Are there add-on libraries or tools available for ASP.NET MVC development?

Question

My first experience with ASP.NET MVC and the Entity Framework has raised my interest in this framework and I would like to implement some basic applications, covering the basic requirements of real-world web applications. So far the support given by VS 2008 is already impressive. For some areas however, it might be a time saver to use existing add-ons or libraries of all kind. Are there already commercial or open solutions which I should take a look at?

Answer 1

Some of them:

• S#arp architecture
• MVCContrib
• MVC Project Awesome

Be sure to check out example projects.

Telerik has made some UI stuff too (haven't checked out yet).

You might be interested to check out other view engines like:

• Spark (this one kicks a$$)
• NHaml

Haack recently posted about .less - might be worth checking out for managing css

T4MVC by David Ebbo library is a nice solution how to make your asp.net mvc app more strongly typed.

For UI testing - Watin framework.
Here's Jimmy talking about implementation and solution of common problems when doing UI testing. Seems to me that he prefers Gallio + NBehave + MbUnit combo but i personally like BehaveN (it doesn't need test runner, is not tied with particular unit test framework).

HtmlAgilityPack is a nice tool if working with raw html is necessary.

MvcTurbine might simplify technical part of your asp.net-mvc project.

Found useful MvcExtensions extension made by Kazi Manzur Rashid.

For managing javascript and css - Chirpy.

Object to object mapper for MVVM support - AutoMapper.

elmah is great for error logging.

Answer 2

Not necessarily MVC specific, but:

MVC lends itself to take advantage of all the jQuery UI controls and pretty things.

There's also Elmah, and StructureMap for DI/IOC.