Screencast “Making the Transition from WebForms to MVC” is available on YouTube

This series shows how to setup a real world application using the MVC framework together with the DevExpress MVC extensions and Xpress Persistent Objects (XPO) as data layer.

I will take the WebForms based XPressMe Blog Tool and show how to create an MVC version.

Part 1

Check out part 1 where I will give a quick tour on the WebForms version to see what needs to be build. Next I will create the MVC project using the DevExpress Template Gallery, and I will move over the assets like images, JavaScript and CSS and setup the _Layout.cshtml file which resembles the WebForms MasterPage.

I will also explain and prepare a flexible reusable architecture which incorporates the DTO pattern into the MVC project to let our Xpress Persistent Objects (XPO) data layer work efficiently with the MVC framework.

I will end with a working homepage showing the navigation using the Menu extension and the blog posts using the DataView extension which were previously entered in the WebForms version of the XPressMe application.

Part 2

Part 2 will continue by setting up the PopupControl as well as the FormLayout extensions for inserting and editing a blog post. I will also explain some technical changes we need to make because of the different architectures of WebForms and MVC. At the end of this screencast, you will see the MVC version of the XPressMe Blog tool which allows you to insert and edit posts.

The XPressMe Blog tool

The XPressMe Blog tool is a small responsive real world application I have built in 3 earlier webinars. They cover things like setting up a data model using Xpress Persistent Objects (XPO) and its modeling tool, setting up responsive CSS with the Skeleton CSS framework and media queries, and using the DevExpress ASP.NET controls in a responsive layout. Furthermore I am showing some JavaScript tricks demonstrating the rich client-side API of the DevExpress ASP.NET controls.

You can watch these videos on our YouTube channel at:

• Creating an ASP.NET Blog Engine - Part 1
• Creating an ASP.NET Blog Engine – Part 2
• Creating an ASP.NET Blog Engine – Part 3

All the source code available on GitHub

If you want to test-drive the code yourself, it is all available on my GitHub account at https://github.com/donwibier/XPressMe where you can get the repo or just get a zip file with the source.

Let me know if you have built anything cool in your version of XPressMe or if you have questions about it.

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