How do I configure an ASP.NET MVC project to work with Boo

Question

I want to build an ASP.NET MVC application with Boo instead of C#. If you know the steps to configure this type of project setup, I'd be interested to know what I need to do.

The MVC project setup is no problem. What I'm trying to figure out how to configure the pages and project to switch to use the Boo language and compiler.

Answer 1

So there are two levels of "work with Boo". One would be all the code (namely, the Controllers), and the other would be the views.

For the code, I assume Boo compiles to standard .NET assemblies, so simply properly following the naming conventions using by ASP.NET MVC should allow you to write Controllers. You will probably need to start with a C# or VB version of the MVC web application project template and port some of the boilerplate code over into Boo to get the solution entirely in Boo (I presume Boo supports Web Application projects?).

The other half is views. Someone will need to port the Brail view engine over to the ASP.NET MVC view engine system. This may already be done, but I don't know for sure. If it's not, then this is probably a significant amount of work to be done.

Probably the best place to get answers to these kinds of questions is the MvcContrib community on CodePlex.

Answer 2

The Brail view engine has been implemented to be used in ASP.NET MVC. The MvcContrib project implemented the code. The source code is located on Google Code.

As far as the controllers, I really am not sure. I am not that familiar with Boo. I know a lot of developers use it for configuration instead of using xml for instance. My tips would be, if Boo can inherit off the Controller base class and you stick to the naming conventions, you should be alright. If you vary off the naming conventions, well you would need to implement your own IControllerFactory to instantiate the boo controllers as the requests come in.

I have been following the ASP.NET MVC bits since the first CTP and through that whole time, I have not seen somebody use Boo to code with. I think you will be the first to try to accomplish this.