To teach the roadmap for Controllers, Routing, and Return Types in ASP.NET Core MVC, structuring your lessons effectively with examples will reinforce each concept and help students grasp how everything connects. Here’s a guideline with step-by-step instructions, examples, and activities to make your lessons engaging and informative.
Goal: Give a quick overview of the MVC pattern, focusing on the role of controllers.
Explain MVC: Briefly explain the MVC architecture and the role of each component.
Controller’s Role: Emphasize the controller’s job in handling requests, defining actions, and managing routing.
Activity: Create a “Hello World” ASP.NET Core MVC app and show the default routing behavior (HomeController with Index action).
Goal: Help students understand how to structure and create controllers, and introduce them to actions.
Controller suffix) and that controllers are public classes that inherit from Controller.public IActionResult Index()).Index action and return type.public class ProductController : Controller { public IActionResult Index() { return View(); } public IActionResult Details(int id) { var product = new Product { Id = id, Name = "Sample Product", Price = 25.00m }; return View(product); } }CustomerController) with a few basic actions.Goal: Teach students how routing works in ASP.NET Core, starting with the default route and moving to attribute-based routing.
Program.cs.{controller=Home}/{action=Index}/{id?} pattern works and introduce the optional parameter id?.[Route] and HTTP-specific attributes like [HttpGet], [HttpPost] control the behavior of action methods.[Route("product")] public class ProductController : Controller { [HttpGet("list")] public IActionResult List() { /*...*/ } [HttpGet("{id:int}")] public IActionResult Details(int id) { /*...*/ } }
CustomerController, like [HttpGet("all")] for a list of customers and [HttpGet("{id}")] for customer details.Goal: Teach students to handle various HTTP requests using controllers and action methods.
Explain HTTP Verbs:
GET, POST, PUT, DELETE).Creating Actions with HTTP-Specific Attributes:
[HttpGet], [HttpPost], etc., to restrict action methods to specific HTTP methods.POST for creating data and DELETE for deleting data).Example:
public class ProductController : Controller { [HttpGet] public IActionResult List() { /*...*/ } [HttpPost] public IActionResult Create(Product product) { /*...*/ } [HttpDelete("{id}")] public IActionResult Delete(int id) { /*...*/ } }
Activity: Have students create CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) actions in their CustomerController and test using different HTTP methods.
Goal: Familiarize students with various return types in ASP.NET Core MVC.
Introduce Basic Return Types:
View())Json())Content())Explain When to Use Each:
Examples:
public class ProductController : Controller { public IActionResult Index() => View(); public JsonResult GetProductJson(int id) => Json(new { id, name = "Product" }); public ContentResult GetMessage() => Content("This is a simple text message."); }
Advanced Return Types:
RedirectToActionResult for redirection and StatusCodeResult for custom status codes.FileResult for handling downloads.Activity: Challenge students to create an API-style action in their controller that returns JSON and another action that returns plain text.
Goal: Show students how to build a real-world feature, passing data between controller, model, and view.
Create a Model:
Product model with properties like Id, Name, and Price.Controller-Model Interaction:
public IActionResult Details(int id) { var product = new Product { Id = id, Name = "Laptop", Price = 1200.00m }; return View(product); }Pass Data to the View:
Product details.Activity: Have students build a simple “Product Details” page where they:
Product model.Details and List actions.Goal: Reinforce the concepts with a project that combines everything they’ve learned.
Project Outline:
Suggested Workflow:
Product).Encourage Questions and Discussions:
This structure gives a full overview while also providing practical, hands-on tasks, making it easier for students to build and connect concepts with code. Let me know if you’d like further specifics on any area or examples!
@Html.BeginForm() and generate form elements like text boxes and dropdowns.• Service Lifetimes: Discuss how to choose between Scoped, Transient,
and Singleton in dependency injection.
• Repository Pattern: Abstraction of database operations with
repositories to separate business logic from data access.
• Unit of Work Pattern: Manage transactions across multiple
repository operations.
• EF Core Setup: How to install EF Core and configure a connection
string for SQL Server.
• Code First Migrations: Applying migrations to manage database
schema updates.
• Seeding the Database: Automatically populate the database with
initial data.
• Entity Relationships: Define one-to-many and many-to-many
relationships using EF Core.
• LINQ: Use LINQ for querying data in a readable way.
• Tracking and Detaching Entities: Optimizing performance by
detaching entities when needed.
• Full CRUD Cycle: Create, Read, Update, and Delete operations for
managing records.
• Pagination and Filtering: Enable pagination and filtering for large
data sets.
• What is a REST API?: Introduce REST principles and why APIs are
important in web development.
• Creating a REST API: Use ASP.NET Core to create simple APIs using
controllers and routing.
• Returning JSON: Show how to return JSON responses from API
endpoints.
• Model Binding in APIs: Handle POST, PUT, and DELETE requests,
including validation.
• Swagger Integration: Demonstrate how to use Swagger for API
documentation and testing.
• API Versioning: Explain the need for versioning in APIs and how to
implement it.10. Authentication and Authorization
• ASP.NET Core Identity: User registration, login, and managing user
profiles.
• Role-Based Authorization: Restrict access to parts of the application
based on user roles.
• External Authentication: Implement third-party login with Google,
Facebook, etc.
• JWT Authentication (Optional): For building APIs with token-based
authentication.
• Partial Views and View Components: Reusable components for
modularizing your views.
• AJAX in ASP.NET Core: How to make asynchronous requests using
AJAX without refreshing the page, and handling responses
dynamically.
• JavaScript Integration: Use JavaScript and jQuery for front-end
interactivity.