Ext.Direct for ASP.NET MVC

[elishnevsky]

Ext.Direct for ASP.NET MVC
Here is my implementation of Ext.Direct server-side stack for ASP.NET MVC 3 and 4.

Nov 12, 2012: The project has moves to GitHub.

Key features

* Easy setup
* Support for different types of parameters - simple types, complex types and arrays
* Form post values can be bound to multiple simple type parameters, a single complex type parameter (object) or a mix of both on the server
* Support for method aliases
* Exceptions with full stack trace and additional user-defined data for easy debugging
* Support for custom server-side events
* Support for named arguments (Ext JS 4.x)

The full source code is available here:

Ext.Direct for ASP.NET MVC on GitHub

Clone it or download the repository as zip file. You need to open the solutions in Visual Studio 2012 and allow NuGet to download missing packages before attempting to build it, as described in Compiling the source section in the README file.

Please read the README !!!

Any questions, comments, suggestions are welcome.

[andycramb]

Very nice examples
I was thinking of converting my existing ExtJs MVc app to using Direct but I have not had time to look at using it
This is great to get me jump started

Questions
Does the DirectProvider class generate the DirectApi.js file and write it back to the response stream?
When does it do this? I noticed its cached if I add a new contoller will it automatically generate a new DirectApi.js file?

Does the router pick up all requests marked DirectRouter and then inspect the JSON and map the action to the controller and the method to the action?

[elishnevsky]

Removed the comment. Its content was no longer valid in the latest version.

[Razhick]

Very nice examples and thank you for sharing.

Just one comment; testing using FireFox 3.0.11 everything works but using IE 7, the tree and the grid panel do not show - Error: Object expected, Char: 13, Line 7506.

Thanks a lot!

[elishnevsky]

Very nice examples and thank you for sharing.

Just one comment; testing using FireFox 3.0.11 everything works but using IE 7, the tree and the grid panel do not show - Error: Object expected, Char: 13, Line 7506.

Thanks a lot!

That's because I don't care about IE But I fixed it anyways. Extra comma thing again, doh!

Just uploaded Ext.Direct.Mvc-0.2.zip. It requires you to make a small change in the configuration. Please change from this:

<section name="ext.direct" type="Ext.Direct.Mvc.DirectSectionHandler, Ext.Direct.Mvc"/>

To this:

<section name="ext.direct" type="Ext.Direct.Mvc.Configuration.DirectSection, Ext.Direct.Mvc"/>

Also added extra exception handling and moved all configuration related stuff to Ext.Direct.Mvc.Configuration namespace.

First post updated.

[elishnevsky]

Uploaded version 0.3. Controller actions marked with DirectIgnoreAttribute (e.g. [DirectIgnore]) can now be executed as regular actions via the default route. Head post updated.

[elishnevsky]

Uploaded version 0.4. You can now use [DirectIgnore] attribute to also mark classes (controllers) for ignore. This is useful if you need to create an abstract controller that itself uses DirectController as a base class.

[mohaaron]

Nice work. I'm going to start building some test cases using this. Thanks for the examples and code.

[franklt69]

Hi elishnevsky's , in your example you have only one view (index.aspx), is it the right approach? I mean, could you give more details about the view and javascript using this approach, what about if you have many aspx page in your app?

maybe is trivial but I am confused

regards
Frank

[elishnevsky]

Hi elishnevsky's , in your example you have only one view (index.aspx), is it the right approach? I mean, could you give more details about the view and javascript using this approach, what about if you have many aspx page in your app?

maybe is trivial but I am confused

regards
Frank

When using Ext JS to develop a web application, it is usually the most common practice to only have one page and have all your markup generated by Ext JS. Therefore my current Ext.Direct implementation sort of follows this practice. However, you can still have more than one view and include the same API in all of them. You will just end up having some client-side methods in one view that you will never call, because they are meant to be used in another view.
As I wrote in one of my previous posts, I'm planning to support multiple providers in the future, just can't tell exactly when yet.