Comparison Between Asp.Net MVC5 vs ASP.Net Core MVC

Debasis Saha

Print 9 min read

14 Aug 2022

Beginner

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Introduction

In this article, we will discuss the basic concept of ASP.Net MVC. Asp.Net MVC is a web-based application development framework introduced by Microsoft in 2009. after several years, Microsoft introduced another upgraded framework called ASP.NET Core MVC in 2016. Both frameworks have many differences in comparison to each other. So, as a developer, we are always generally confused while selecting any framework for Web Application development between these two frameworks. So, in this article, we will discuss related to both Frameworks as per functionality and also, discuss a comparison between them so that everyone can identify the required framework as per the requirement of the development.

Overview of ASP.NET MVC 5

In 2009, for the first time, Microsoft introduced a framework called ASP.NET MVC which helps us to develop Web-based applications. After that, ASP.NET MVC becomes an alternative approach compared to the ASP.NET WebForms. This framework provides us with an open-source MVC-based (Model-View-Controller) architecture. This framework also supports different formats like HTML, JavaScript, WML, and XML. Due to its functionalities, the ASP.NET MVC framework becomes very much popular among developers during this period. One of the main reasons behind this, ASP.NET MVC-based web application development processes are very easier to develop and debug. So of the common features of ASP.NET MVC is -

NET MVC is based on Model-View-Controller Pattern.
It is lightweight, fast and secure.
We can use either pure HTML Controls or HTML Helpers Control. (No Service Control)
It always used a controller-based URL.
It does not implement any view state.
We can implement Razor Syntax for Customization.
We can implement Layout as a concept of Master Pages for consistent looks and feel throughout the entire application.
NET MVC 5 is an open-source framework.

So, in short, MVC stands for Model, View, and Controllers. The meaning of these three keywords are as below -

Model

The model is responsible for communicating with the Database layer and in this part, we can implement DB-related operational logic and also can retrieve the data from the DB Level.

View

View represents the user interface where we can display the data fetched from the DB level. Also, if we require to capture some data from the User end, then that also needs to be taken care of in the View Layer.

Controller

Controller acts as a bridge between model and view. Data fetched from the DB in model layers needs to be passed through the controller layer to the views and vice-versa. Also, we can implement all types of programming and business logic in this layer.

The Above diagram displays the basic data flow in these three layers.

Overview of ASP.NET Core MVC

ASP.NET Core MVC is an upgraded framework version compared to the ASP.NET MVC. This framework is much more lightweight, open-source, highly testable compared to the previous version. In this framework, Microsoft introduced a patterns-based concept to develop a dynamic web-based application with the help of a clean separation of concern. This framework supports a complete TDD-friendly development environment with the help of the latest web standards. The MVC (Model-View-Controller) pattern breaks the application into three main parts or components, i.e. Models, Views, and Controllers. In this way, we can achieve the separation of concerns.

Model Responsibilities

In MVC Application, the Model takes the responsibility to represent the state of the application and any business logic or DB level operations. Business logic is always encapsulated with the model class. For display, the data into the views, Strongly-type views or ViewModel is designed to contain the data from the model and display into the View. The Controller always creates and populates these ViewModel instances from the Model.

View Responsibilities

In MVC Application, Views takes the responsibility to represent the content or data to the user interface. In this view, we can use Razor View Engine to merge the .NET Core into the HTML code. Normally, we maintain a minimum amount of logic in the view part and if we require to implement any logic, that needs to be related to the presenting content in the user interface. We do not implement any business logic in the view part. To design a complex view or user interface, we can consider the View Component, ViewModel, or View Template to make the process simpler.

Controller Responsibilities

In MVC Applications, Controllers take the responsibility to handle user interactions and communicate with models and views. In the MVC Application, Views can only display information. The controllers always handle the user inputs and respond to the user interaction. In the MVC Pattern, the Controller is always the entry point and it is always responsible to finalize which model types need to work and which view needs to render.

