Maussoft MVC ported to .NET 5

31 Oct 2021 - by 'Maurits van der Schee'

In 2015 I was working on a Simple C# web framework for .NET. Back then I wanted to create an MVC framework that would allow me to run C# web applications on Linux. Back then I was using MonoDevelop to work on C# code for Mono. Today in 2021 I'm using Visual Studio Code to write C# code for .NET 5 (still on Linux). This port aims to take full advantage of the new .NET 5 platform and it's support for Linux. I am especially interested in cross-platform support and creating single executable web applications (like Go can do with go-bindata-assetfs).

Design philosophy

I tried to sum up the goals for the project as bullet points:

Develop and run primarily on Linux
Single executable, easy to deploy
- Views produce code that can be debugged
- Static files are embedded.
Convention over configuration
- Routing uses reflection, no exceptions
Simple to understand, not too much code
Minimal dependencies, no ASP.NET

Thankfully .NET 5 makes it really easy to achieve those goals.

Install .NET 5 on Ubuntu

On Ubuntu 20.04 you need to execute:

wget https://packages.microsoft.com/config/ubuntu/20.04/packages-microsoft-prod.deb \
  -O packages-microsoft-prod.deb
sudo dpkg -i packages-microsoft-prod.deb
rm packages-microsoft-prod.deb

Then install the needed packages using:

sudo apt-get update; \
  sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https && \
  sudo apt-get update && \
  sudo apt-get install -y dotnet-sdk-5.0

Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/install/linux-ubuntu

Now you have the dotnet command on your command line and I would recommend that you install Visual Studio Code and it's C# extension.

How to get started

Would you like to play with this minimalistic MVC framework? First you need to clone the example project:

git clone https://github.com/maussoft/mvc-example-cs

Now you have the following directories in your project directory:

bin/ (ignored, where the executables are stored)
obj/ (ignored, where the intermediate binaries are stored)
tools/ (this is where the view generator task is stored)
Content/ (this is where the Javascript, CSS and images are stored)
Controllers/ (your controller classes)
Views/ (your views with a subdirectory for every controller)
Acme.Example.csproj (your project file)
Program.cs (the entry point of your application, with function "Main" )
Session.cs (the session object that is available on every action)
appsettings.json (the settings of the application)

Now let me show you how to add some code.

Writing the code

Our webserver uses the following session class in Session.cs:

using System.Collections.Generic;

public class Session
{
  public List<string> Names { get; set; }

  public Session()
  {
    this.Names = new List<string>();
  }
}

This Session class can hold names in a list.

Now let's create a simple controller in Controllers/Hello.cs:

using Maussoft.Mvc;

namespace Acme.Example.Controllers
{
  public class Hello
  {
    public void World(WebContext<Session> context, string name)
    {
      context.Session.Names.Add(name);
      context.Data.Names = context.Session.Names.ToArray();
    }
  }
}

The create a Layout in Views/Layouts/Hello.aspx:

<%@ Master %>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Hello!</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <% RenderViewContent(); %>
  </body>
</html>

And a view in Views/Hello/World.aspx:

<%@ Page Inherits="Layouts.Hello" %>
<h1>Names</h1>
<ul>
  <% foreach (var name in Context.Data.Names) { %>
    <li><%= name %></li>
  <% } %>
</ul>

And then run the application using:

dotnet run

And access it on:

http://localhost:2345/Hello/World/Maurits

You will see an increasing list of names (stored in the session).

Source code: https://github.com/maussoft/mvc

Happy programming!

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TQ
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