This test, which consists of writing a simple utility application written in .Net, is a standard test given to all technical applicants. How we judge this test is based on the job being applied for.
The results of this test will allow us to better understand your thought process when writing an application; Such as design, implementation, usability, as well as your attention to detail.
Overview
The purpose of the application is to allow end-users to quickly enter and manage a list of name/value pairs.
Although this test must be written without any other persons help, any standard reference material that is used during a normal programming cycle may be used (such as online help or books). No third party class libraries or code snippets may be used.
Create a Windows Forms application using a UI similar to the one shown below. The application code should be written in C# , unless you are specifically applying for a position that does not require C# skills or were given instructions to do otherwise.
Required Features:
Name/Value pairs are to be entered into the upper textbox. This textbox will be used by the end-user to quickly add Name/Value pairs to the list below.
When a Name/Value pair is about to be added to the list it must be validated to ensure proper syntax. If the syntax is incorrect then the Name/Value pair must not be added. The Name/Value pair entry format is shown below:
=
Where is the name portion of the pair, and is the value portion of the pair. Only valid Name/Value pairs can be added. Names and Values can contain only alpha-numeric characters. The equal-sign is used to delimit the pair, spaces before and/or after the equal-sign may be entered by the end user (and should be ignored.)
When the ‘Sort by Name’ button is pressed the list will be sorted ascending by Name.
When the ‘Sort by Value’ button is pressed the list will be sorted ascending by Value.
When the ‘Delete’ button is pressed all selected items in the listbox will be deleted.
When the ‘Save as XML’ button is pressed, all of the items in the listbox must be saved to an XML file.
When the ‘Exit’ button is pressed the program will close.
General Information
Make any modifications/additions you feel are necessary to enhance the usability of this application. Some of the descriptions (such as ‘Save to XML’) are kept vague on purpose, to allow you to make your own design/implementation decisions. Keep the code clean, well organized and well commented.The quality of the application should be at the same level that you would to create for a paying client/employer. If you have any questions about the description of the application please feel free to send in an email with your inquiry.
Once the test is complete please zip up the project and its associated files along with a release build of the executable. Then email the zip file in along with a copy of your resume.
Thanks in advance for taking the time to apply at Dundas Software.
Create a Movie Database Application in 15 Minutes with ASP.NET MVC (C#)
The purpose of this tutorial is to give you a sense of "what it is like" to build an ASP.NET MVC application. In this tutorial, I blast through building an entire ASP.NET MVC application from start to finish. I show you how to build a simple database-driven application that illustrates how you can list, create, and edit database records.
To simplify the process of building our application, we’ll take advantage of the scaffolding features of Visual Studio 2008. We’ll let Visual Studio generate the initial code and content for our controllers, models, and views.
If you have worked with Active Server Pages or ASP.NET, then you should find ASP.NET MVC very familiar. ASP.NET MVC views are very much like the pages in an Active Server Pages application. And, just like a traditional ASP.NET Web Forms application, ASP.NET MVC provides you with full access to the rich set of languages and classes provided by the .NET framework.
My hope is that this tutorial will give you a sense of how the experience of building an ASP.NET MVC application is both similar and different than the experience of building an Active Server Pages or ASP.NET Web Forms application.
Overview of the Movie Database Application
Because our goal is to keep things simple, we’ll build a very simple Movie Database application. Our simple Movie Database application will allow us to do three things:
List a set of movie database records
Create a new movie database record
Edit an existing movie database record
Again, because we want to keep things simple, we’ll take advantage of the minimum number of features of the ASP.NET MVC framework needed to build our application. For example, we won’t be taking advantage of Test-Driven Development.
In order to create our application, we need to complete each of the following steps:
Create the ASP.NET MVC Web Application Project
Create the database
Create the database model
Create the ASP.NET MVC controller
Create the ASP.NET MVC views
Preliminaries
You’ll need either Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Web Developer 2008 Express to build an ASP.NET MVC application. You also need to download the ASP.NET MVC framework.
