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Hanalei, Hawaii Thursday, March 11, 2010

MVC Storefront Part 26: Finis

This is the last episode in the MVC Storefront series and this might seem a bit odd. It's definitely not the last screencast I'll do with respect to ASP.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

This is the last episode in the MVC Storefront series and this might seem a bit odd. It's definitely not the last screencast I'll do with respect to ASP.NET MVC, but I think I've gone about as far as I can go with this series.

Shift In Perspective
The goal of the series has been to explore ASP.NET MVC and the various disciplines that compliment it. We've covered all kinds of developer goodness, including Test-driven Development, Dependency Injection, and (lightly) Domain Driven Design. You've seen me build, break, store learn, and refactor - all the cycles that most applications go through in their early lifetime.

At this point the Storefront is changing shape. I talk a bit about this in the video - but I'd like to add to it a bit. I've tried to make this as real-world as possible, which is hard when I didn't really have a client (especially when it came to trying to use DDD). This is has worked for the most part, but I've reached a point where it's no longer viable to keep developing in this way.

We're altering the Storefront right now to be more of a "platform" and this is a lot different from building out a dedicated client application. We have to build in extensibility, theming, and other things that might be of interest, but in the end don't really apply to "real world" development.

I'll have a lot more to say about this at MIX 09 (details in the future) so hopefully you're coming!

Source Code
Many people have been asking for a drop of the source - and I'm hoping to have it soon. There's a lot more to do - including Code Analysis and documentation (which I hope to capture in a screencast). I want to get you the source but it's goin to be a week or two before I can.

The Presentation Model
The first part of the video I spend about 8 minutes or so "wrapping up" the series and offer some final thoughts on the journey so far, but I wanted to tell you there is a fair bit of code in this last video as well.

One question I get asked a lot with respect to ASP.NET MVC is "how do you handle a page with a lot of different data on it" - like the front page of a Blog for instance. I give a possible solution to this with something I've just implemented with the Storefront: The Presentation Model.

The Presentation Model is something Fowler talks about as a way of basically segregating your UI decision "stuff" into a central location so that when you branch/change you UI, your don't need to reproduce all your view logic. This may initially seem like "dude how often would I do that" but if you think about the advent of ASP.NET MVC and how much code you'd need to replace - well you know where I'm going. Centralizing this stuff is a pretty nice design choice, and it also allows you to "go thick" if you want to leverage Silverlight in the future.

Final Thoughts on DDD
In the beginning I finish up my overall thoughts on DDD and where it's taken me and the MVC Storefront in general. I had wanted to do a bit more with respect to DDD, but in the end thought it would be a bit redundant. I've been lucky enough to do a couple of podcasts on the subject:

Hanselminutes Podcast #140: I talk with Scott about learning DDD

Alt.NET Podcast #15: Domain Driven Design

In the first podcast (with Scott) I talk a bit more about the learning of DDD - not really DDD itself so it's sort of a "summary" if you will. In the Alt.Net podcast I go a bit deeper into what I've learned and the philosophy behind it all.

I had intended on talking a bit more about it with the Storefront series, but to be honest I just don't think I know enough about it to go any further. For now I know enough to understand that there are some things that will work well (and I covered those last time) and some things that I just don't need since I'm not building rockets.

To me that's the goal - knowing enough to know when you don't need it.

That's where I'll leave off with this series: the importance of learning and always trying to improve what you know. Knowledge isn't a weapon - it's a gift and one that you should share and seek.

Download Here (35Mb ~ 27 minutes)

Mongo

rafiseddiqi - January 26, 2009 - Thanks Rob for this series. It helped me greatly with a real world e-commerce application I have been working on. Keep up the good work.



-Rafi
Lachlan - March 17, 2009 - Hi,



Just wanted to say nice work on this series. I've found it very very interesting. It's great to see that Microsoft is adopting proven patterns and practices from the greater software community.



It's been frustrating at times being in the .net camp as a web dev because there have been some awesome j2ee frameworks out there for a long time. About 6 or 7 years ago I used to work with the struts and webwork frameworks (with j2ee), the asp.net webforms framework never seemsed to fit http very well to me, and obviously it wasn't very testable as you've pointed out. This new mvc framework seems to be extremely well designed, I'm looking forward to using it.



Also, I think that the recent (and long overdue imo) shift towards orm in .net is great (i like IQueryable btw!). I remember being on a team that wrote a crude implementation of an orm in c# based on a paper by scott ambler :) And it was because there was no equivilent to ejb or hibernate (which hadn't really established itself at the time).



Anyway, well done with the series, the honesty and humility in your approach and the fact you were able to get the community invloved made it great to watch!
robconery - February 18, 2009 - Nothing HTML-specific - just enough to tell the view what it needs to know

(ideally)...
James - February 18, 2009 - Not sure my comment posted or not so will try this again. Sorry if it repeats.



