ASP.NET MVC for Ruby on Rails developers?

Question

Long time lurker, first time poster. I'm a self-taught hacker that learned Ruby on Rails to start. At work I've been allowed to work on a web app--the only catch is I have to use ASP.NET. This technology choice is mandated, as much as I'd prefer to use Rails.

There's dozens of "Rails for .NET/PHP/Java Developers" books and blog posts but I haven't found any going the opposite direction, from Rails to .NET.

Could someone please give me an overview of how a typical Rails app would translate over to ASP.NET MVC? I'll research the details of the IDE, C#/VBscript, etc. But what are the possible equivalents to:

• Generators
• Gems/Plugins
• Databases
• Migrations
• Routes
• Models (ORMs)
• Controllers (InheritedResources)
• Views (layouts, templates, partials)
• Rails Console
• Test Units/Specs
• etc. anything else I'm forgetting

I assume a lot of the Rails niceties I take for granted like route-based helper methods, and simple macro association declarations will not be possible. :(

Thank you so much!

Answer 1

I think what you'll find in the .Net world is that you have a lot of choices to make. Rails is nice because it provides all of that stuff in one place, but developing for .Net you'll have to piece together a solution of your own.

• Generators - There are various code generation facilities, but each one is for a different piece. Eg, you can get MyGeneration that will generate code based on a database.
• Gems/Plugins - No uniting system for this; Components can be found on the web and you would download either the source or the .dll, then you would add a reference in your project to the assembly (.dll).
• Databases - you can connect to pretty much anything; You'll probably find the most guidance for an MS SQL Server.
• Migrations - I don't know of a direct method for this in the .net world; I usually write SQL code in SQL and run scripts on the server manually as part of deployment.
• Routes - ASP.Net MVC includes routes, look in the global.asax.cs file that gets generated when you create a project for example.
• Models (ORMs) - ORMs for .Net are all over the place. Included as part of .Net are things like Linq-to-sql and the Entity Framework. Outside of MS you can find many, but I'd probably recommend NHibernate.
• Controllers - Built in to .Net MVC; You get to write the code.
• Views - Built in to .Net MVC; Once again you get to write them. MasterPages allow you to get the same general layout on all your pages(including common header/footer, etc), Web Controls (.ascx files) allow you to do a partial view.
• Rails Console - I don't know exactly what this provides (I'm a .net developer interested in learning Rails, but haven't spent much time yet); Visual Studio lets you debug applications, step through code, etc. I don't think there are any consoles available to test code outside of just writing the code, compiling, and running it.
• Test Units/Specs - There are a few test frameworks for .Net (MS has a framework included, NUnit is one alternative). For specs and such, probably google around for Behavior Driven Design and see what exists.

Answer 2

There are a couple of .NET ports of RoR migrations. I have used migratordotnet and FluentMigrator. Both work as expected but I prefer FluentMigrator. It is more full-featured (e.g. can create indexes) and I like the fluent style.

Answer 3

LINQPad is your equivalent to Rails Console.. see here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/9403457/1029644