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 Web Forms.

You can download and install the ASP.NET MVC framework in the following ways:

• Install the framework using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer. You can download the installer from the installation page on the Microsoft Web gallery site.

• Download the framework from the ASP.NET MVC 1.0 page on the Microsoft Download Center.

Roadmap to ASP.NET MVC

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

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)
Familiarizing yourself with ASP.NET MVC classes	System.Web.Mvc namespace System.Web.Mvc.Ajax 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 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
Understanding URL routing in ASP.NET MVC	ASP.NET Routing
Working with controllers	How to: Add a Controller to an MVC Application in Visual Studio How to: Add an Action Method to an MVC Controller in Visual Studio System.Web.Mvc.Controller class
Working with views	How to: Add a View to an MVC Application in Visual Studio Rendering a Form in ASP.NET MVC Using HTML Helpers Passing Data in an ASP.NET MVC Application 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)
Working with models	Validating Model Data in an MVC Application 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)
Using AJAX in ASP.NET MVC applications	Walkthrough: Adding ASP.NET AJAX Scripting to an MVC Project
Filtering action methods	Action Filtering in MVC Applications Creating Custom Action Filters How to: Create a Custom Action Filter
Handling errors in MVC applications	Implementing an Error-Handling Filter
Securing MVC applications	Restricting Access to an Action Method Preventing JavaScript Injection Attacks (tutorial on the ASP.NET Web site) Authenticating Users with Forms Authentication (tutorial on the ASP.NET Web site) Authenticating Users with Windows Authentication (tutorial on the ASP.NET Web site)
Improving ASP.NET MVC application performance	Output Caching in an Action Method 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)
Learning more about ASP.NET MVC from blog entries written by ASP.NET MVC experts	ASP.NET MVC Framework Road-Map Update (Scott Guthrie) ASP.NET MVC Design Gallery and Upcoming View Improvements with the ASP.NET MVC Release Candidate (Scott Guthrie) ASP.NET MVC Release Candidate 2 (Phil Haack) Take Charge of Your Security (Phil Haack) ASP.NET Wire Format for Model Binding to Arrays, Lists, Collections, Dictionaries (Scott Hanselman) Building Web Apps without Web Forms (Chris Tavares)