Difference between ASP.NET MVC5 and ASP.NET Core

So, in this section, we will discuss the difference between the ASP.NET MVC5 and ASP.NET Core. These two frameworks have many differences. Some of the important differences are –

NET Core provides Single Aligned Web Stack for both ASP.NET MVC and Web APIs. In ASP.NET MVC 5, we can choose between MVC and Web API as a projection Template while creating a new Solution for the web applications. It’s because the web stacks for MVC 5 and Web API are different. But in ASP.NET Core, provides a single-aligned web stack for both MVC and Web API-based applications. In the below image, we can find that there are no template options for Web API in ASP.NET Core.

Project (Solution) Structure changes in ASP.NET Core. In ASP.NET Core MVC solution project structure, we can not find any options such as Web.config, Global.asax. These two files exist in the ASP.NET MVC 5 project structure and using these files, we mainly handled configuration settings, authentication, and application-wise startup code execution policy. But now, in ASP.NET Core MVC, for this type of operation, we need to use the newly added files called app settings. json or we can create custom configuration files. Except this, there are some other changes also in the folder structure which demonstrate in the below image.

As we know that .NET Core Framework supports Cross-Platform Environments with continuous compilation. So, in ASP.NET Core we can develop any application based on any operating system and then easily publish and deploy the same for other operating system environments also without much hassle. In simple words, the ASP.NET Core framework is a much more advanced framework and it successfully combines both Web API and .NET MVC into a single framework.
NET Core MVC Based applications do not mandatorily require IIS for hosting. Since ASP.NET Core is a cross-platform framework, it can be used IIS for hosting environments in Windows environments. But at the same time, it can use the Nginx web-server for non-windows environments.
NET Core MVC Projects structure contains wwwroot folder for storing static files. This folder represents the actual root of the web application when we run the application on any web server. The static files mean HTML, JavaScript, CSS, images, library-related files, etc. Also, related to the security benefits, this wwwroot folder also simply with the help of common tasks like bundling and minification. These options can be incorporated into the standard build process and can be performed by using automated tools like Grunt.

In ASP.NET Core MVC, Microsoft provides a new approach to main the dependent packages for both server-side and client-side. In earlier .NET Framework version applications, we are much familiar with the Reference folder which contains all the application-related Dlls, Nuget packages, etc. Leverage the same experience of working in Visual Studio IDE and now we can deploy the applications on any operating system using .NET Core, so it maintains the server-side dependency management. Also, for any application, Client-side dependency management is important because the client-side always uses different types of packages from the server-side. Also, the Client-side can use jQuery, Bootstrap, Grunt, and any JavaScript-related frameworks like Angular, Backbone, images, and styles, or CSS-related files.
NET Core MVC Project saves space related to the Server-side packages. As a developer, we normally use the NuGet package manager to add a reference for the different types of assemblies, libraries, frameworks, or any third-party packages. In the earlier version of the .NET Framework, these packages were normally downloaded from the NuGet into the Packages folder under the project structure. So, for example, the support we have is around 30 ASP.NET Applications and each application uses around 70 MB NuGet Packages for the reference purpose, then in the overall concept, it will take around 2 GB extra disk space for storing those NuGet Packages. So, ASP.NET Core-based application stores all packages related to its development or reference purpose in the Users folders. So, while creating the application, Visual Studio takes the reference from the User Folder. This feature is normally called a Runtime store for .NET Core. Even, though we have 100 web applications using the ASP.NET Core framework, all of them are references from the User Folder. So, no extra space is required for those applications.
NET Core Provides Inbuilt Dependency Injection (DI) support. As we know, with the help of Dependency Injection we can achieve loosely coupled, more testable code. In the ASP.NET MVC 5, we need to use separate DI containers like Unity, AutoFac, etc. So, in that framework, implementing dependency injection is always needs additional efforts. Now, in ASP.NET Core, Dependency injection is inbuilt which means no extra setup is required to implement the DI. While we create a new application in ASP.NET Core, the created project structure always has the DI inbuilt in it. To check this, let’s open “Startup.cs” and look for the “ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)” method. Its primary purpose is to provide EF, Authentication, adding MVC, and handwritten custom services like IEmailServer and ISmsSender.

Conclusion

Asp.net Core 6.0 has been released with many new features and functionality. In this article, we discuss the overview and features of the ASP.NET MVC 5 and ASP.NET Core. We also discussed the between the two frameworks. Any suggestions or feedback or query related to this article are most welcome.