MVC Developer

Bundling and minification are two new techniques introduced to improve request load time. It improves load time by reducing the number of requests to the server and reducing the size of requested assets (such as CSS and JavaScript).

Bundling: It lets us combine multiple JavaScript (.js) files or multiple cascading style sheet (.css) files so that they can be downloaded as a unit, rather than making individual HTTP requests.

Minification: It squeezes out whitespace and performs other types of compression to make the downloaded files as small as possible. At runtime, the process identifies the user agent, for example IE, Mozilla, etc. and then removes whatever is specific to Mozilla when the request comes from IE.

Action Filters are additional attributes that can be applied to either a controller section or the entire controller to modify the way in which action is executed. These attributes are special .NET classes derived from System.Attribute which can be attached to classes, methods, properties and fields.

Output Cache: This action filter caches the output of a controller action for a specified amount of time.

Handle Error: This action filter handles errors raised when a controller action executes.

Authorize: This action filter enables you to restrict access to a particular user or role.

Now we will see the code example to apply these filters on an example controller ActionFilterDemoController. (ActionFilterDemoController is just used as an example. You can use these filters on any of your controllers.)

When you create a project a folder structure gets created by default under the name of your project which can be seen in solution explorer. Below I will give you a brief explanation of what these folders are for.

☛ Model: This folder contains classes that is used to provide data. These classes can contain data that is retrieved from the database or data inserted in the form by the user to update the database.

☛ Controllers: These are the classes which will perform the action invoked by the user. These classes contains methods known as "Actions" which responds to the user action accordingly.

☛ Views: These are simple pages which uses the model class data to populate the HTML controls and renders it to the client browser.

☛ App_Start: Contains Classes such as FilterConfig, RoutesConfig, WebApiConfig. As of now we need to understand the RouteConfig class. This class contains the default format of the URL that should be supplied in the browser to navigate to a specified page.

A route is a URL pattern that is mapped to a handler. The handler can be a physical file, such as a .aspx file in a Web Forms application. A handler can also be a class that processes the request, such as a controller in an MVC application. To define a route, you create an instance of the Route class by specifying the URL pattern, the handler, and optionally a name for the route.

You add the route to the application by adding the Route object to the static Routes property of the RouteTable class. The Routesproperty is a RouteCollection object that stores all the routes for the application.

You typically do not have to write code to add routes in an MVC application. Visual Studio project templates for MVC include preconfigured URL routes. These are defined in the Mvc Application class, which is defined in the Global.asax file.