Question

I’ve been puzzled by what I consider a contradiction in terms: ASP.NET MVC claims to be furthering and supporting the “separation of concern” motto, which I find a great idea.

However, it seems there’s no way of separating out controllers, model or views into their own assembly, or separating areas into assemblies.

With the fixed Controller, Model and View folders in your ASP.NET MVC, you’re actually creating a huge hodge podge of things. Is that the separation of concerns, really?? Seems like quite the contrary to me.

So what I’m wondering:

• how can I create an ASP.NET MVC solution that will either separate out controllers, the model, and the folders full of views, into separate assemblies?

• how can I put areas of ASP.NET MVC 2 into separate assemblies?

• or how else do you manage a large ASP.NET MVC app – which has several dozen or even over a hundred controllers, lots of model and viewmodel classes, and several hundred views?

Answer 1

I think you’re looking for Areas in ASP.Net MVC 2. There are some things to uncomment in the CSProj files, but after that it will copy the views over when you build. I don’t think there is any requirement that the Controller or Model classes be in the same assembly as the views.

Walkthrough: Creating an ASP.NET MVC Areas Application Using Multiple Projects