Adam Freeman - Pro ASP.NET Core 3: Develop Cloud-Ready Web Applications Using MVC, Blazor, and Razor Pages

is an experienced IT professional who has held senior positions in a range of companies, most recently serving as chief technology officer and chief operating officer of a global bank. Now retired, he spends his time writing and long-distance running.

is a senior consultant and a senior analyst/developer using Microsoft technologies. He works for BluArancio ( www.bluarancio.com ). He is a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer for .NET, a Microsoft Certified Application Developer for .NET, a Microsoft Certified Professional, and a prolific author and technical reviewer. Over the past ten years, hes written articles for Italian and international magazines and coauthored more than ten books on a variety of computer topics.

When you start using ASP.NET Core, it can be confusing to find that there are different application frameworks available. As you will learn, these frameworks are complementary and solve different problems, or, for some features, solve the same problems in different ways. Understanding the relationship between these frameworks means understanding the changing design patterns that Microsoft has supported, as I explain in the sections that follow.

The MVC Framework was introduced in the pre-Core days of ASP.NET. The original ASP.NET relied on a development model called Web Pages, which re-created the experience of writing desktop applications but resulted in unwieldy web projects that did not scale well. The MVC Framework was introduced alongside Web Pages with a development model that embraced the character of HTTP and HTML, rather than trying to hide it.

MVC stands for Model-View-Controller, which is a design pattern that describes the shape of an application. The MVC pattern emphasizes separation of concerns, where areas of functionality are defined independently, which was an effective antidote to the indistinct architectures that Web Pages led to.

Early versions of the MVC Framework were built on the ASP.NET foundations that were originally designed for Web Pages, which led to some awkward features and workarounds. With the move to .NET Core, ASP.NET became ASP.NET Core, and the MVC Framework was rebuilt on an open, extensible, and cross-platform foundation.

The MVC Framework remains an important part of ASP.NET Core, but the way it is commonly used has changed with the rise of single-page applications (SPAs). In an SPA, the browser makes a single HTTP request and receives an HTML document that delivers a rich client, typically written in a JavaScript client such as Angular or React. The shift to SPAs means that the clean separation that the MVC Framework was originally intended for is not as important, and the emphasis placed on following the MVC pattern is no longer essential, even though the MVC Framework remains useful (and is used to support SPAs through web services, as described in Chapter ).