ASP.NET Model View Controller (MVC)

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This page is specific to

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010/.NET Framework 4

Other versions are also available for the following:

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008/.NET Framework 3.5

ASP.NET Model View Controller (MVC)

The Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern is an architectural design principle that separates the components of a Web application. This separation gives you more control over the individual parts of the application, which lets you more easily develop, modify, and test them.

ASP.NET MVC is part of the ASP.NET framework. Developing an ASP.NET MVC application is an alternative to developing ASP.NET Web Forms pages; it does not replace the Web Forms model.

If you have installed Visual Studio 2010, the ASP.NET MVC 2 is already installed on your computer. You can get the most up-to-date version of the ASP.NET MVC 2 framework from the ASP.NET MVC download on the ASP.NET MVC download page.

Note
An earlier version of the MVC Framework (ASP.NET MVC 1.0) is also available. If you are working with an application that is specifically written to work with that version of the MVC framework, you can download ASP.NET MVC 1.0 from the ASP.NET MVC 1.0 page on the Microsoft Download Center.

Content Map for ASP.NET MVC

We suggest the following progression of documentation to help you learn about ASP.NET MVC.

Note
Additional information is available in blog entries written by ASP.NET MVC experts. For more information, see Blog Entries About ASP.NET MVC later in this document.

Scenario	Topics
Getting started with ASP.NET MVC	ASP.NET MVC Overview Walkthrough: Creating a Basic MVC Project with Unit Tests in Visual Studio Creating a Tasklist Application with ASP.NET MVC (video on the ASP.NET Web site) See also: Blog Entries About ASP.NET MVC later in this document.
Familiarizing yourself with ASP.NET MVC classes	System.Web.Mvc namespace System.Web.Mvc.Ajax namespace System.Web.Mvc.Async namespace System.Web.Mvc.Html namespace
Understanding models, views, and controllers	Controllers and Action Methods in MVC Applications Views and UI Rendering in MVC Applications Models and Model Binders in MVC Applications Using an Asynchronous Controller in ASP.NET MVC Understanding Models, Views, and Controllers (video on the ASP.NET Web site) Episode 1 with Paul Litwin - Creating a Data Driven MVC Application (video on the ASP.NET Web site) Episode 2 with Paul Litwin - Creating the Controller and View (video on the ASP.NET Web site)
Understanding ASP.NET MVC project structure	MVC Framework and Application Structure Understanding the MVC Application Execution Process Walkthrough: Organizing an ASP.NET MVC Application using Functional Areas
Understanding URL routing in ASP.NET MVC	ASP.NET Routing
Working with views	Rendering a Form in ASP.NET MVC Using HTML Helpers Passing Data in an ASP.NET MVC Application Walkthrough: Using Templated Helpers to Display Data Creating an ASP.NET MVC View by Calling Multiple Actions Creating Custom HTML Helpers (tutorial on the ASP.NET Web site) Creating Page Layouts with View Master Pages (video on the ASP.NET Web site) See also: Blog Entries About ASP.NET MVC later in this document.
Working with models	Walkthrough: Using MVC View Templates with Data Scaffolding How to: Validate Model Data Using DataAnnotations Attributes Creating Model Classes with LINQ to SQL (tutorial on the ASP.NET Web site) Displaying a Table of Database Data (tutorial on the ASP.NET Web site) Creating Model Classes with the Entity Framework (tutorial on the ASP.NET Web site) See also: Blog Entries About ASP.NET MVC later in this document.
Using AJAX in ASP.NET MVC applications	Walkthrough: Adding ASP.NET AJAX Scripting to an MVC Project See also: Blog Entries About ASP.NET MVC later in this document.
Filtering action methods	Action Filtering in MVC Applications Creating Custom Action Filters How to: Create a Custom Action Filter
Handling errors in MVC applications	HandleErrorAttribute class
Securing MVC applications	AuthorizeAttribute class Preventing JavaScript Injection (XSS) Attacks (tutorial on the ASP.NET Web site) Preventing Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks (tutorial on the ASP.NET Web site) SQL Injection (SQL Server 2008 Books Online) How To: Protect From SQL Injection in ASP.NET (Patterns & practices) Authenticating Users with Forms Authentication (tutorial on the ASP.NET Web site) Authenticating Users with Windows Authentication (tutorial on the ASP.NET Web site) See also: Blog Entries About ASP.NET MVC later in this document.
Improving ASP.NET MVC application performance	OutputCacheAttribute class Adding Dynamic Content to a Cached Page (tutorial on the ASP.NET Web site)
Testing MVC applications	How to: Add a Custom MVC Test Framework in Visual Studio Walkthrough: Creating a Basic MVC Project with Unit Tests in Visual Studio Creating Unit Tests for ASP.NET MVC Applications (tutorial on the ASP.NET Web site)
Deploying MVC applications	How to: Deploy an ASP.NET MVC Application Using ASP.NET MVC with Different Versions of IIS (tutorial on the ASP.NET Web site)

Blog Entries About ASP.NET MVC

The following blog entries provide additional information about how to work with ASP.NET MVC.

ASP.NET 1.0 (Scott Guthrie)
ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta Released (Phil Haack)
Hmtl.RenderAction and Html.Action (Phil Haack)
ASP.NET MVC 2 Custom Validation (Phil Haack)
Localizing ASP.NET MVC Validation (Phil Haack)
VS10 Beta 2 from an ASP.NET MVC Perspective (Phil Haack)
Default Templated Views (Phil Haack)
JSON Hijacking (Phil Haack)
Using jQuery Grid with ASP.NET MVC (Phil Haack)
Scripting ASP.NET MVC Views Stored in the Database (Phil Haack)
Hanselminutes Podcast 188: ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta with Phil Haack (Scott Hanselman)
ASP.NET Wire Format for Model Binding to Arrays, Lists, Collections, Dictionaries (Scott Hanselman)
Migrating ASP.NET MVC 1.0 applications to ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta (Eilon Lipton)
Introducing SmartyRoute: A smarty-ier way to do routing in ASP.NET applications (Eilon Lipton)
ASP.NET MVC 2 Templates (Brad Wilson)
Consuming a Portable Area with a Web Forms application (Jeffery Palermo)
Building Web Apps without Web Forms (Chris Tavares)