Asp.net-mvc – ASP.NET MVC doesn’t work with ViewState and Postback

asp.netasp.net-mvccontrolspostback

Perhaps this is a naive question. In my understanding, ASP.NET MVC cannot work with ViewState and Postback which is fundamentals of ASP.NET forms. Is that correct?

If that's it, then all ASP.NET Web Controls depending on ViewState & Postback cannot be used in ASP.NET MVC, right?

Best Answer

ASP.NET's server-side controls work with WebForms, not MVC. MVC doesn't use controls in the traditional ASP.NET sense (at least yet).

The MVC model is quite different from the WebForms model; not better or worse, but very different. Using MVC puts the developer much closer to the generated HTML, lends itself more intrinsically to unit testing, and provides a strong separation of concerns between the UI and the code that populates that UI.

At first glance, especially to hardened ASP.NET veterans, MVC can seem like a huge step backwards (if you've were coding then, visions of ASP COM development might dance in your head).

But give MVC a try. It is very interesting and its model is quite compelling once you get used to it.

Also, check out this interesting blog engine that uses MVC: http://www.codeplex.com/oxite

Finally, check out Rob Conery's MVC storefront project: http://wekeroad.com/category/mvc-storefront

Related Solutions

Asp.net-mvc – Compile Views in ASP.NET MVC

From the readme word doc for RC1 (not indexed by google)

ASP.NET Compiler Post-Build Step

Currently, errors within a view file are not detected until run time. To let you detect these errors at compile time, ASP.NET MVC projects now include an MvcBuildViews property, which is disabled by default. To enable this property, open the project file and set the MvcBuildViews property to true, as shown in the following example:

<Project ToolsVersion="3.5" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews>
  </PropertyGroup>

Note Enabling this feature adds some overhead to the build time.

You can update projects that were created with previous releases of MVC to include build-time validation of views by performing the following steps:

Open the project file in a text editor.
Add the following element under the top-most <PropertyGroup> element: <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews>
At the end of the project file, uncomment the <Target Name="AfterBuild"> element and modify it to match the following:

<Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(MvcBuildViews)'=='true'">
    <AspNetCompiler VirtualPath="temp" PhysicalPath="$(ProjectDir)\..\$(ProjectName)" />
</Target>

C# – How to create a dropdownlist from an enum in ASP.NET MVC

For MVC v5.1 use Html.EnumDropDownListFor

@Html.EnumDropDownListFor(
    x => x.YourEnumField,
    "Select My Type", 
    new { @class = "form-control" })

For MVC v5 use EnumHelper

@Html.DropDownList("MyType", 
   EnumHelper.GetSelectList(typeof(MyType)) , 
   "Select My Type", 
   new { @class = "form-control" })

For MVC 5 and lower

I rolled Rune's answer into an extension method:

namespace MyApp.Common
{
    public static class MyExtensions{
        public static SelectList ToSelectList<TEnum>(this TEnum enumObj)
            where TEnum : struct, IComparable, IFormattable, IConvertible
        {
            var values = from TEnum e in Enum.GetValues(typeof(TEnum))
                select new { Id = e, Name = e.ToString() };
            return new SelectList(values, "Id", "Name", enumObj);
        }
    }
}

This allows you to write:

ViewData["taskStatus"] = task.Status.ToSelectList();

by using MyApp.Common