With the addition of the Presentation Model are you inclined to stick you view presentation logic in those models instead of creating an HTMLHelper function? Like you talked about in "ASP.NET MVC: Avoiding Tag Soup".
James - February 18, 2009 - For lack of better place to ask this, with the move towards a presentation model are you more inclined to stick view presentation logic there now instead creating an HTMLHelper function like you showed in your blog....ASP.NET MVC: Avoiding Tag Soup?
robconery - February 17, 2009 - No worries - I've been under some serious pressure from the community to

release the source and I let it get to me :(. What can I say - I'm human...

Honestly MIX is a convenient target - and hopefully when I'm done with the

talk and release the source it will make sense why.
James - February 17, 2009 - Dude there were no insults intended.



Storefront being a marketing tool isn't a bad thing. Means someone thinks it worthy to use to show off new features. Not showing it before MIX, done or undone, makes total sense to me. I worked in similar situations where we had to wait for a conference to release a finished product (not saying storefront is finished). Must means something good is to come.



Sorry, I can see how the post didn't come off to well on my side. I've read and watched the series and think you did/ are doing a great job. I thought MIX09 was in 2 months, sorry. One month makes it even better.



The presentation model is of interest because we are currently trying to use MVC in a large project and we are fighting the whole aggregation of data and how to keep things looking right between the model and view. Just trying to find some best practices. So when you hit on it in the last blog I thought, finally I'm not the only one that had a problem.



Out of the three (you, Scott, and Phil), you were the only one doing a complete application so everyone was watching you closely. I wish Atwood would share some insights, using it with stackoverflow, but he rather start flame wars right now. BTW- nice reply on his post.



Any road, I am sorry I said what I said the way I said it. I think it would be cool to work on a project like this and have people want you to kick it up a few notches to make it a best practice / showcase piece.
robconery - February 16, 2009 - Dude, seriously - it's 4 weeks away. There are a TON of reasons why I'm not

sharing it right now and I'm asking for your trust here. I don't think I've

done anything to violate that - except for being lucky enough to have

Microsoft "pick up" this project and run with it seriously.

If you have something specific you'd like me to blog about between now and

then, please feel free to ask (it sounds like you want to see more about the

Presentation Model - I'm happy to show you that). But insults don't sit well

with me.
James - February 16, 2009 - Storefront just became a marketing tool. Maybe it was all along. My guess is you have to wait now because they want a splash at the conference, when really all I want is to see how you implemented the presentation model in the application. Guess 2 more months will have to do. Thanks for the update.
MartinF - February 16, 2009 - Thanks, but that is quite some time more than expected (1-2 weeks) :(

Almost 2 months.
robconery - February 15, 2009 - It'll be up on Codeplex by MIX 09
cowgaR - February 15, 2009 - March 18-20 2009 - my estimate :)



There has been told it will show itself in full Glory on Mix 09, MS main devel conference, so guess we need to get visa fast :)
MartinF - February 14, 2009 - "I want to get you the source but it's goin to be a week or two before I can."



3 weeks have passed and still no source code ? :(

Any idea about when it will be ready ? ... please ? :)
robconery - February 11, 2009 - There are reasons and i promise they're not evil :).
JeroenH - February 11, 2009 - Why not make the code available on a public svn server, so we can follow progress and possibly help out?

Chad Moran - February 11, 2009 - Yeah I figured as much. I've just really liked some of the things you've shown off and can't wait to see the source. Hopefully we get a changeset before MIX.



Either way, just registered for MIX yesterday so I'll be sure to make it to that session.
robconery - February 11, 2009 - :) same for me.

It's actually the opposite - the project has been embraced completely and

I'll be showing it (in it's new form) at MIX. I'm actually typing this

comment while on a team conf call where we are going over lots of fun

innovations and things we want to show!



So - despite how it *looks* - the project has not gone away :)
Chad Moran - February 11, 2009 - I apologize for coming off the way I did when I wrote that I was extremely tired and cranky. I'm just saying I liked the way you were releasing consistent updates to your codebase. This is probably one of the most looked-to projects to learn ASP.NET MVC since the documentation isn't there yet. Now is a critical point when people are seriously considering using ASP.NET MVC for their projects.



Now I know you have bosses and my comment though harsh was not really directed or intended for you. Just a generalization that the usual pattern of having to deal with bosses and the "company," seems to be getting to the project. I look forward to the eventual release of the source and hope that it come sooner rather than later.



