Today we just released ASP.NET MVC 2 Preview 2 for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (and ASP.NET 3.5 SP1), which builds on top of the work we did in Preview 1 released two months ago.
Some of the cool new features we’ve added to Preview 2 include:
- Client-Side Validation – ASP.NET MVC 2 includes the jQuery validation library to provide client-side validation based on the model’s validation metadata. It is possible to hook in alternative client-side validation libraries by writing an adapter which adapts the client library to the JSON metadata in a manner similar to the xVal validation framework.
- Areas – Preview 2 includes in-the-box support for single project areas for developers who wish to organize their application without requiring multiple projects. Registration of areas has also been streamlined.
- Model Validation Providers - allow hooking in alternative validation logic to provide validation when model binding. The default validation providers uses Data Annotations.
- Metadata Providers - allow hooking in alternative sources of metadata for model objects. The default metadata provider uses Data Annotations.
Based on this list, you’ll notice a theme where in Preview 1, we tied much functionality directly to Data Annotation attributes, in Preview 2 we inserted abstractions around our usage of Data Annotations which allow hooking in custom implementations of validation and metadata providers.
This will allow you to do things like swapping out our default validation with the Enterprise Library Validation Block for example. It also allows providing implementations where model metadata is stored in alternative locations rather than via attributes, with a bit of work.
What About Visual Studio 2010?
The tools for this particular release only work in Visual Studio 2008 SP1. The version of ASP.NET MVC 2 Preview 2 for Visual Studio 2010 will be released in-the-box with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2. You won’t need to go anywhere else, it’ll just be there waiting for you. Likewise, the RTM of ASP.NET MVC 2 will be included with the RTM of Visual Studio 2010.
Therefore, if you want to try out the new HTML encoding code blocks with ASP.NET MVC 2 Preview 2, you’ll have to wait till Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 is released. But for now, you can try out Preview 2 on VS 2008 and start providing feedback.