Question

The more I read into Asp.Net MVC the more layers and components I find out are required in order to make my application follow all of the standards and best programming practices.

It’s starting to get a bit confusing because some of the new layers don’t seem to fit in as easily as the others I learnt. So I just wanted someone to go over all of the required/recommended layers for an Asp.Net MVC application- what purpose they serve and how they interact with the other layers.

Here’s a few of the layers I’ve found and how they link up:
(Some of them may be wrong)

View/UI --> Model Binder --> Controller --> Service Layer --> Repository --> Entity Framework/LINQ to SQL --> DB

Could someone go over ones I may be missing, how they all link up, and what each of their purposes are?

Thanks,
Matt

Answer 1

Good question, I think you covered all the layers I have seen: Modal binder and service layer are optional.

Maybe, you can add another Error Handling layer such as elmah.

• View/UI –> You put your html markup / Javascript code.
• Model Binder –> You perform the magic to bind your input to the action parameters, normally, you will use the default binder, so you don’t need worry about it. However, you can override this with your own binder, and do validation in this layer. Here is a good example on this.
• Controller –> Enough documentation online.
• Service Layer –> A lot of people do validation and other business logic processing here before sending it to repository. Asp.net mvc contact manger example has a good example here. This is also the layer to actually work with your modal.
• Repository –> Simple read/write operation.
• Entity Framework/LINQ to SQL –> DB – Actually writing to database. Nhibernate is another good candidate here.