Again, I apologize and keep up the good work. :)
robconery - February 11, 2009 - There won't be a "final" drop - we're working on it continually :). We'll

put it on Codeplex and it will work against RC, yes. For what it's worth,

I'm working on it full time right now :)
Jordan - February 10, 2009 - Great video series Rob, really learnt a lot about ASP.NET MVC. Will the final code drop be done against the latest RC of the MVC code?
MrTea - February 10, 2009 - I think we're all looking forward to the source code but unless Microsoft are going to charge us to download this particular demo project I don't see how you can liken it to a Microsoft Product.



Rob's clearly put a lot of time, thought and effort in to this, you can't rush the process, far better he gets it right. In agile terms it'll be ready when it's ready!
robconery - February 10, 2009 - Wow. "tisk tisk"? You just let me know what else I can do for you Chad...
Chad Moran - February 10, 2009 - Yeah I have to be honest here. As much as I've enjoyed the series -- this has turned into a typical Microsoft product. Long release spans and not a lot of information, kind of a let down considering NOW is the time when developers are ramping up their projects with MVC in RC.



Tisk tisk.
David - February 10, 2009 - Thank you Rob and every one helping Rob. I'm so happy I learned so much about MVC just by watching the videos... :-)
Vijay Santhanam - February 6, 2009 - ++ Totally agree! Great Series! Thoroughly enjoyed it. Any luck with the source code?
surx - February 4, 2009 - Great series, can you please share the source code. Thanks
Mike - February 4, 2009 - "To me that's the goal - knowing enough to know when you don't need it."



Let me share my recent lesson. I was reading Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns and working with NHibernate trying my best to do DDD. Soon I had 8 projects in my solution, was writing tests 75% of the time, and had no clear view of the application anymore. Then the Getting Real book from 37signals arrived in the mail. Since I have rebooted, I will use LINQ to SQL, stick close to the database and I'm not even sure I will be writing unit tests even.



Bottom line, I am now convinced the app will be finished in the near future. I realised my app doesn't need DDD, although I learned it can be a very good practice. Just not for me, not now.



I think you learned similar lessons. If you haven't read the Getting Real book, I recommend it.
Petr - February 3, 2009 - ANy news about source code?





I'm very curious.
Dave - February 1, 2009 - Hey Rob - long time lurker, first time commenter!



Just a quick (but certainly not small) thanks for the MVC SF series...I am learning a lot from it and using it to help shape my company's new web site.



I was just wondering if (or where) you have posted the sample code for the last episode? The areas where I need the most help are authentication and wrapping my brain around the method of repository pattern you settled on in the end. It looks like 17126 is the last change set available for download - does that code cover episode 26?



Thx, dave
robconery - January 31, 2009 - Well that sucks. I switched the download back to my servers (where it will

stay) - again sorry for the pain. The download should work now.
Mads Laumann - January 31, 2009 - "Server is too busy"

This message has been on the video for days now. I see Jesse Liberty have the same error on his video on his latest blog post, so guess it a common problem with some of Microsoft servers.



The sad thing is that is has been like this for some days now, which is very bad...

Rob, call up Bill and make him take a look at it :)



Oh, btw, would love to comment on the video, but can't see it as you know.



BR

Mads

Bill - January 30, 2009 - Rob. Great job on the series. This video does not display in this page. When I click the link or try to download this page just hangs.
Dietrich - January 30, 2009 - Congrats Rob -- the completion of this series is quite an accomplishment.



Thanks

--Dietrich

robconery - January 27, 2009 - Hi James - Silverlight's back up so I set the link here (you can watch it

streaming) or you can DL the vid file. Sorry for the pain.
james - January 27, 2009 - I have tried for 3 days now to look at this video. I get about 50% streamed or downloaded and then it just stops.
Mitch - January 27, 2009 - Thanks Rob,



I've enjoyed the series very much, it has been a great learning experience. Very real world hands on learning, what devs go through everyday, this is why I think so many people have identified with / learned from it.



I'll be sure to drop ScottGu a note, they surely deserve to know the value of this learning experiment.



You are the man!!!!

Andrew Knox - January 27, 2009 - Thanks for the series Rob. Has to be the most useful development resource I've ever come across. Pulled in so many aspects of the development process and didn't just focus on ASP.NET MVC itself. So much more than that. Thank you!!
JeroenH - January 26, 2009 - ok, makes sense.

I should have looked at the code first, I guess... Oh wait... :-P

Just kidding of course, thanks again for the great series (but still, eagerly awaiting some source code!)



robconery - January 26, 2009 - In this case it's just the way it looks. In other words I created them as I

needed them according to the UI, not per object. It just so happens I have

one for Order, Product, and Customer :). Which coincidentally are my agg

roots - go figure :)
JeroenH - January 26, 2009 - Great series. I have one question specific for this episode regarding your use of view models. It seems you are creating a view model per 'entity'? Might it not be better to craft view models specific for a page? So if I were to have a 'edit product' page, I would have a ViewModel that contains a product ID and name but not a list of all products. For a 'product list' page, the ViewModel would have, well.. a list of products :-)
Daniel Higgins - January 26, 2009 - Thank you. The best webcast series I've seen on building a complete application.



