Learning MVC 2 – ‘In action’
I've been reading the very informative ASP.NET MVC 2 In Action. This book contains a lot of information to be aware of if you are using (or planning to use) the MVC framework, however, don't expect a gentle introduction to starting out in web applications.
What's good:
- This is a goldmine for finding out techniques that you may not be aware of when just using the code from ASP.NET MVC (or when just looking at the decidedly patchy documentation)
- The book is by no means restricted to just the core technology, by reading the book you'll brush up against complementary techniques such as NHibernate, Auto Mapper and several inversion of control frameworks, as well as skimming over the basic concepts of DDD.
- There are several examples that go well beyond 'hello world' and actually demonstrate how to build maintainable applications. A quality lacking in an astounding number of other technical books.
- The paper copy comes with a free ebook, but...
What could be better:
- The ebook is only available in PDF format. This really does not work so well on a 6-inch Kindle. (I'm currently using a copy made in a PDF to Mobi converter, but this screws up the formatting of source code examples.)
- This is a book of many authors, and it shows. There are several jarring changes of writing style throughout. This doesn't really impact the value of the content, but it could be a better read.
What could go either way:
- A couple of chapters are given over to differences between plain ASP.NET and MVC. This is of little value if you don't have an ASP.NET background (but I'm sure it helps if you do).
While reading through this book, I've been working on a sample project to excersize some of the techniques. It's online on GitHub. Don't expect sparkling clean code, or even much functionality, as this is just to try a couple of things out, and is intended as 'work in progress' only.