If you don’t own Visual Studio 2008, then you can download a 90 day trial version of Visual Studio 2008 from this website:
Alternatively, you can create ASP.NET MVC applications with Visual Web Developer Express 2008. If you decide to use Visual Web Developer Express then you must have Service Pack 1 installed. You can download Visual Web Developer 2008 Express with Service Pack 1 from this website:
After you install either Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Web Developer 2008, you need to install the ASP.NET MVC framework. You can download the ASP.NET MVC framework from the following website:
Instead of downloading the ASP.NET framework and the ASP.NET MVC framework individually, you can take advantage of the Web Platform Installer. The Web Platform Installer is an application that enables you to easily manage the installed applications are your computer:
Let’s start by creating a new ASP.NET MVC Web Application project in Visual Studio 2008. Select the menu option File, New Project and you will see the New Project dialog box in Figure 1. Select C# as the programming language and select the ASP.NET MVC Web Application project template. Give your project the name MovieApp and click the OK button.
Make sure that you select .NET Framework 3.5 from the dropdown list at the top of the New Project dialog or the ASP.NET MVC Web Application project template won’t appear.
Whenever you create a new MVC Web Application project, Visual Studio prompts you to create a separate unit test project. The dialog in Figure 2 appears. Because we won’t be creating tests in this tutorial because of time constraints (and, yes, we should feel a little guilty about this) select the No option and click the OK button.
Visual Web Developer does not support test projects.
An ASP.NET MVC application has a standard set of folders: a Models, Views, and Controllers folder. You can see this standard set of folders in the Solution Explorer window. We’ll need to add files to each of the Models, Views, and Controllers folders in order to build our Movie Database application.
When you create a new MVC application with Visual Studio, you get a sample application. Because we want to start from scratch, we need to delete the content for this sample application. You need to delete the following file and the following folder:
Controllers\HomeController.cs
Views\Home
Creating the Database
We need to create a database to hold our movie database records. Luckily, Visual Studio includes a free database named SQL Server Express. Follow these steps to create the database:
Right-click the App_Data folder in the Solution Explorer window and select the menu option Add, New Item.
Select the Data category and select the SQL Server Database template (see Figure 3).
Name your new database MoviesDB.mdf and click the Add button.
After you create your database, you can connect to the database by double-clicking the MoviesDB.mdf file located in the App_Data folder. Double-clicking the MoviesDB.mdf file opens the Server Explorer window.
The Server Explorer window is named the Database Explorer window in the case of Visual Web Developer.
Next, we need to create a new database table. From within the Sever Explorer window, right-click the Tables folder and select the menu option Add New Table. Selecting this menu option opens the database table designer. Create the following database columns:
Column Name
Data Type
Allow Nulls
Id
Int
False
Title
Nvarchar(100)
False
Director
Nvarchar(100)
False
DateReleased
DateTime
False
The first column, the Id column, has two special properties. First, you need to mark the Id column as the primary key column. After selecting the Id column, click the Set Primary Key button (it is the icon that looks like a key). Second, you need to mark the Id column as an Identity column. In the Column Properties window, scroll down to the Identity Specification section and expand it. Change the Is Identity property to the value Yes. When you are finished, the table should look like Figure 4.
The final step is to save the new table. Click the Save button (the icon of the floppy) and give the new table the name Movies.
After you finish creating the table, add some movie records to the table. Right-click the Movies table in the Server Explorer window and select the menu option Show Table Data. Enter a list of your favorite movies (see Figure 5).
We next need to create a set of classes to represent our database. We need to create a database model. We’ll take advantage of the Microsoft Entity Framework to generate the classes for our database model automatically.
The ASP.NET MVC framework is not tied to the Microsoft Entity Framework. You can create your database model classes by taking advantage of a variety of Object Relational Mapping (OR/M) tools including LINQ to SQL, Subsonic, and NHibernate.
Follow these steps to launch the Entity Data Model Wizard:
Right-click the Models folder in the Solution Explorer window and the select the menu option Add, New Item.
Select the Data category and select the ADO.NET Entity Data Model template.
Give your data model the name MoviesDBModel.edmx and click the Add button.
After you click the Add button, the Entity Data Model Wizard appears (see Figure 6). Follow these steps to complete the wizard:
In the Choose Model Contents step, select the Generate from database option.
In the Choose Your Data Connection step, use the MoviesDB.mdf data connection and the name MoviesDBEntities for the connection settings. Click the Next button.
In the Choose Your Database Objects step, expand the Tables node, select the Movies table. Enter the namespace MovieApp.Models and click the Finish button.
After you complete the Entity Data Model Wizard, the Entity Data Model Designer opens. The Designer should display the Movies database table (see Figure 7).
We need to make one change before we continue. The Entity Data Wizard generates a model class named Movies that represents the Movies database table. Because we’ll use the Movies class to represent a particular movie, we need to modify the name of the class to be Movie instead of Movies (singular rather than plural).
