Developer roadmap - 1. Moving to MVC. Your thoughts.
- 4
- 20
- 6/25/2010
- United Kingdom
Personally, I don't think nopCommerce should be moved to ASP.NET MVC, at least not for the time being. This is just one more learning hurdle that I'd have to suffer to get a project up and running, and until I get the time to learn the intricacies of MVC properly, it's not going to help to have it foisted on me.
- 138
- 1374
- 1/4/2010
- United States
Moving forward with the technology, when it makes sense, is a good thing. However, that being said; not yet. NopCommerce is going through some really, really big growing spurts every quarter, and it can be quite a task to keep up with all the changes.
I just filled in a survey that asked about improving the CMS, adding on auction capabilities, and adding web services; at this time, these would meet the needs of our clients, and bring us more clients (revenue); a big tech change like a switch to MVC would have the opposite effect: downtime required to switch over to a new technology.
The big shift this year was changing over to VS2010/.Net 4.0; give your user base (we developers) some time to actually utilize what's already in place, before bringing an entirely new curve to our world.
I just filled in a survey that asked about improving the CMS, adding on auction capabilities, and adding web services; at this time, these would meet the needs of our clients, and bring us more clients (revenue); a big tech change like a switch to MVC would have the opposite effect: downtime required to switch over to a new technology.
The big shift this year was changing over to VS2010/.Net 4.0; give your user base (we developers) some time to actually utilize what's already in place, before bringing an entirely new curve to our world.
- 10
- 50
- 3/27/2010
- Ireland
I vote in favour of MVC.
We run one of the largest niche sites for our industry in the world (big fish in a small pond) on NopCommerce and would be more than happy to switch to MVC. I think the advantages FAR outweigh the disadvantages, especially when it comes to D/I, unit testing and promoting S.O.L.I.D. architectural design.
I also think the point on missing out on rich UI elements from WebForms is not valid - you can replicate any of these UI elements in MVC AND have complete control over the HTML/CSS. Think about it - the WebForms elements ulitmately render as HTML on the client side anyway (and usually in a VERY nasty way). A bit of jQuery and maybe an extension method or two and voila!
Perhaps I'm missing something obvious here but why don't we start an MVC branch in the repository? Allow the "classic" ASP.NET development to continue with its current core contributors & allow those who want an MVC port to contribute towards it. The way I see it, the people most interested in an MVC port will be dev folk. If dev folk want it badly enough, the should work for it :)
Just my 2 cents.
We run one of the largest niche sites for our industry in the world (big fish in a small pond) on NopCommerce and would be more than happy to switch to MVC. I think the advantages FAR outweigh the disadvantages, especially when it comes to D/I, unit testing and promoting S.O.L.I.D. architectural design.
I also think the point on missing out on rich UI elements from WebForms is not valid - you can replicate any of these UI elements in MVC AND have complete control over the HTML/CSS. Think about it - the WebForms elements ulitmately render as HTML on the client side anyway (and usually in a VERY nasty way). A bit of jQuery and maybe an extension method or two and voila!
Perhaps I'm missing something obvious here but why don't we start an MVC branch in the repository? Allow the "classic" ASP.NET development to continue with its current core contributors & allow those who want an MVC port to contribute towards it. The way I see it, the people most interested in an MVC port will be dev folk. If dev folk want it badly enough, the should work for it :)
Just my 2 cents.
- 7
- 35
- 11/26/2008
MVC is the way to go with no doubt!
I would vote for MVC 3 since it's coming with Razor templates framework that will simplify and make clear the code.
I also don't get the "at least not now" statement from others - sooner is better, later it'll be much more code to move.
Thank you for the product!
I would vote for MVC 3 since it's coming with Razor templates framework that will simplify and make clear the code.
I also don't get the "at least not now" statement from others - sooner is better, later it'll be much more code to move.
Thank you for the product!
- 5
- 25
- 11/26/2009
- Australia
The move to MVC certainly makes sense for the front-end at some stage as MVC is very good for generating highly controlled mark-up which is good for SEO. However the back-end needs more richness in functionality so moving that doesn't make a great deal of sense, as it's a lot of effort for very little gain. Another thing I would strong recommend against is moving to use the likes of LinqToSql and LinqToEntities... If you've already gone to the trouble to manually create the SQL it's going to be far more efficient than having it generated and there's plenty of blog posts out there about issues with performance when it comes to ORM.
nopCommerce is a great product, but I think the team needs to put a little bit of effort (it's not that much) to actually standardise development practices and coding standards. I don't about the absolute latest release, but if you look at some recent releases you will see that there effectively isn't a naming convention being adhered to in terms of method naming, etc... The simplest thing to do is run FxCop on the codebase and fix the issues as appropriate... Not everything has to be fixed, but it certainly would help to fix quite a few issues.
nopCommerce is a great product, but I think the team needs to put a little bit of effort (it's not that much) to actually standardise development practices and coding standards. I don't about the absolute latest release, but if you look at some recent releases you will see that there effectively isn't a naming convention being adhered to in terms of method naming, etc... The simplest thing to do is run FxCop on the codebase and fix the issues as appropriate... Not everything has to be fixed, but it certainly would help to fix quite a few issues.
- 187
- 2299
- 11/25/2009
- United Kingdom
Move the front end to MVC and leave the admin as Web forms, for now?
I haven't spent much time inside the MVC platform, but one thing I can hand on heart say is: I love the clean HTML. I know this is a tiny point in the grand scheme of things, but it makes your application neater and faster loading.
The other thing about working in MVC is the lack of having to build your application each time in VS. Its like using a web site rather than a web application. Do you know how much time this will save us all over time? Days, weeks, maybe years of time not wasted sitting waiting for the application to build. As the app grows this time will only get longer too!
I haven't spent much time inside the MVC platform, but one thing I can hand on heart say is: I love the clean HTML. I know this is a tiny point in the grand scheme of things, but it makes your application neater and faster loading.
The other thing about working in MVC is the lack of having to build your application each time in VS. Its like using a web site rather than a web application. Do you know how much time this will save us all over time? Days, weeks, maybe years of time not wasted sitting waiting for the application to build. As the app grows this time will only get longer too!
- 248
- 1446
- 5/4/2010
- United Kingdom
If NopCommerce 0.01 were being written today you'd go with MVC, no doubt about it.
However, the rate of change with Nop has been very fast recently, and there are outstanding bugs and performance issues. I would prefer to let things settle for a while, get this version stable and performing well, and go with MVC for Nop 2. By then MVC 3 should be out (at least) along with Razor and other enhancements.
Also, from a personal point of view you're moving faster than I can keep up with. I got a good understanding of the DAL, and you moved to EF. I got a good understanding of the architecture and have been using the Nop DLLs in my own work and now those DLLs could be ripped apart. I'd prefer 1.x not to change radically any more.
I don't buy the argument that MVC is not mature. I've read the Sanderson book on MVC 2 and was very impressed. It is however a paradigm shift from Web Forms.
However, the rate of change with Nop has been very fast recently, and there are outstanding bugs and performance issues. I would prefer to let things settle for a while, get this version stable and performing well, and go with MVC for Nop 2. By then MVC 3 should be out (at least) along with Razor and other enhancements.
Also, from a personal point of view you're moving faster than I can keep up with. I got a good understanding of the DAL, and you moved to EF. I got a good understanding of the architecture and have been using the Nop DLLs in my own work and now those DLLs could be ripped apart. I'd prefer 1.x not to change radically any more.
I don't buy the argument that MVC is not mature. I've read the Sanderson book on MVC 2 and was very impressed. It is however a paradigm shift from Web Forms.