Rules to Better MVC

Help your users by setting the default field when your MVC Website loads.

By selecting a default field for your users when a page loads you can improve the usability of your website by reducing the amount of steps needed to perform a task.

Understanding the Enterprise MVC request process is crucial for ensuring smooth operations, efficient handling of requests, and alignment with organizational goals. It enables timely delivery and keeps everyone well-informed throughout the process.

UpdateModel will throw an exception if validation of the model fails. Instead of managing an exception, you should use TryUpdateModel as it adds the error to the ModelState dictionary. This lets you check the ModelState.IsValid property and decide how to handle the issue from there.

This is an important distinction to be made because if we had used UpdateModel then our if (ModelState.IsValid) would not be hit in the event of a failure to bind.

Model binding in the ASP.NET MVC framework is simple. Your action methods need data, and the incoming HTTP request carries the data you need. The catch is that the data is embedded into POST-ed form values, and possibly the URL itself. Enter the DefaultModelBinder, which can magically convert form values and route data into objects.

Model binders allow your controller code to remain cleanly separated from the dirtiness of interrogating the request and its associated environment.

Any sensitive data that is sent over the wire must be protected using a secure transport such as HTTPS. MVC (version 2, Preview 2 or higher) allows you to specify that HTTPS is required for an action. It’s important that the GET method is secure as well as the POST method to avoid people sending sensitive form data over the wire.

ASP.NET CORE MVC provides several ways to pass data to views:

• Weakly typed data: ViewData and ViewBag
• Strongly typed data: ViewModel

Returning a view that is named differently to the action confuses the MVC process and can make the code difficult to maintain.

Adding code to the Application_Start method in the Global.asax file is the easiest and most straight-forward approach for executing startup logic, however, this code should be encapsulated in static methods outside the Global.asax file. Doing this helps provide cleaner code and encourages proper adherence to the Single Responsibility principle.

ASP.NET MVC provides the AuthorizeAttribute which ensures there is a logged in user before it will execute an action. You can also provide parameters to restrict actions or controllers to only be accessible to certain roles or users. This is a better solution than checking whether a logged-in user exists in code as the authorization itself doesn’t need to be repeated.

Repeated sections of User Interface should be encapsulated in either Html Helpers or Partial Views to avoid repetition.