Double-click the name of the class on the designer surface and change the name of the class from Movies to Movie. After making this change, click the Save button (the icon of the floppy disk) to generate the Movie class.
Creating the ASP.NET MVC Controller
The next step is to create the ASP.NET MVC controller. A controller is responsible for controlling how a user interacts with an ASP.NET MVC application.
Follow these steps:
In the Solution Explorer window, right-click the Controllers folder and select the menu option Add, Controller.
In the Add Controller dialog, enter the name HomeController and check the checkbox labeled Add action methods for Create, Update, and Details scenarios (see Figure 8).
Click the Add button to add the new controller to your project.
After you complete these steps, the controller in Listing 1 is created. Notice that it contains methods named Index, Details, Create, and Edit. In the following sections, we’ll add the necessary code to get these methods to work.
public ActionResult Create(FormCollection collection)
{
try
{
// TODO: Add insert logic here
return RedirectToAction("Index");
}
catch
{
return View();
}
}
//
// GET: /Home/Edit/5
public ActionResult Edit(int id)
{
return View();
}
//
// POST: /Home/Edit/5
[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Post)]
public ActionResult Edit(int id, FormCollection collection)
{
try
{
// TODO: Add update logic here
return RedirectToAction("Index");
}
catch
{
return View();
}
}
}
}
Listing Database Records
The Index() method of the Home controller is the default method for an ASP.NET MVC application. When you run an ASP.NET MVC application, the Index() method is the first controller method that is called.
We’ll use the Index() method to display the list of records from the Movies database table. We’ll take advantage of the database model classes that we created earlier to retrieve the movie database records with the Index() method.
I’ve modified the HomeController class in Listing 2 so that it contains a new private field named _db. The MoviesDBEntities class represents our database model and we’ll use this class to communicate with our database.
I’ve also modified the Index() method in Listing 2. The Index() method uses the MoviesDBEntities class to retrieve all of the movie records from the Movies database table. The expression _db.MovieSet.ToList() returns a list of all of the movie records from the Movies database table.
The list of movies is passed to the view. Anything that gets passed to the View() method gets passed to the view as view data.
Listing 2 – Controllers/HomeController.cs (modified Index method)
using System.Linq;
using System.Web.Mvc;
using MovieApp.Models;
namespace MovieApp.Controllers
{
public class HomeController : Controller
{
private MoviesDBEntities _db = new MoviesDBEntities();
public ActionResult Index()
{
return View(_db.MovieSet.ToList());
}
}
}
The Index() method returns a view named Index. We need to create this view to display the list of movie database records. Follow these steps:
You should build your project (select the menu option Build, Build Solution) before opening the Add View dialog or no classes will appear in the View data class dropdown list.
Right-click the Index() method in the code editor and select the menu option Add View (see Figure 9).
In the Add View dialog, verify that the checkbox labeled Create a strongly-typed view is checked.
From the View content dropdown list, select the value List.
From the View data class dropdown list, select the value MovieApp.Models.Movie.
Click the Add button to create the new view (see Figure 10).
After you complete these steps, a new view named Index.aspx is added to the Views\Home folder. The contents of the Index view are included in Listing 3.
The Index view displays all of the movie records from the Movies database table within an HTML table. The view contains a foreach loop that iterates through each movie represented by the ViewData.Model property. If you run your application by hitting the F5 key, then you’ll see the web page in Figure 11.
The Index view that we created in the previous section includes a link for creating new database records. Let’s go ahead and implement the logic and create the view necessary for creating new movie database records.
The Home controller contains two methods named Create(). The first Create() method has no parameters. This overload of the Create() method is used to display the HTML form for creating a new movie database record.
The second Create() method has a FormCollection parameter. This overload of the Create() method is called when the HTML form for creating a new movie is posted to the server. Notice that this second Create() method has an AcceptVerbs attribute that prevents the method from being called unless an HTTP POST operation is performed.
This second Create() method has been modified in the updated HomeController class in Listing 4. The new version of the Create() method accepts a Movie parameter and contains the logic for inserting a new movie into the Movies database table.
Notice the Bind attribute. Because we don’t want to update the Movie Id property from HTML form, we need to explicitly exclude this property.
Visual Studio generates the view in Listing 5 automatically. This view contains an HTML form that includes fields that correspond to each of the properties of the Movie class.
