MVC patterns and practices

Question

I would ask also for best practices and patterns for asp.net MVC, using this example:

I have a project. This is its architecture:

1. Models
2. Controler
3. Views
4. Tools

In models folder I have every single ViewModel in separate class field. All of table declarations (objects) I put in one file (AccountModels.cs or ForumModels.cs). I have a separate file for EF context (MyAppContext.cs).

Controler - here I have only Controler classes. But maybe part of code will be better example and suggestion what can I improve:

private AppContext db = new AppContext ();

[HttpPost]
[Authorize]
public ActionResult AddGun(GunModel model)
{
    if (ModelState.IsValid)
    {
        Gun gunToAdd = new Gun
        {
            Tilte = model.Tilte,
            AuthorID = UserTools.getUser(User.Identity.Name).UserId,
            AddDate = DateTime.UtcNow,
            Content = model.Content,
            CategoryID = model.CategoryID,
            CategoryName = GunsTools.getCategoryName(model.CategoryID)

        };

        db.Guns.Add(gunToAdd);
        db.SaveChanges();

        return RedirectToAction("Details", new { ID = gunToAdd.ID });

    }

return RedirectToAction("Index");

}

This is a part of controler with AddGun Action. Others ActionResults are similar - generaly I use lambda expression on my db context to get values etc.

Views - Views in separate folder, for Partial Views I set special prefix (for example - _NavigationPartial.cshtml or _CalculatorPartial.cshtml). Is there anything for improve here? Of course Views use ViewModels, not Models.

And at least - Tools. I've put here some classes and methods to prevent from repeating code. Here is some methods witch returns from database some objects or just strings, like GetUser(..) or GetCategoryName(..). Is it a good practise at all?

I think that many young MVC developers have the same project architecture (I personally saw it in a few companies) and many of them perhaps also wants to improve something in theirs projects to be a better programmers.

Regards

Answer 1

As noted in the comments above, it's hard to answer such a broad question, but I will make a couple of observations

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• It's not a great idea to use your database entities directly in your Controller, because that tightly couples your controller to the database and can lead to data being exposed to your view that really doesn't belong there.

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Instead you should have a separate data layer that abstracts away the details of what a Gun entity is (from the perspective of the database) and what a Gun Model is (from the perspective of the View)

A randomly selected but good SO question about this is found here

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• You could consider using Dependency Injection (DI) for your controller

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so that you have a constructor that looks like this:

readonly AppContext _db;
public GunController(AppContext db)
{
    if (db==null) {throw new ArgumentNullException("db is null");}
   _db=db;
}

You'll need to use a DI Container to this up. A randomly selected (but really good) article can be found here

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Above all, keep asking questions, but try to keep them more specific i.e about specific areas of your app - and in no time you will have a really good picture of what is and isn't good practice!