Windows Phone MVC

Updated Wiki: Home

JakeGinnivan — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 01:49:41 GMT

Windows Phone MVC has been replaced by http://phoenixframework.codeplex.com/

There is quite a high compatibility and many concepts are transferrable. The main difference is Phoenix has WPF and WP7 support, and is far more mature.

This project was spawned from Columbus, another WP7 framework, which was inspired from Magellan (a WPF MVC framework). I learnt a lot from those projects, and I wanted to change some core behavior of Columbus, and so WP7 MVC was born.

MVVM can only get you so far, MVC is an awesome way to deal with navigation BETWEEN views, then MVVM can take over and provide the interaction on that view. A large effort has been made to maintain full compatibility with the out of the box feature sets.

Documentation/More information at http://windowsphonefoundations.net/

See an example of many of the features at http://jake.ginnivan.net/windows-phone-mvc-update

Google Group for discussion/asking questions at https://groups.google.com/group/windowsphonemvc

Framework Features

- Strongly Typed Navigation, with objects as parameters support (Controller<HomeController>().NavigateTo(c=>c.SomeAction(StateArgument)))
- Custom Shell, Navigator and Journal to give better control over navigation of WP7 (like back stack manipulation, in NoDo! And stuff like BackTo<HomeController>(c=>c.Main());)
- TransitionFrame comes out of the box, for nice navigation animations using the Silverlight Toolkits Transitions
- FAST! I am constantly tweaking the internals to make sure all the awesomeness does not have a massive performance hit
- Ability to pass arguments in navigation, rather than uri query strings (had to mention this twice because it is so handy)
- Easy access to Obscured and Activated events on your view model
- Full Testable! All major WP7 classes (WindowsPhoneFrame, WindowsPhoneApplication etc) all have Interfaces and are wrapped to allow you to test
- Some helpers around Async. Execute.AsyncPattern or Execute.AsyncPatternWithResult synchronise async calls
- Task/Chooser support, in a testable way
- Convention based Controller and View discovery
- Autofac Support Via an Extension
- Easy access to page or application transient storage
- Simple tombstoning support
- Awesome tracing/debugging output so you know what is happening, and see any performance bottlenecks, see http://jake.ginnivan.net/wp7-mvc-trace-logging-and-debugging for a look

Mango Features

- Search Extra's support
- Super Easy Deep Linking (easier than the default apis :P)
- More coming soon!

Apps Using it

Windows Phone MVC is in production now and is being used by http://transhub.wordpress.com/ which is a really cool app and winner of Spotlight 2011

And we are in the process of rebuilding Mahtweets for WP7 (http://mahtweetswp7.codeplex.com/) just for Mango using the framework. So head over there for a currently evolving app and see how Windows Phone MVC can help you write awesome performant WP7 apps with ease and without the frustration of the restrictiveness of the OOTB APIs.

At this point I am really open to suggestions in ways to improve this framework.

Notes

Controller actions are executed asynchronously, this means if you are fetching data from web services, it should be done in a synchronous way, currently the best way to do this is:
var stuff = Execute.AsyncPatternWithResults(myService.BeginGetStuff, "Arg1", "Arg2", myService.EndGetStuff);

Updated Wiki: Home

JakeGinnivan — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 01:49:31 GMT

Windows Phone MVC has been replaced by http://phoenixframework.codeplex.com/

Documentation/More information at http://windowsphonefoundations.net/

See an example of many of the features at http://jake.ginnivan.net/windows-phone-mvc-update

Google Group for discussion/asking questions at https://groups.google.com/group/windowsphonemvc

Framework Features

Mango Features

- Search Extra's support
- Super Easy Deep Linking (easier than the default apis :P)
- More coming soon!

Apps Using it

Notes

Source code checked in, #4e30f7c8fca0

Jake Ginnivan — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:57:40 GMT

Saved project file

Source code checked in, #9e377fb3c380

Jake Ginnivan — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:53:17 GMT

Adding TPL into project to add async actions support

Source code checked in, #67c3a78c8cc3

Jake Ginnivan — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:20:02 GMT

Continue Rename and code refactoring

Source code checked in, #6ff87e141843

Jake Ginnivan — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 11:45:26 GMT

First cut at InvokeBackground. Started renaming classes/methods as most don't make sense now

Source code checked in, #96e081e2c933

Jake Ginnivan — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 10:14:06 GMT

Improved the tracing heaps

Updated Wiki: Home

JakeGinnivan — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 13:06:37 GMT

Project Description
Windows Phone MVC is a MVC implementation for WP7. It supports strongly typed navigation with history, easier handling of windows phones lifecycle, multiple navigation frames and enables you to build testable, and maintainable applications for WP7.

This project was spawned from Columbus, another WP7 framework, which was inspired from Magellan (a WPF MVC framework). I learnt a lot from those projects, and I wanted to change some core behavior of Columbus, and so WP7 MVC was born.

MVVM can only get you so far, MVC is an awesome way to deal with navigation BETWEEN views, then MVVM can take over and provide the interaction on that view. A large effort has been made to maintain full compatibility with the out of the box feature sets.

Documentation/More information at http://windowsphonefoundations.net/

See an example of many of the features at http://jake.ginnivan.net/windows-phone-mvc-update

Google Group for discussion/asking questions at https://groups.google.com/group/windowsphonemvc

Framework Features

Mango Features

- Search Extra's support
- Super Easy Deep Linking (easier than the default apis :P)
- More coming soon!

Apps Using it

Notes

Commented Feature: Add Multiple Navigator Support [9]

JakeGinnivan — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 13:00:10 GMT

This is a bit of brain dump about what has to happen for this to happen

* NavigationApplication should become a ContentControl, content can be Navigtor's (which will also need to become content controls)
* Journal needs to move into NavigationApplication, as there can only be one Journal for all Navigators (to support only one frame going back at once)
* Journal needs ability to pop last FOR frame, when restoring from tombstone there is no guarentee that the first navigator will have the last navigation. The tombstone replay of the last navigation for each frame must be order independent
* Navigator needs to expose default controller/action dependency properties

This will enable configuration which looks something like

<NavigationApplication>
<Navigator /> 
<Navigator DefaultController="Home" DefaultAction="HeaderDefault" FrameName="HeaderFrame" />
</NavigationApplication>
Comments: This is very low priority and I probably will can the idea. I can't see the value in the feature really, not for the effort and added complexity to the codebase.

Edited Feature: Add Multiple Navigator Support [9]

JakeGinnivan — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:59:33 GMT

Edited Issue: Project and Item Templates [8]

JakeGinnivan — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:59:03 GMT

Create and publish project and item templates to Visualstudio Gallery so that you can create new projects, controllers, and views quickly.

Commented Issue: Project and Item Templates [8]

JakeGinnivan — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:58:33 GMT

Create and publish project and item templates to Visualstudio Gallery so that you can create new projects, controllers, and views quickly.
Comments: Have created templates.. Problem is that I cannot upload to Template Gallery because the 'Silverlight for Windows Phone' folder takes so many characters that the extension path length fails validation... Am investigating a workaround.

Closed Issue: Delay setting application bar until after transition in TransitionMvcFrame [3]

JakeGinnivan — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:57:06 GMT

Curretly when you navigate the Application bar appears just before the Transition starts, it needs to be set after the transition finishes as visually it looks a bit broken..
Comments: Done

Closed Issue: Expose Application & Page Transient State in ViewModelBase [1]

JakeGinnivan — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:56:57 GMT

Currently you need to access transitent state statically, it needs to be part of the ViewModelBase
Comments: Done

Closed Issue: Add Transient Property Helper [2]

JakeGinnivan — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:56:51 GMT

Usage will be something like:

Transient(()=>MyProperty), this can be done in the CTOR of the viewmodel, and will result in that property automatically being persisted to Application Transient Storage when the application is deactivated, and restored automatically when restored
Comments: Done

Closed Issue: ApplicationSettings Support [5]

JakeGinnivan — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:56:39 GMT

Current thoughts are a settings system similar to FunnelWeb, syntax will be:

var settings = GetSettings<MySettings>();

MySettings looks like this:

public class MySettings
{
[DefaultValue("Foo")]
[DisplayName("Bar Setting")]
public string SomeSetting { get; set; }
}
Comments: Done, in WP7 Essentials

Closed Issue: Autofac Support [7]

JakeGinnivan — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:56:27 GMT

Add a autofac project which has the appropriate AutofacControllerFactories etc.
Comments: Done

Closed Issue: Investigate Mango support [6]

JakeGinnivan — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:56:03 GMT

The navigation service should support deep linking and other new mango features, while maintaining backward compatibility.
Comments: Added Mango Support

Updated Wiki: Home

JakeGinnivan — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:54:27 GMT

Documentation/More information at http://windowsphonefoundations.net/

See an example of many of the features at http://jake.ginnivan.net/windows-phone-mvc-update

Framework Features

Mango Features

- Search Extra's support
- Super Easy Deep Linking (easier than the default apis :P)
- More coming soon!

Apps Using it

Notes

Updated Wiki: Home

JakeGinnivan — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:26:08 GMT

Documentation/More information at http://windowsphonefoundations.net/

See an example of many of the features at http://jake.ginnivan.net/windows-phone-mvc-update

The basics of the framework are functional, so far we have (list may be out of date, check release notes):
- Strongly Typed Navigation
- Custom Shell, Navigator and Journal to give better control over navigation of WP7
- TransitionFrame comes out of the box, for nice navigation animations
- Ability to pass arguments in navigation, rather than uri query strings
- Modal Dialog support
- Easy access to Obscured and Activated events on your view model
- Full Testable! All major WP7 classes (WindowsPhoneFrame, WindowsPhoneApplication etc) all have Interfaces and are wrapped to allow you to test
- Some helpers around Async. Execute.AsyncPattern or Execute.AsyncPatternWithResult synchronise async calls
- Task/Chooser support, in a testable way
- Convention based Controller and View discovery
- Autofac Support Via an Extension
- Easy access to page or application transient storage
- Simple tombstoning support

At this point I am really open to suggestions in ways to improve this framework.