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MonoRail is a fully MVC compliant Web Framework inspired by Action Pack . MonoRail differs from the standard WebForms approach to development as it enforces separation of concerns; controllers simply handle application flow, models represent the data, and the view is only concerned with the logic surrounding the presentation of that data. Consequently, you write less code and end up with a more maintainable application.
Although the project name is MonoRail, we do not have any affiliation with the Mono project. MonoRail runs on Microsoft .Net 1.1, 2.0 and Mono.
Before diving into the details of MonoRail it's probably worth understanding a little more about what it is, what value it brings to web development and how it works. Further information on each of these topics is covered in the following sections.
Model-view-controller (MVC) is an architectural pattern used in software engineering. In complex computer applications that present a large amount of data to the user, a developer often wishes to separate the logic concerning data (otherwise known as the model ) and the user interface (or view ) so that changes to the user interface will not affect data handling, and that the data can be reorganized without changing the user interface. The model-view-controller pattern solves this problem by decoupling data access and business logic from data presentation and user interaction through the introduction of an intermediate component: the controller .
The model in the MVC pattern is the domain-specific representation of the information on which the application operates. Domain logic adds meaning to raw data (e.g., calculating if today is the user's birthday, or the totals, taxes, and shipping charges for shopping cart items). Many applications use a persistent storage mechanism (such as a database) to store data. MVC does not specifically mention the data access layer because it is understood to be underneath or encapsulated by the Model.
The view renders the model into a form suitable for interaction, typically a user interface element. Multiple views can exist for a single model for different purposes.
MonoRail differs from the standard WebForms approach to development as it enforces separation of concerns; controllers simply handle application flow, models represent the data, and the view is only concerned with the logic surrounding the presentation of that data. Consequently, you write less code and end up with a more maintainable application.
Although MonoRail can use WebForms as a view engine, it does not work as smoothly as others engines. If your project depends too much on third party Web controls or if you IT team skill set is totally centered around WebForms, MonoRail would not be a good choice. Because MonoRail does not provide abstractions over the page processing like WebForms, there is an additional learning curve for developers that were introduced to web development using pure WebForms without knowledge of the HTTP protocol.
Following are some other benefits of using the MonoRail framework.
Like RoR, MonoRail prefers convention over configuration. The project structure skeleton is the same throughout all MonoRail enabled solutions. The MonoRail installer also includes a handy templated solution provider for both VS.NET 2003 and 2005 to create the project skeleton and testing is included. Accustomed MonoRail developers can open any solution and just know where things are going to be.
MonoRail supports IoC via the Windsor container. Controllers and their dependencies/parameters can be injected by the container if necessary.
MonoRail is essentially a front controller sitting over the
ASP.NET infrastructure intercepting specially formed URI’s.
This is achieved through the provision of an alternate
implementation of the
IHttpHandler
interface that extracts information from the Url and
searches for a controller in a binary tree. If found, the
controller is created and from that point on, the controller
handles the request.
The controller is able to select the action (method) to
invoke, process the arguments (in the case of
SmartDispatcherController
) and delegate the execution to it.
When the action returns, the controller checks if a view was selected (and no redirect was issued). If so the ViewEngine is invoked to process the selected view, which renders the content directly to the client's browser.
As MonoRail runs on top of Asp.Net infrastructure (not to be confused with WebForms) it takes advantage of all features like Session management, Application/Request level events and security.
MonoRail is release under the terms of Apache Software Foundation License 2.0 . Please refer to the Apache License for a friendly description.