Microsoft has announced to launch ASP.NET vNext, which includes MVC, Web API, and Web Pages frameworks will be merged into one framework, called MVC 6. This new framework removes a lot of overlap between the existing MVC and Web API frameworks. It uses a common set of abstractions for routing, action selection, filters, model binding, and so on. You can use the framework to create both UI (HTML) and web APIs.
ASP.NET vNext has been designed to provide you the facilities to create .NET stack for building modern cloud-based apps. ASP.NET vNext will build on .NET vNext.
What’s included in ASP.NET vNext:
- Web Forms, MVC 5, Web API 2, Web Pages 3, SignalR 2, EF 6, Identity 2 will be fully supported on .NET vNext.
- MVC, Web API, Web Pages 6, SignalR 3, EF 7, Identity 3
- MVC, Web API and Web Pages have been merged into a single framework MVC 6. For example, there’s now unified controller and routing concepts between all three.
- New project system
- New configuration system
- No System.Web, new lightweight HttpContext (not System.Net.Http)
- We will have a migration tool which will help you migrate your application to use ASP.NET vNext on .NET vNext and cloud optimized .NET vNext. This will cover scenarios such as migrating from MVC 5 to 6 and more.
Following are the main features of Asp.NET vNext:
- ASP.NET vNext Provides Cloud-Optimized
This feature is really very helpful for developers. ASP.NET vNext can target .NET vNext (with cloud optimized mode). This means that services such as session state and caching can be replaced based on whether the app is running in the cloud or in a traditional hosting environment.
- Version of .NET Framework Side by side support
When targeting the Cloud optimized mode in .NET vNext, ASP.NET vNext will let you deploy any other version of .NET Framework. Since now the .NET vNext Framework can be deployed with the app, each app can run different versions of .NET vNext side-by-side and upgrade separately, all on the same machine.
- More Enhancement for developer
In ASP.NET vNext, you can now edit your code files and refresh the browser to see the changes without explicitly building your app. You can also edit your application outside of Visual Studio.
ASP.NET vNext projects have project.json file where all the project dependencies are stored. This makes it easier to open vNext projects outside of Visual Studio so that you can edit them using any editor such as Notepad etc. You can even edit ASP.NET vNext projects in the cloud.
- Helps in building Web sites and services both
MVC and Web API have been merged into a single programming model. For example, there’s now unified controller, routing and model binding concepts between them. You can now have a single controller that returns both MVC views and formatted Web API responses, on the same HTTP verb.
- Modular Stack
ASP.NET vNext will ship as NuGet packages. NuGet packages will also be the unit of reference in your application. NuGet packages and libraries references will be treated the same so it will be easier to manage the references in your project.
This makes it possible for an application developer to choose what functionality they want to bring into their application. In the previous versions of ASP.NET features such as HttpContext, Session, Caching, and Membership were baked into the framework. As an app developer now if you do not need these features then you can choose not to bring it into your app.
- Support for Dependency Injection
Dependency Injection is built into vNext and is consistent across the stack. All of the vNext components such as MVC, Web API, SignalR, EF and Identity will use the same DI. This will allow us to provide the right set of services based on the environment that you are running in.
- New Configuration
There is a new configuration system which can read values from environment variables. This configuration provides a unified API system for accessing configuration values. You can use the same APIs to access configuration values locally or in Azure.
- vNext is Open Source
The entire source code is already released as open source via the .NET Foundation. You can see the source at https://github.com/aspnet and follow progress on vNext in real time. You can also send pull requests and contribute to the source code.
- vNext have Cross-platform support
We're developing vNext with cross-platform in mind, including an active collaboration with Xamarin to ensure that cloud-optimized .NET applications can run on Mac or Linux on top of the Mono runtime.
Reference: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdev/archive/2014/06/03/asp-net-vnext-in-visual-studio-14-ctp.aspx
Summary: In this article, we have learn some overview and features about ASP.NET vNext. I hope you would like this article. If you have any query regarding same, Please post your comments below.