I would also like to thank all the people that contributed - Scott, Oren, Jeremy ...



It takes a village to build an application!
500fthigh - January 26, 2009 - I can't connect to the video above ("Download Here 35MB 27 minutes"). Is something down?? HELP. Thanks.
robconery - January 25, 2009 - :) one of my favorites :)
Josh Schwartzberg - January 25, 2009 - Thank you for all of your time and your contributions to the community. But most importantly, thank you for letting Maynard end the series.
Trevor - January 25, 2009 - Thanks Rob,



You got me hooked on TDD, good thing or bad thing I still don't know but I I'm having a lot of fun.



Trevor



cowgaR - January 25, 2009 - with "more" you certainly meant refactoring it with much better OR/M that L2S is...what was its name...let me check...



...there was some familiarity with sega's hedgog ;)...got it! sonic...Subsonic 3!



I think that will be the final part ;p

Esico - January 25, 2009 - I especially liked the TDD and the DDD stuff. Thanks!
robconery - January 24, 2009 - Thanks to all for the comments. It was truly my pleasure to put this together and if you liked the experience, let the decision makers know (ScottGu and SimonCal, etc)!



Cheers - I really hope to do more in the future :)
Alan Westley - January 24, 2009 - Keeping in line with all other comments, thank you so much for this series!! This series, more than anything else I've looked at, has helped me understand the patterns and technologies (asp.net MVC, IoC, Repository pattern, etc) that I need to move my development skills forward. It truly was a great learning experience and I sincerely thank you for taking the time and effort to create it!! Many, many thanks!!
Ryan Gadoury - January 24, 2009 - Awesome series Rob. A true pleasure to watch and an education to boot. My very sincere thanks.
robconery - January 24, 2009 - Thanks Jimmy! I forgot to add you and Ben Taylor to the credits :) - oops!
Jimmy Bogard - January 24, 2009 - Congrats, Rob. This was a great service to the community, we all enjoyed the journey!
Angus McDonald - January 24, 2009 - Rob,



I've been loving the series, and it's been a great help in encouraging me to go DDD at work too (it got me to read Evans' book on the subject). Thanks you for sharing this with us.



Angus
blowmage - January 24, 2009 - Thanks for the series Rob! It has been a great shared reference when discussing various Alt.NET topics, and also a validation for them. I've enjoyed the journey of you caring about your craft. Well done.
Ben Taylor - January 24, 2009 - Nice work Rob. Congratulations on the series and big respect for putting yourself out there and doing it all in public. I imagine it has been an interesting mission, but one you're glad to have accomplished!
robconery - January 24, 2009 - One of the limitations of using Linq To Sql (the way I was) is that I had to

go without factories. You can't use this with Linq To SQL:

from p in db.Products

select Product.CreateNew(p.ID, p.Name)



You can use constructors, however.



Yes, I've moved a lot of stuff back to the Repo level as I'm gearing this to

be usable by *any* data source, not just IQueryable sources. I also have

some other tricks up my sleeve which I'll share when I can.



I will get the source pushed - just hang in there.
citezein - January 24, 2009 - I have to concur, I'd love to peek around a bit more. Specifically, I'm curious as to what you put into your domain services such as CustomerService. You seem to have moved the basic CRUD to the repository, and I'd like to know what's left. Also, did you find yourself needing to use any factories?



Thanks for the work though. I'm going to look into Mix 09.
Chad Moran - January 24, 2009 - Yay, thanks Rob!



I think a lot of us wouldn't mind an unfinished... maybe "changeset," version of the source. Most of us probably want a peak at the source so we can get some ideas rather than using it as an actual application.



Thanks again.
Santos Ray Victorero, II - January 24, 2009 - Nice Journey!



Thanks,



Santos
PabloBlamirez - January 24, 2009 - Just wanted to say thanks, appreciate all the effort you've put into this series.
Javier Lozano - January 24, 2009 - Yet another way to prove that you're a ninja in disguise!



Great job!
Chad Moran - January 24, 2009 - Nice work Rob.



Thanks!
Yassir - January 24, 2009 - Great work !!

this series were useful to me it worth watching thank you !
alanstevens - January 24, 2009 - Nice work, Rob. Thanks for the awesome series!



++Alan
Joachim - January 24, 2009 - Exciting. Thanks a lot!
Nayana - January 29, 2009 - Thanks for the all the screen casts Rob. It was great learning experience. I can't explain how much it has helped us to know lot of things which I never thought of.Thanks again!
Justin Adler - January 28, 2009 - Thanks Rob for the effort you have put into this series. Personally, I've found it to be one of the most rewarding educational lessons in the last few of years / this decade (yeah, big statement). The reason is because of the number of video posts, the richness of the content (is that a word?) and of course the ideas presented.



