Taking a step back

So I recently started a personal project with a friend/developer, to try out serious development with ASP.NET MVC. Inspired by Rob Conery’s MVC Storefront/Kona series, we want to try out setting up all parts of a proper environment (automated builds, continuous integration, version control, the works basically). Learning by doing, more or less.

So far, we’ve only just started. We assessed that we want to build an application for record keeping, contact records to be precise, as we’re both interested in keeping our client relations in check. Our first ‘milestone’ is to create a system to insert, delete update and do reports on contact records. We’re working without a database at the moment, using mock repositories for testing purposes. Ok, enough about the background.

I wanted to create a listview, which worked with a set of contacts. Simple, no? Here’s where it went wrong. As you might know, the ASP.NET MVC default solution provides us with a very simple setup. A folder for your models, folder for controllers, folder for views. Let’s look at the views for a moment.

The view structure is set up as follows:

• ControllerX
• ControllerY
• Shared

Each attempt to render a view checks the folder named after the controller for a view with the specified name. If it’s not found, it defaults to the one in the highlighted ‘Shared’ folder. My problem here was that I was anticipating for future expansions right from the start. The WRONG assumption, looking back at it. I tried to create a list view, which would work on any object I’d throw in it. Or actually, in the view model. I have to take a step back.

So, while I started on a very complex solution, I actually decided to go for a view which would probably not live for very long. I will modify it in a later stadium to actually be generic over multiple classes I toss at it. Why don’t I do that now? Because I don’t have to. This is one major insight I had so far over the course of the project, which is actually only a few days old. Seems like it’s paying off already!