Foreword

I was thrilled to work on the first two versions of this book. When I decided to take a break from writing on the third version, I wondered who would take over. Who could fill the vacuum left by my enormous ego? Well, only four of the smartest and nicest fellows one could know, each one far more knowledgeable than I.

Phil Haack, the Program Manager ASP.NET MVC, has been with the project from the very start. With a background rooted in community and open source, I count him not only as an amazing technologist but also a close friend. Phil currently works on ASP.NET, as well as the new .NET Package Manager called NuGet. Phil and I share a boss now on the Web Platform and Tools and are working to move both ASP.NET and Open Source forward at Microsoft.

Brad Wilson is not only my favorite skeptic but also a talented Developer at Microsoft working on ASP.NET MVC. From Dynamic Data to Data Annotations to Testing and more, there's no end to Brad's knowledge as a programmer. He's worked on many open source projects such as XUnit.NET, and continues to push people both inside and outside Microsoft towards the light.

Jon Galloway works in the Developer Guidance Group at Microsoft, where he's had the opportunity to work with thousands of developers who are both new to and experienced with ASP.NET MVC. He's the author of the MVC Music Store tutorial, which has helped hundreds of thousands of new developers write their first ASP.NET MVC application. Jon also helped organize mvcConf—a series of free, online conferences for ASP.NET MVC developers. His interactions with the diverse ASP.NET community give him some great insights on how developers can begin, learn, and master ASP.NET MVC.

And last but not least, K. Scott Allen rounds out the group, not just because of his wise decision to use his middle name to sound smarter, but also because he brings his experience and wisdom as a world-renown trainer. Scott Allen is a member of the Pluralsight technical staff and has worked on websites for Fortune 50 companies, as well as consulted with startups. He is kind, thoughtful, respected, and above all, knows his stuff backwards and forwards.

These fellows have teamed up to take this ASP.NET MVC 3 book to the next level, as the ASP.NET web development platform continues to grow. The platform is currently used by millions of developers worldwide. A vibrant community supports the platform, both online and offline; the online forums at www.asp.net average thousands of questions and answers a day.

ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC 3 powers news sites, online retail stores, and perhaps your favorite social networking site. Your local sports team, book club or blog uses ASP.NET MVC 3 as well.

When it was introduced, ASP.NET MVC broke a lot of ground. Although the pattern was old, it was new to much of the existing ASP.NET community; it walked a delicate line between productivity and control, power and flexibility. Today, to me, ASP.NET MVC 3 represents choice—your choice of language, your choice of frameworks, your choice of open source libraries, your choice of patterns. Everything is pluggable. MVC 3 epitomizes absolute control of my environment—if you like something, use it; if you don't like something, change it. I unit test how I want, create components as I want, and use my choice of JavaScript framework.

ASP.NET MVC 3 brings you the new Razor View Engine, an integrated scaffolding system extensible via NuGet, HTML 5 enabled project templates, powerful hooks with dependency injection and global action filters, and rich JavaScript support (including unobtrusive JavaScript, jQuery Validation, and JSON binding).

The ASP.NET MVC team has created version 3 of their amazing framework and has given us the source. I encourage you to visit www.asp.net/mvc for fresh content, new samples, videos, and tutorials.

We all hope this book, and the knowledge within, represents the next step for you in your mastery of ASP.NET MVC 3.

—Scott Hanselman

Principal Community Architect

Web Platform and Tools

Microsoft