration only scans assemblies that are referenced from the main UI application. If this is change than the they could be drop in a bin as long as that portable area does not require some sort of communication with the host application. If it can carry along all of its data, configuration, and logic than it could be dropped in.

By: TJ

TJ — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:26:42 +0000

Very cool Eric, i like the use of a message bus. Correct me if I’m wrong but since the portable areas are required to be referenced by the host application and then compiled, you don’t get assembly drop-in functionality with this approach.

This combined with MEF for true pluggable areas is the next step perhaps?

By: Haacked

Haacked — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:25:54 +0000

@erichexter it has been fixed on ASP.NET 4. Try it out!

By: erichexter

erichexter — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:52:02 +0000

@Haacked , this approach does not work with Medium Trust. we need to get the ASP.Net team to fix that!