What is ASP.NET MVC?

What is ASP.NET MVC? 0:00 To answer this question, let's start by taking a look at how a website works. 0:02 Every website or web application has two key participants, client and the server. 0:08 When browsing a website or using a web application, 0:15 you're using a web browser to communicate with the server. 0:18 Your browser might be a desktop or mobile version, 0:22 Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Edge. 0:27 In all of those cases the browser is the client. 0:30 When you perform an action in the browser by clicking on a link or 0:34 submitting a form the browser formats and sends a request to the server. 0:38 The server receives the request and 0:43 prepares a response to return to the client. 0:45 The format of the request and response follows a specific set of rules 0:47 known as HTTP, or Hypertext Transfer Protocol. 0:53 When developing websites, there are two places that we can run code, 0:59 the client and the server. 1:03 On the client we typically use HTML, CSS or JavaScript. 1:05 This is often referred to as client-side or front end development. 1:10 On the server, it's not a straightforward. 1:15 We have a lot of options for doing server-side or back end development. 1:18 We can use Java, Python, PHP or 1:22 even JavaScript using Node.js, just to name some. 1:26 But we're looking to use C#. 1:29 So we'll use ASP.NET, a web framework that's part of .NET. 1:32 ASP.NET comes in several flavors including web forms, web pages or MVC. 1:37 Of these three options MVC is the most popular. 1:45 That's lucky for us, since this happens to be a course about ASP.NET MVC. 1:49 The MVC, and ASP.NET MVC, refers to the popular MVC design pattern. 1:55 So what is the MVC design pattern? 2:03 You might even be wondering, what is a design pattern? 2:06 Over the years, developers noticed a set of problems that kept coming up time and 2:10 time again. 2:15 Some of these problems were so common, it became obvious 2:17 that it would be helpful to describe and share solutions in very general terms, 2:20 without regard to any specific technology or programming language. 2:26 That way developers everywhere could learn and benefit from their efforts. 2:30 These solutions, written as descriptions or 2:35 templates, are referred to as design patterns. 2:38 So what is MVC? 2:42 MVC is a design pattern. 2:45 In fact MVC is a very common design pattern. 2:47 It's used in a wide variety of server side frameworks including Ruby on Rails and 2:51 Java Spring Framework. 2:57 It's even used in client-side JavaScript frameworks like Angular.js. 2:58 Let's take a closer look. 3:03 MVC is an acronym that stands for Model View Controller. 3:05 The model represents the data in your website. 3:10 The view is the visual part. 3:13 And the controller is the coordinator. 3:15 When users browse to a specific page in our website, 3:18 the controller is responsible for coordinating what specific actions need to 3:20 be performed In order to return a response for that user request. 3:25 Don't worry if you don't fully understand how the MVC design pattern works. 3:31 At this point it's good enough to know that there is something called a mode, 3:36 a view, and a controller. 3:40 As we build a comic book gallery website we'll continue to explore the MVC 3:43 design pattern. 3:47 All right, we've covered a lot of ground. 3:48 Let's go back to our original question, what is ASP.NET MVC? 3:51 ASP.NET MVC is a server-side web framework that utilizes the MVC design pattern. 3:56 It's used to process HTTP requests and prepare responses 4:04 containing HTML, CSS and JavaScript for rendering in a browser. 4:09 Although this can seem overly complicated 4:14 especially when you're new to web development. 4:17 It's okay to feel that way. 4:20 As developers, it's important and helpful to know the big picture, but 4:22 it's not something that we think about all the time. 4:27 As we build our website, we'll be focusing on small individual parts of the process. 4:30 That will make it easier for us to learn and be productive. 4:36 We covered a lot of information in this video. 4:40 Let's do a short quiz in order to reinforce the main points. 4:43 After that, we will create a GitHub repo for our project. 4:47 See you then. 4:50