I've already emailed your PM (a while back) about how important it has been to myself and my collegues, so i'm sure i'll do it again to re-enforce how important it has been and how (IMO) the community needs more vid's/projects like this. There are so many technologies out there to leverage, it's so frustrating trying to find how to take maximum advantage with least effort - in summary, how to best make a website, using the skills and applications available resulting in least amount of support & maintenance.



I feel that you have opened our eyes to many well know ideas and skills but most importantly showed us how to bring these together into a usable and profitable mechanism.



Well done and i can't wait to see how SubSonic intergrates into this. I'm holding off learning SubSonic until i can see how it is integrated in this project, if that will ever happen. Why? This is how strong i have come to believing in what you've been doing that when i now hear or learn something new out there, I see how it can relate to this project and how it can fit into this project. So when i see how to do SubSonicy(tm) things in this MVC Storefront will i come close to Enlightenment.



So yeah .. thanks Rob :) Oh .. what next? Finish up SubSonic or is there more Ninja-MVC-magic behind the scenes?



/end Wall-Of-Text. *blush*



Kobe – the ASP.NET MVC sample application « Bogdan Brinzarea’s blog - April 20, 2009 - [...] Conery has started a few months ago his own tutorial on an ASP.NET MVC Storefront starter kit. After a couple of comments on his architectural approach, he decided to refactor the [...]
Joachim - January 24, 2009 - Exciting. Thanks a lot!
Chad Moran - January 24, 2009 - Yay, thanks Rob!

I think a lot of us wouldn't mind an unfinished... maybe "changeset," version of the source. Most of us probably want a peak at the source so we can get some ideas rather than using it as an actual application.

Thanks again.
Brian Vallelunga - January 24, 2009 - I have to concur, I'd love to peek around a bit more. Specifically, I'm curious as to what you put into your domain services such as CustomerService. You seem to have moved the basic CRUD to the repository, and I'd like to know what's left. Also, did you find yourself needing to use any factories?

Thanks for the work though. I'm going to look into Mix 09.
robconery - January 24, 2009 - One of the limitations of using Linq To Sql (the way I was) is that I had to
go without factories. You can't use this with Linq To SQL:
from p in db.Products
select Product.CreateNew(p.ID, p.Name)

You can use constructors, however.

Yes, I've moved a lot of stuff back to the Repo level as I'm gearing this to
be usable by *any* data source, not just IQueryable sources. I also have
some other tricks up my sleeve which I'll share when I can.

I will get the source pushed - just hang in there.
Alan Stevens - January 24, 2009 - Nice work, Rob. Thanks for the awesome series!

++Alan
Javier Lozano - January 24, 2009 - Yet another way to prove that you're a ninja in disguise!

Great job!
Yassir - January 24, 2009 - Great work !!
this series were useful to me it worth watching thank you !
Chad Moran - January 24, 2009 - Nice work Rob.

Thanks!
PabloBlamirez - January 24, 2009 - Just wanted to say thanks, appreciate all the effort you've put into this series.
Santos Ray Victorero, II - January 24, 2009 - Nice Journey!

Thanks,

Santos
Ben Taylor - January 24, 2009 - Nice work Rob. Congratulations on the series and big respect for putting yourself out there and doing it all in public. I imagine it has been an interesting mission, but one you're glad to have accomplished!
Mike Moore - January 24, 2009 - Thanks for the series Rob! It has been a great shared reference when discussing various Alt.NET topics, and also a validation for them. I've enjoyed the journey of you caring about your craft. Well done.
Angus McDonald - January 24, 2009 - Rob,

I've been loving the series, and it's been a great help in encouraging me to go DDD at work too (it got me to read Evans' book on the subject). Thanks you for sharing this with us.

Angus
Jimmy Bogard - January 24, 2009 - Congrats, Rob. This was a great service to the community, we all enjoyed the journey!
robconery - January 24, 2009 - Thanks Jimmy! I forgot to add you and Ben Taylor to the credits :) - oops!
Ryan Gadoury - January 24, 2009 - Awesome series Rob. A true pleasure to watch and an education to boot. My very sincere thanks.
Alan Westley - January 24, 2009 - Keeping in line with all other comments, thank you so much for this series!! This series, more than anything else I've looked at, has helped me understand the patterns and technologies (asp.net MVC, IoC, Repository pattern, etc) that I need to move my development skills forward. It truly was a great learning experience and I sincerely thank you for taking the time and effort to create it!! Many, many thanks!!
robconery - January 25, 2009 - Thanks to all for the comments. It was truly my pleasure to put this together and if you liked the experience, let the decision makers know (ScottGu and SimonCal, etc)!

Cheers - I really hope to do more in the future :)
cowgaR - January 25, 2009 - with "more" you certainly meant refactoring it with much better OR/M that L2S is...what was its name...let me check...

...there was some familiarity with sega's hedgog ;)...got it! sonic...Subsonic 3!

I think that will be the final part ;p
Esico - January 25, 2009 - I especially liked the TDD and the DDD stuff. Thanks!
Trevor - January 25, 2009 - Thanks Rob,

You got me hooked on TDD, good thing or bad thing I still don't know but I I'm having a lot of fun.

Trevor
Josh Schwartzberg - January 25, 2009 - Thank you for all of your time and your contributions to the community. But most importantly, thank you for letting Maynard end the series.
robconery - January 25, 2009 - :) one of my favorites :)
500fthigh - January 26, 2009 - I can't connect to the video above ("Download Here 35MB 27 minutes"). Is something down?? HELP. Thanks.
Daniel Higgins - January 26, 2009 - Thank you. The best webcast series I've seen on building a complete application.

I would also like to thank all the people that contributed - Scott, Oren, Jeremy ...

It takes a village to build an application!
rafiseddiqi - January 26, 2009 - Thanks Rob for this series. It helped me greatly with a real world e-commerce application I have been working on. Keep up the good work.

-Rafi
JeroenH - January 26, 2009 - Great series. I have one question specific for this episode regarding your use of view models. It seems you are creating a view model per 'entity'? Might it not be better to craft view models specific for a page? So if I were to have a 'edit product' page, I would have a ViewModel that contains a product ID and name but not a list of all products. For a 'product list' page, the ViewModel would have, well.. a list of products :-)
robconery - January 26, 2009 - In this case it's just the way it looks. In other words I created them as I
needed them according to the UI, not per object. It just so happens I have
one for Order, Product, and Customer :). Which coincidentally are my agg
roots - go figure :)
JeroenH - January 26, 2009 - ok, makes sense.
I should have looked at the code first, I guess... Oh wait... :-P
Just kidding of course, thanks again for the great series (but still, eagerly awaiting some source code!)
Andrew Knox - January 27, 2009 - Thanks for the series Rob. Has to be the most useful development resource I've ever come across. Pulled in so many aspects of the development process and didn't just focus on ASP.NET MVC itself. So much more than that. Thank you!!
Mitch - January 27, 2009 - Thanks Rob,

I've enjoyed the series very much, it has been a great learning experience. Very real world hands on learning, what devs go through everyday, this is why I think so many people have identified with / learned from it.

I'll be sure to drop ScottGu a note, they surely deserve to know the value of this learning experiment.

You are the man!!!!
james - January 28, 2009 - I have tried for 3 days now to look at this video. I get about 50% streamed or downloaded and then it just stops.
robconery - January 28, 2009 - Hi James - Silverlight's back up so I set the link here (you can watch it
streaming) or you can DL the vid file. Sorry for the pain.
Justin Adler - January 28, 2009 - Thanks Rob for the effort you have put into this series. Personally, I've found it to be one of the most rewarding educational lessons in the last few of years / this decade (yeah, big statement). The reason is because of the number of video posts, the richness of the content (is that a word?) and of course the ideas presented.

I've already emailed your PM (a while back) about how important it has been to myself and my collegues, so i'm sure i'll do it again to re-enforce how important it has been and how (IMO) the community needs more vid's/projects like this. There are so many technologies out there to leverage, it's so frustrating trying to find how to take maximum advantage with least effort - in summary, how to best make a website, using the skills and applications available resulting in least amount of support & maintenance.

I feel that you have opened our eyes to many well know ideas and skills but most importantly showed us how to bring these together into a usable and profitable mechanism.

Well done and i can't wait to see how SubSonic intergrates into this. I'm holding off learning SubSonic until i can see how it is integrated in this project, if that will ever happen. Why? This is how strong i have come to believing in what you've been doing that when i now hear or learn something new out there, I see how it can relate to this project and how it can fit into this project. So when i see how to do SubSonicy(tm) things in this MVC Storefront will i come close to Enlightenment.

So yeah .. thanks Rob :) Oh .. what next? Finish up SubSonic or is there more Ninja-MVC-magic behind the scenes?

/end Wall-Of-Text. *blush*
Nayana - January 29, 2009 - Thanks for the all the screen casts Rob. It was great learning experience. I can't explain how much it has helped us to know lot of things which I never thought of.Thanks again!
Dietrich - January 30, 2009 - Congrats Rob -- the completion of this series is quite an accomplishment.

Thanks
--Dietrich
Bill - January 30, 2009 - Rob. Great job on the series. This video does not display in this page. When I click the link or try to download this page just hangs.
Mads Laumann - January 31, 2009 - "Server is too busy"
This message has been on the video for days now. I see Jesse Liberty have the same error on his video on his latest blog post, so guess it a common problem with some of Microsoft servers.

The sad thing is that is has been like this for some days now, which is very bad...
Rob, call up Bill and make him take a look at it :)

Oh, btw, would love to comment on the video, but can't see it as you know.

BR
Mads
robconery - January 31, 2009 - Well that sucks. I switched the download back to my servers (where it will
stay) - again sorry for the pain. The download should work now.
Dave - February 2, 2009 - Hey Rob - long time lurker, first time commenter!

Just a quick (but certainly not small) thanks for the MVC SF series...I am learning a lot from it and using it to help shape my company's new web site.

I was just wondering if (or where) you have posted the sample code for the last episode? The areas where I need the most help are authentication and wrapping my brain around the method of repository pattern you settled on in the end. It looks like 17126 is the last change set available for download - does that code cover episode 26?

Thx, dave
Petr - February 4, 2009 - ANy news about source code?


I'm very curious.
Mike - February 4, 2009 - "To me that’s the goal – knowing enough to know when you don’t need it."

Let me share my recent lesson. I was reading Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns and working with NHibernate trying my best to do DDD. Soon I had 8 projects in my solution, was writing tests 75% of the time, and had no clear view of the application anymore. Then the Getting Real book from 37signals arrived in the mail. Since I have rebooted, I will use LINQ to SQL, stick close to the database and I'm not even sure I will be writing unit tests even.

Bottom line, I am now convinced the app will be finished in the near future. I realised my app doesn't need DDD, although I learned it can be a very good practice. Just not for me, not now.

I think you learned similar lessons. If you haven't read the Getting Real book, I recommend it.
surx - February 5, 2009 - Great series, can you please share the source code. Thanks
Vijay Santhanam - February 6, 2009 - ++ Totally agree! Great Series! Thoroughly enjoyed it. Any luck with the source code?
Chad Moran - February 10, 2009 - Yeah I have to be honest here. As much as I've enjoyed the series -- this has turned into a typical Microsoft product. Long release spans and not a lot of information, kind of a let down considering NOW is the time when developers are ramping up their projects with MVC in RC.

Tisk tisk.
robconery - February 11, 2009 - Wow. "tisk tisk"? You just let me know what else I can do for you Chad...
MrTea - February 11, 2009 - I think we're all looking forward to the source code but unless Microsoft are going to charge us to download this particular demo project I don't see how you can liken it to a Microsoft Product.

Rob's clearly put a lot of time, thought and effort in to this, you can't rush the process, far better he gets it right. In agile terms it'll be ready when it's ready!
Chad Moran - February 11, 2009 - I apologize for coming off the way I did when I wrote that I was extremely tired and cranky. I'm just saying I liked the way you were releasing consistent updates to your codebase. This is probably one of the most looked-to projects to learn ASP.NET MVC since the documentation isn't there yet. Now is a critical point when people are seriously considering using ASP.NET MVC for their projects.

Now I know you have bosses and my comment though harsh was not really directed or intended for you. Just a generalization that the usual pattern of having to deal with bosses and the "company," seems to be getting to the project. I look forward to the eventual release of the source and hope that it come sooner rather than later.

Again, I apologize and keep up the good work. :)
robconery - February 11, 2009 - :) same for me.
It's actually the opposite - the project has been embraced completely and
I'll be showing it (in it's new form) at MIX. I'm actually typing this
comment while on a team conf call where we are going over lots of fun
innovations and things we want to show!

So - despite how it *looks* - the project has not gone away :)
Chad Moran - February 11, 2009 - Yeah I figured as much. I've just really liked some of the things you've shown off and can't wait to see the source. Hopefully we get a changeset before MIX.

Either way, just registered for MIX yesterday so I'll be sure to make it to that session.
David - February 10, 2009 - Thank you Rob and every one helping Rob. I'm so happy I learned so much about MVC just by watching the videos... :-)
Jordan - February 11, 2009 - Great video series Rob, really learnt a lot about ASP.NET MVC. Will the final code drop be done against the latest RC of the MVC code?
robconery - February 11, 2009 - There won't be a "final" drop - we're working on it continually :). We'll
put it on Codeplex and it will work against RC, yes. For what it's worth,
I'm working on it full time right now :)
JeroenH - February 11, 2009 - Why not make the code available on a public svn server, so we can follow progress and possibly help out?
robconery - February 11, 2009 - There are reasons and i promise they're not evil :).
MartinF - February 14, 2009 - "I want to get you the source but it’s goin to be a week or two before I can."

