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AngularJS Extension for ASP.NET MVC

Anonymous User5772 17-Mar-2015

Hi everyone in this article I’m explaining about AngularJS with ASP.NET MVC.

Introduction:

This is an extension to ASP.NET MVC that creates a tight and smooth integration between MVC on the server and AngularJS MVC on the client.

AngularJS is one of the most popular client-side frameworks on the web. It is maintained by Google and helps in creating Single-Page Applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This framework provides Model-View-Controller (MVC) on the client side and helps the developer to implement structural JavaScript on client-side. The Data-Binding and Dependency Injection features provided by Angular simplifies the heavy and complex JavaScript code on the client, which we used to write earlier to do the same task. If you are absolutely new to AngularJS.

DataBinding:This provides an automatic synchronization of data in between data model and the User interface components. This synchronization is managed in such a way that when any changes occur in either Model or View, it is notified to one another. 

Module:Acts as a container for different components of the application e.g. Controller, Services, directives, etc. The bootstrapping of the application is specified by the Module. This is attached with DOM using ng-app directive. 

Controller:Controller is a repository for the actions to be exposed to the DOM. This is a JavaScript constructor function attached to the DOM using ng-controller directive. When the controller is attached with DOM a new injectable scope parameter will be available to the controller’s constructor function of the name $scope.

Goals:

The project consists of several parts:

1.       A set to attributes to decorate ASP.NET MVC controllers and make connections to Angular controllers

2.       A set of extensions that create forms using Editor For and EditorForModel that are aware of Angler’s attributes and Bootstrap's styles

3.       Angular directives for better integration with JQuery validation

Usage:

The primary idea is an automation process for creating forms based on models decorated with a bunch of attributes. This makes the model to a single point of change in the project and hence easier to maintain. 

Once we have a sophisticated model we can create views out of it without care to much about HTML and everything around it. Especially, we can avoid digging deeper into HTML, JavaScript frameworks, Bootstrap CSS, and finally AngularJS. There is still some work to do for creating special controller functions, but the whole infrastructure is created automatically.

To start, we decorate an MVC Web API controller with

[NgDataContext(typeof(DemoController), "DemoPortal/api")]

This creates a data context class in JavaScript that supports the angular controllers.

Each method must be decorated like this:

[NgDataContextFunction]
 publicActionResult GetProjects()
 {
         // we create some fake projects to let the UI running
         List<EaProject> result = newList<EaProject>();
         result.Add(new EaProject { Description = "Angular JS", Id = 1, IsPublished = false, Name = "NG", StartedAt = DateTime.Now });
         return JsonList(result, Math.Min(5, result.Count), JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
   }

So, that's all we need to have an API.

Now, we create forms. We start with regular, Razor enabled MVC forms. These forms are supported by regular MVC controllers. However, these controllers are quite stupid, as the hard work is in the Angular controllers. But we benefit a lot from this duplication of controllers.

See the beginning of such a controller:

[NgController]
publicclassProjectController : AngularJsController
{
    [NgController("~/Views/Project/js/index.js")]
    publicActionResult Index() {
    return View();
}

NgController is the trick to create and place the Angular stuff.

A view looks like this:

 

@using Mvc2Ng.Web.UI.Areas.EasyAuthorPortal.Extensions 
@model EditProject
<section class="mainbar" data-ng-controller="editproject as vm">
  <section class="matter">
    <div class="container">
      <div class="row">
        <div class="widget wgreen">
          <div data-cc-widget-header title="{{vm.title}}"></div>
          <div class="widget-content user">
            <p>
              Fine tune your project, invite contributors, and pre-set publishing options.
            </p>
            <form role="form" data-ng-submit="editProject()">
              @Html.AngularEditorForModel()
              <button type="button" data-ng-click="cancel()" class="btn btn-danger pull-left">Cancel</button>
              <button type="submit" class="btn btn-default pull-right">Save</button>
            </form>
          </div>
        </div>
        <div class="panel panel-warning" data-ng-show="!vm.isValid">
          <!-- Default panel contents -->
          <div class="panel-heading">Panel heading</div>
          <div class="panel-body">
            <p>{{vm.validationSummary}}</p>
          </div>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
  </section>
</section>


The helper AngularEditorForModel creates the whole form as we need it to support the controller.

To make it working some restrictions apply to paths, naming, and bundling. The upside is a drastic improvement in development speed and reliability.


Updated 02-Dec-2017
I am a content writter !

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