<%= Html.ValidationSummary("Create was unsuccessful. Please correct the errors and try again.") %>
<% using (Html.BeginForm()) {%>
<% } %>
<%=Html.ActionLink("Back to List", "Index") %>
The HTML form generated by the Add View dialog generates an Id form field. Because the Id column is an Identity column, we don’t need this form field and you can safely remove it.
After you add the Create view, you can add new Movie records to the database. Run your application by pressing the F5 key and click the Create New link to see the form in Figure 13. If you complete and submit the form, a new movie database record is created.
Notice that you get form validation automatically. If you neglect to enter a release date for a movie, or you enter an invalid release date, then the form is redisplayed and the release date field is highlighted.
In the previous sections, we discussed how you can list and create new database records. In this final section, we discuss how you can edit existing database records.
First, we need to generate the Edit form. This step is easy since Visual Studio will generate the Edit form for us automatically. Open the HomeController.cs class in the Visual Studio code editor and follow these steps:
Right-click the Edit() method in the code editor and select the menu option Add View (see Figure 14).
Check the checkbox labeled Create a strongly-typed view.
From the View content dropdown list, select the value Edit.
From the View data class dropdown list, select the value MovieApp.Models.Movie.
Click the Add button to create the new view.
Completing these steps adds a new view named Edit.aspx to the Views\Home folder. This view contains an HTML form for editing a movie record.
The Edit view contains an HTML form field that corresponds to the Movie Id property. Because you don’t want people editing the value of the Id property, you should remove this form field.
Finally, we need to modify the Home controller so that it supports editing a database record. The updated HomeController class is contained in Listing 6.
In Listing 6, I’ve added additional logic to both overloads of the Edit() method. The first Edit() method returns the movie database record that corresponds to the Id parameter passed to the method. The second overload performs the updates to a movie record in the database.
Notice that you must retrieve the original movie, and then call ApplyPropertyChanges(), to update the existing movie in the database.
Summary
The purpose of this tutorial was to give you a sense of the experience of building an ASP.NET MVC application. I hope that you discovered that building an ASP.NET MVC web application is very similar to the experience of building an Active Server Pages or ASP.NET application.
In this tutorial, we examined only the most basic features of the ASP.NET MVC framework. In future tutorials, we dive deeper into topics such as controllers, controller actions, views, view data, and HTML helpers.
The Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern separates an application into three main components: the model, the view, and the controller. The ASP.NET MVC framework provides an alternative to the ASP.NET Web Forms pattern for creating MVC-based Web applications. The ASP.NET MVC framework is a lightweight, highly testable presentation framework that (as with Web Forms-based applications) is integrated with existing ASP.NET features, such as master pages and membership-based authentication. The MVC framework is defined in the System.Web.Mvc namespace and is a fundamental, supported part of the System.Web namespace.
MVC is a standard design pattern that many developers are familiar with. Some types of Web applications will benefit from the MVC framework. Others will continue to use the traditional ASP.NET application pattern that is based on Web Forms and postbacks. Other types of Web applications will combine the two approaches; neither approach excludes the other.
The MVC framework includes the following components:
Models. Model objects are the parts of the application that implement the logic for the application's data domain. Often, model objects retrieve and store model state in a database. For example, a Product object might retrieve information from a database, operate on it, and then write updated information back to a Products table in SQL Server.
In small applications, the model is often a conceptual separation instead of a physical one. For example, if the application only reads a data set and sends it to the view, the application does not have a physical model layer and associated classes. In that case, the data set takes on the role of a model object.
Views. Views are the components that display the application's user interface (UI). Typically, this UI is created from the model data. An example would be an edit view of a Products table that displays text boxes, drop-down lists, and check boxes based on the current state of a Products object.
Controllers. Controllers are the components that handle user interaction, work with the model, and ultimately select a view to render that displays UI. In an MVC application, the view only displays information; the controller handles and responds to user input and interaction. For example, the controller handles query-string values, and passes these values to the model, which in turn queries the database by using the values.
The MVC pattern helps you create applications that separate the different aspects of the application (input logic, business logic, and UI logic), while providing a loose coupling between these elements. The pattern specifies where each kind of logic should be located in the application. The UI logic belongs in the view. Input logic belongs in the controller. Business logic belongs in the model. This separation helps you manage complexity when you build an application, because it enables you to focus on one aspect of the implementation at a time. For example, you can focus on the view without depending on the business logic.
