Chapter 2

Controllers

— By Jon Galloway

What's In This Chapter?

• The controller's role
• A brief history of controllers
• Sample application: The MVC Music Store
• Controller basics

This chapter explains how controllers respond to user HTTP requests and return information to the browser. It focuses on the function of controllers and controller actions. We haven't covered views and models yet, so our controller action samples will be a little high level. This chapter lays the groundwork for the following several chapters.

Chapter 1 discussed the Model-View-Controller pattern in general and then followed up with how ASP.NET MVC compared with ASP.NET Web Forms. Now it's time to get into a bit more detail about one of the core elements of the three-sided pattern that is MVC—the controller.