1. Controllers

2. Taking Control of Controllers
Adding Actions
Model Binding
Filters
Vanity URLs
Controller Best Practices

3. Taking Control of Controllers
Adding Actions
Model Binding
Filters
Vanity URLs
Controller Best Practices

4. Adding Actions Controllers are classes Actions are methods
Creating an action involves adding a method to a class

5. Action Signature Return Types Parameters ActionResult
FileResult
JsonResult
ViewResult
Parameters
Normal parameters
MCV model binding
Parameters in MVC are just normal parameters.
Typically, return types are ActionResult or something that inherits from ActionResult.

6. Controller Method Attributes
HttpGet & HttpPost
Known as methods or verbs
Send a signal from the client to the server
Header information that lets user send large amounts of data

7. Get and Post Create/Update/Delete are typically two step operations
Present the form
Accept the input
Create two actions
Form presentation via HttpGet (default)
Accept data via HttpPost

8. Controllers
All the controller classes inherit from the base class Controller
Has built in helper methods such as View()
Parameter to the View method is the data that the view needs
Controller method gets the model and combines the model with the view to return
public ActionResult Index() {
return View(db.Movies.ToList()); }

9. Default Model Binder Uses the name attribute of input elements
Automatically matches parameter names for simple data types
Complex objects are mapped by property name
Complex properties use dot notation
@Html.EditorFor(model => model.Lyrics, …

10. Controlling Model Binding
Imagine the following model
Need
Create a form to edit everything but the lyrics
Challenge
Default model binder automatically binds all inbound properties

11. Solutions
Simplest
Use the bind attribute to indicate which properties to bind
Other solutions
Create a view model
Create a custom model binder
Create a view model with only the SongID, Title, and Length attributes.
Creating a custom model binder is possible, but not recommended.

12. Filters Filters are attributes Goal is to alter execution
Decorate controllers and actions
Goal is to alter execution
MVC contains several built-in filters
If you want the filter to be global, put it in the FilterConfig.cs file
Sometimes you want to perform logic either before an action method is called or after an action method runs. To support this, ASP.NET MVC provides filters. Filters are custom classes that provide both a declarative and programmatic means to add pre-action and post-action behavior to controller action methods. ASP.NET has several built in filters.
For example:
Can set up security with filters by decorating an action with a filter

13. Security Filters Authorize ValidateAntiForgeryToken RequireHttps
Control who can access a controller/action
Properties
Users
Roles
ValidateAntiForgeryToken
Defends against cross-site request forgery
Requires anti-forgery token to be added to view
RequireHttps
Uses SSL
Might use Authorize on Create, Edit, and Delete, to automatically redirect you to a login page
ValidateAntiForgeryToken - Make sure a form has not been set from a different page

14. SSL Encrypts traffic and prevents tampering Authenticates server
When to use SSL
Asking for sensitive information
After authentication
When in doubt enable SSL

15. Vanity URL Standard URL Vanity URL
Users have no idea what that URL refers to
Search engines have no idea what that URL refers to
Vanity URL
User knows information provided by the page
Search engines know information provided by page

16. MVC Routing Vanity URLs are handled by routing
Routing in MVC controls what controller/action is called based on the URL provided
Methods for updating routing
RouteConfig.cs
AttributeRouting

17. Attribute Routing Attributes control routing/URL RouteAttribute
Calls the Edit action
Passes in the ID parameter
ID must be an integer
Could use to make the method names more user friendly in the Vanity URL. For example could have the route attribute for the Index method renamed to all:
[Route(“Album/All”)]

18. RoutePrefix Added to controller Adds prefix to all routes
Controller is now named Album instead of Albums in the URL route

19. Controller Design Guidelines
High Cohesion
Make sure all actions are closely related
Low Coupling
Controllers should know as little about the rest of the system as possible
Simplifies testing and changes
Repository pattern
Wrap data context calls into another object
Controller methods are typically short, 5 to 10 lines of code.
There are two ways that the repository can query business entities. It can submit a query object to the client's business logic or it can use methods that specify the business criteria. In the latter case, the repository forms the query on the client's behalf. The repository returns a matching set of entities that satisfy the query. The diagram shows the interactions of the repository with the client and the data source.