MVC Web App Screencast: The generated Clarion# code

By David Harms

Posted March 26 2009

The first screencast in this series explored the demo Clarion# MVC web application, created with C6/C7 templates; this screencast goes behind the scenes and looks at the generated Clarion# code.

We're pretty excited about this template set. It's still alpha code and there's a long way yet to go, but as this screencast shows it really is possible to create Clarion# web sites with AppGen, even though there's no AppGen yet for Clarion#. Of course, when Clarion# gets an AppGen we'll port the templates over to their rightful home.

So what are our plans for the template set? We'll be releasing the core templates to ClarionMag subscribers (and possibly to the wider world), so you'll be able to take advantage of them as well, although you'll have to be pretty ambitious to use them right now (did I mention this is alpha code?).

More importantly for all Clarion Magazine subscribers, we're using these templates to build the next version of the ClarionMag web site. At present, the magazine is delivered via a web application that's a combination of server-side Java code and a C6 database admin application. While that solution has worked well enough for the past decade, we're ready to take advantage of Clarion# and the many tools available to .NET web developers.

Key technologies used by the templates (and the next version of ClarionMag) include the Castle Monorail MVC framework and the NHibernate ORM layer. MVC stands for the Model-View-Controller architecture, which when applied to web applications greatly enhances testability and encourages the separation of the user interface from the business layer. We've been big fans of MVC for years, and Microsoft is finally coming around to our way of thinking. The folks in Redmond have come out with ASP.NET MVC, a very Monorail-like product which is still a bit green but shows a lot of promise. We'll be keeping a close eye on Microsoft's progress, but for now Monorail has the maturity and the features ClarionMag demands.

Watch the screencast now.

If you have any comments or questions please post them below.

David Harms is an independent software developer and the editor and publisher of Clarion Magazine. He is also co-author with Ross Santos of Developing Clarion for Windows Applications, published by SAMS (1995), and has written or co-written several Java books. David is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA).