Ok, one of you forgot to send me the memo about the MVC application block released by Microsoft. Fess up. Who forgot to send the memo?

Perhaps I missed this because they chose the name “User Interface Process Application Block” (“UIP” for short). A name that means very little to me and would not catch my attention. Not a big deal, but it seems to me that “MVC Application Block” would catch developers attentions more to its real use, unless there really is more to it than just MVC (which I have not yet investigated).

Just recently I was working on a UI that could have benefitted from the MVC pattern. I decided not to roll my own at the moment since I was trying to rapdily prototype the UI. I was implementing this UI in ASP.NET, but with the idea that a WinForms version could also be useful at some point.

Fortunately, Mark Seeman comes to the rescue with this article, “Easy UI Testing - Isolate Your UI Code Before It Invades Your Business Layer”. Mark succinctly outlines how to implement the Application Controller pattern using the UIP and completes the picture with UI agnostic unit tests (using NUnit) of the controller logic. You know how I loves me some unit tests!

Mark, I owe you a beer for highlighting the real potential underneath this hidden gem of an application block.