In addition to managing complexity, the MVC pattern makes it easier to test applications than it is to test a Web Forms-based ASP.NET Web application. For example, in a Web Forms-based ASP.NET Web application, a single class is used both to display output and to respond to user input. Writing automated tests for Web Forms-based ASP.NET applications can be complex, because to test an individual page, you must instantiate the page class, all its child controls, and additional dependent classes in the application. Because so many classes are instantiated to run the page, it can be hard to write tests that focus exclusively on individual parts of the application. Tests for Web Forms-based ASP.NET applications can therefore be more difficult to implement than tests in an MVC application. Moreover, tests in a Web Forms-based ASP.NET application require a Web server. The MVC framework decouples the components and makes heavy use of interfaces, which makes it possible to test individual components in isolation from the rest of the framework.
The loose coupling between the three main components of an MVC application also promotes parallel development. For instance, one developer can work on the view, a second developer can work on the controller logic, and a third developer can focus on the business logic in the model.
Deciding When to Create an MVC Application
You must consider carefully whether to implement a Web application by using either the ASP.NET MVC framework or the ASP.NET Web Forms model. The MVC framework does not replace the Web Forms model; you can use either framework for Web applications. (If you have existing Web Forms-based applications, these continue to work exactly as they always have.)
Before you decide to use the MVC framework or the Web Forms model for a specific Web site, weigh the advantages of each approach.
Advantages of an MVC-Based Web Application
The ASP.NET MVC framework offers the following advantages:
It makes it easier to manage complexity by dividing an application into the model, the view, and the controller.
It does not use view state or server-based forms. This makes the MVC framework ideal for developers who want full control over the behavior of an application.
It uses a Front Controller pattern that processes Web application requests through a single controller. This enables you to design an application that supports a rich routing infrastructure. For more information, see Front Controller on the MSDN Web site.
It provides better support for test-driven development (TDD).
It works well for Web applications that are supported by large teams of developers and Web designers who need a high degree of control over the application behavior.
Advantages of a Web Forms-Based Web Application
The Web Forms-based framework offers the following advantages:
It supports an event model that preserves state over HTTP, which benefits line-of-business Web application development. The Web Forms-based application provides dozens of events that are supported in hundreds of server controls.
It uses a Page Controller pattern that adds functionality to individual pages. For more information, see Page Controller on the MSDN Web site.
It uses view state or server-based forms, which can make managing state information easier.
It works well for small teams of Web developers and designers who want to take advantage of the large number of components available for rapid application development.
In general, it is less complex for application development, because the components (the Page class, controls, and so on) are tightly integrated and usually require less code than the MVC model.
Features of the ASP.NET MVC Framework
The ASP.NET MVC framework provides the following features:
Separation of application tasks (input logic, business logic, and UI logic), testability, and test-driven development (TDD) by default. All core contracts in the MVC framework are interface-based and can be tested by using mock objects, which are simulated objects that imitate the behavior of actual objects in the application. You can unit-test the application without having to run the controllers in an ASP.NET process, which makes unit testing fast and flexible. You can use any unit-testing framework that is compatible with the .NET Framework.
An extensible and pluggable framework. The components of the ASP.NET MVC framework are designed so that they can be easily replaced or customized. You can plug in your own view engine, URL routing policy, action-method parameter serialization, and other components. The ASP.NET MVC framework also supports the use of Dependency Injection (DI) and Inversion of Control (IOC) container models. DI allows you to inject objects into a class, instead of relying on the class to create the object itself. IOC specifies that if an object requires another object, the first objects should get the second object from an outside source such as a configuration file. This makes testing easier.
A powerful URL-mapping component that lets you build applications that have comprehensible and searchable URLs. URLs do not have to include file-name extensions, and are designed to support URL naming patterns that work well for search engine optimization (SEO) and representational state transfer (REST) addressing.
Support for using the markup in existing ASP.NET page (.aspx files), user control (.ascx files), and master page (.master files) markup files as view templates. You can use existing ASP.NET features with the ASP.NET MVC framework, such as nested master pages, in-line expressions (<%= %>), declarative server controls, templates, data-binding, localization, and so on.
Support for existing ASP.NET features. ASP.NET MVC lets you use features such as forms authentication and Windows authentication, URL authorization, membership and roles, output and data caching, session and profile state management, health monitoring, the configuration system, and the provider architecture.
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