MVC .NET Labelfor

[bennyboy]

I'm honestly not sure what you mean by 'Android integrated uploader'.

I mean that my Android app, which uses an embedded Chrome browser, has a javascript interface, and the web controls can do function calls to that interface from javascript.  So if you access my pages with a normal browser, it will work fine.  If you access them with my app (which is a browser with extended functions), I can add whatever Android functionality I want: taking pictures, recording and uploading audio for the webpage, etc.

The synergy between codebehind, markup, and javascript works really nicely in my case: the codebehind builds all on-demand objects (collections of specialized image controls etc.) and does the SQL heavy lifting.  The markup lays out the appearance and provides containers for the codebehind to put stuff into.  The javascript allows live interaction with the page, without even needing AJAX, and provides functions which will call/be called by the Android interface.

I have to say after talking to you guys, and after watching a few youtube videos, MVC looks pretty interesting.  I might play around with it, but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to want to migrate my whole webpage to MVC.

[KevinM1]

How are the Android-specific things actually implemented? Does it simply do a user agent check (or something similar), and then send commands to the Android device? Or something else? I've never dabbled in mobile apps.

I will say that ASP.NET MVC is ASP.NET, so you have all of that backing technology at your disposal, and that you can also combine MVC projects with web forms. So, on the Microsoft side of things, you can mix and match to your heart's desire.

[bennyboy]

How are the Android-specific things actually implemented?  Does it simply do a user agent check (or something similar), and then send commands to the Android device?  Or something else?  I've never dabbled in mobile apps.

I send a modified user agent string from my Android app and check for it in the javascript in pages or user controls. The interface is built into Android's webview class. To be honest, I'm not good at Android programming, but it was easy to access photos, process them, upload them, etc. You could probably get to my level of knowledge in a couple days of serious puttering and a couple dozen google searches.

I will say that ASP.NET MVC is ASP.NET, so you have all of that backing technology at your disposal, and that you can also combine MVC projects with web forms.  So, on the Microsoft side of things, you can mix and match to your heart's desire.

Really? This is something I hadn't considered. So I could have my picture-upload, audio recording etc. on a form page with lots of nested user controls, and I could have things like data entry and display using MVC?

[KevinM1]

Sorry for the delay in responding (yay real life crap!), but yes. Last I looked, back in the MVC 2/3 days, it took a bit of doing to get the web forms and MVC plumbing to mesh, but it was definitely possible. The old school yellow and black apress MVC 2 book I had devoted a chapter to it.

And, going by your Android app description, you could definitely do the same thing with MVC. Your code behind would just be put in a controller, and you'd need to figure out how to have that code talk with your app (likely just AJAX).