Ext.Net for MVC - How useful it can be?

[amitpareek]

@Daniil: Thank you very much for your response. Really appreciate your point by point reply. As I said, my post was not to have points against Ext.Net but to have a proper view of others to take a call on your next project. We may end up having, both Sencha Touch UI in JS & and Ext.Net UI, because I personally prefer Ext.Net over ExtJS javascript coding. I may end up using all Direct Methods in Sencha Touch UI, so most of the communication logic remains same.

I have looked at all examples, and certainly without a spec of doubt I can say that you guys have done a wonderful job to get the best of both worlds together.

Lastly, for support, I don't have Sencha support, as all my support needs are fulfilled by you. That should say enough how good your support is. Thank you for such a support.

You should try Eclipse plugin. It's really good!

@jchau : One of the reasons I use Ext.Net over pure ExtJS is the nice enhancements Ext.Net has made over ExtJS. It's really nice!

Thank you everyone for your responses. Appreciate your views.

[Baidaly]

Hello!

Thank you for your good question!

Let me say my point of view.

Some time ago, I used Ext JS and ASP.NET MVC in one big project. Since this time I love MVC and Ext JS. Solution was very fast and stable but we had to write a lot of code to make many things, which are available in Ext.NET by default. I can say we wrote our own framework for this purposes and had to teach all new developers to use Ext JS and our framework.

So, then, for the next project we used Ext.NET. The main disadvantage it was slower but usually it was possible to solve it due to slowness of ASP.NET. Nevertheless we decided to use Ext.NET because we got much more benefits as:

• Easy to explain how to use it even to junior ASP.NET developers. And absence of Drag&Drop and Syntax Highlighting didn't change it.
• We shouldn't write own framework again because it was written already by Ext.NET
• And many others, I can not recall all of them. But obviously in this case it was right decision.

Now about your questions:

1) Why should I not directly code in ExtJS for Views vs Ext.Net? There is a nice Eclipse plugin which can be used for syntax highlighting and intellisense. Also Sencha Architect does a wonderful job of creating UI by Drag and Drop, something that has been missing in Ext.net since the beginning.

I think it depends but I believe you just don't see all pitfalls of Architect and Clean ExtJS. Of course, Ext.NET is not perfect but for me it's obvious and easy to understand how it works. I hope we will create Drag&Drop but it's a really difficult task.

2) One of the biggest features of Ext.Net is DirectEvents and DirectMethods, but we can create a tiny framework to communicate with controllers on Server side. A little effort, but will work well.

There are some implementations of Direct for ASP.NET MVC. We used one of them for ASP.NET MVC and it was good. However, Ext.NET offers many other features for Direct.

We are removing all dependencies on the server side for any client requirement. We would be sending simple objects which can be consumed on client side. So no use of X.GetCmp or X.Msg.Alert, etc.

Actually, you can do this with Ext.NET too.

We have been planning a sencha touch UI for sometime now.

In my opinion, you should be very carefull with Sencha Touch due to bugs and much less functionality comparing with native apps. However, it's good to try and I believe in 3-4 years we will see many Apps based on Web and JS frameworks but now I wouldn't build a big solution with Sencha Touch.

[Daniil]

I am moving the thread to Open Discussions. I think there is more chances to get feedback from someone else.

[jlosi]

I was POC'ing some stuff with my business partner tonight and I have to say that I am blown away. It took me more time to figure out Razor than it did to figure out how to set up a form that was complete with basic validation (e.g no empty fields).

Ext.NET 2 + MVC4 is a game changer for me in developing MVC apps. I'm sure I will have many questions since I'm new to the 2.0 API, but I was VERY VERY pleased with the design and integration so far; Such as decorating the fields with required attributes and the FormPanelFor recognizing this requirement, rendering the requisite JS, and invalidating the form until the fields were filled... guys.. you made my freaking day.

Form validation in ExtJS has always been something that has bugged the crap out of me when it came to basic things like this.. so THANK YOU!

[Daniil]

Thank you that you are with Ext.NET!:)