Partial controls in Asp.net mvc page

Question

At my new job, I was given some MVC work. There is only one controller with nine action methods(6 are for ajax rendering) . The page was bit large, so I divided it into small your controls and used render partial to render them. Some user controls were being render through ajax also. Most of the controls are not more like foreach loops and rendering some data from tables, not more 10-15 lines. The main index page passes model to all the controls. My main page looked very clean and easy to maintain.

But my team members are saying, I should put everything in the main page rather than building small controls. Their point is number of files will be a lot, if we start creating controls like this. Also they say if we are not reusing these controls somewhere else there is no point creating them separately.

I would like to know what is better approach for this kind of scenario. Any good links which can help us to understand things better, or any book we can read to clarify our questions.

Help will be appreciated.

Regards

Parminder

Please select an answer if you found what you were looking for. — BentOnCoding
– BentOnCoding, Commented Sep 14, 2011 at 23:06

cyrotello · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-13 00:05:24Z

As a preface to my answer, let me mention the important value of maintainability. Software evolves over time... and must change to fit the need of the application.

Maintainability in code does not magically appear... Sacrifices (with a touch of paranoia sometimes) must be made in your coding style now, to have the flexibility you'd like in the future.

There may a large page in your project. Some may say that if it works, no need to fix it. But that's looking at it from a short term perspective. You may need some of those UI interfaces in other places in the future. What some persons may do (rather than make partials) is copy that code in the places where they need it - thus causing the same bloat over time that they were trying to avoid.

If you're on the project in the long haul, you'll more fully appreciate the need for flexibility over time. You can see that there are patterns that you'll want to re-use.

My suggestion then: Partials and controls are good things... they are good investments for your ease in the future. If you forecast reusability, that's a good sign for using them.

But use them sparingly. Don't micromanage everything on a page. Some things may be itching to be 'component-ized' but sometimes it's best to SSFL (Save some for later). Like everything in life, balance is important.

BentOnCoding · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-12 22:48:12Z

0

Having clean concise code is the way to go. Your code will be alot more readable if you utilize :

sections
templates
partial views

Just remember its always easier to navigate folder structure than to read 100's - 1000's of lines of code.

answered Sep 12, 2011 at 22:48

BentOnCoding

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Comments

brodie · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-12 22:52:22Z

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I recommend watching "Putting your controllers on a diet" by Jimmy Bogard.

Also read "Fat Controllers" by Ian Cooper.

these two links will give you a good idea on how to structure your MVC apps.

answered Sep 12, 2011 at 22:52

brodie

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