3 weeks have passed and still no source code ? :(
Any idea about when it will be ready ? ... please ? :)
cowgaR - February 15, 2009 - March 18-20 2009 - my estimate :)

There has been told it will show itself in full Glory on Mix 09, MS main devel conference, so guess we need to get visa fast :)
robconery - February 15, 2009 - It'll be up on Codeplex by MIX 09
MartinF - February 16, 2009 - Thanks, but that is quite some time more than expected (1-2 weeks) :(
Almost 2 months.
James - February 16, 2009 - Storefront just became a marketing tool. Maybe it was all along. My guess is you have to wait now because they want a splash at the conference, when really all I want is to see how you implemented the presentation model in the application. Guess 2 more months will have to do. Thanks for the update.
robconery - February 16, 2009 - Dude, seriously - it's 4 weeks away. There are a TON of reasons why I'm not
sharing it right now and I'm asking for your trust here. I don't think I've
done anything to violate that - except for being lucky enough to have
Microsoft "pick up" this project and run with it seriously.
If you have something specific you'd like me to blog about between now and
then, please feel free to ask (it sounds like you want to see more about the
Presentation Model - I'm happy to show you that). But insults don't sit well
with me.
James - February 17, 2009 - Dude there were no insults intended.

Storefront being a marketing tool isn't a bad thing. Means someone thinks it worthy to use to show off new features. Not showing it before MIX, done or undone, makes total sense to me. I worked in similar situations where we had to wait for a conference to release a finished product (not saying storefront is finished). Must means something good is to come.

Sorry, I can see how the post didn't come off to well on my side. I've read and watched the series and think you did/ are doing a great job. I thought MIX09 was in 2 months, sorry. One month makes it even better.

The presentation model is of interest because we are currently trying to use MVC in a large project and we are fighting the whole aggregation of data and how to keep things looking right between the model and view. Just trying to find some best practices. So when you hit on it in the last blog I thought, finally I'm not the only one that had a problem.

Out of the three (you, Scott, and Phil), you were the only one doing a complete application so everyone was watching you closely. I wish Atwood would share some insights, using it with stackoverflow, but he rather start flame wars right now. BTW- nice reply on his post.

Any road, I am sorry I said what I said the way I said it. I think it would be cool to work on a project like this and have people want you to kick it up a few notches to make it a best practice / showcase piece.
robconery - February 17, 2009 - No worries - I've been under some serious pressure from the community to
release the source and I let it get to me :(. What can I say - I'm human...
Honestly MIX is a convenient target - and hopefully when I'm done with the
talk and release the source it will make sense why.
James - February 18, 2009 - For lack of better place to ask this, with the move towards a presentation model are you more inclined to stick view presentation logic there now instead creating an HTMLHelper function like you showed in your blog....ASP.NET MVC: Avoiding Tag Soup?
robconery - February 18, 2009 - Nothing HTML-specific - just enough to tell the view what it needs to know
(ideally)...
James - February 18, 2009 - Not sure my comment posted or not so will try this again. Sorry if it repeats.

With the addition of the Presentation Model are you inclined to stick you view presentation logic in those models instead of creating an HTMLHelper function? Like you talked about in "ASP.NET MVC: Avoiding Tag Soup".
Lachlan - March 17, 2009 - Hi,

Just wanted to say nice work on this series. I've found it very very interesting. It's great to see that Microsoft is adopting proven patterns and practices from the greater software community.

It's been frustrating at times being in the .net camp as a web dev because there have been some awesome j2ee frameworks out there for a long time. About 6 or 7 years ago I used to work with the struts and webwork frameworks (with j2ee), the asp.net webforms framework never seemsed to fit http very well to me, and obviously it wasn't very testable as you've pointed out. This new mvc framework seems to be extremely well designed, I'm looking forward to using it.

Also, I think that the recent (and long overdue imo) shift towards orm in .net is great (i like IQueryable btw!). I remember being on a team that wrote a crude implementation of an orm in c# based on a paper by scott ambler :) And it was because there was no equivilent to ejb or hibernate (which hadn't really established itself at the time).

Anyway, well done with the series, the honesty and humility in your approach and the fact you were able to get the community invloved made it great to watch!
DarkDeny - August 26, 2009 - Rob (or anyone else who knows),

can you please tell me why did you switch to xUnit during StoreFront development? What was that phrase "Bred made me" meaning?

if there were some nice arguments why switch to xUnit I would like to know that, because I want to turn eyes of my colleagues to this framework, but I do not know any arguments yet, except for that I like it=).

Thanks in advance!
Rob Conery - August 26, 2009 - The primary reason was because Brad was available to help and walk me through it. It's also less verbose and very, very fast. Speed is a major motivator when selecting a framework, and over the span of 1 test you won't notice but over 400 you will.
labilbe - October 22, 2009 - Hi Scott,
The download link does not work anymore.
labilbe - October 23, 2009 - Fixed :)
Thank you!
Gecko