Combining ASP.NET Webforms and MVC into one solution

If you've been wanting a Hybrid ASP.NET Application with both Webforms and MVC in it, then you've come to the right place.  You may have an existing Webforms site and need to migrate to MVC but you don't know where to begin.  There are different approaches to do this.  Of course creating an MVC web application from scratch is the cleanest and easiest to maintain.  However you might need to deploy 2 websites in parallel to do this transition.  If you are not able to deploy 2 websites in parallel then an option is to add MVC code into your Webforms project .  This will definitely work.  The only thing is that you lose some nice MVC development features like Scaffolding. But if you're ok with creating these MVC files manually then it won't be an issue.  Thanks to Scott Hanselman's Blog for most of the information.  I am using Visual Studio 2012 for this test.

1.  First, add these references to your Webforms project:

a.     System.Web.MVC

b.     System.Web.Razor

2.  Add this in appSettings to your web.config

<appSettings>

   <add key="ClientValidationEnabled" value="true"/>

   <add key="UnobtrusiveJavaScriptEnabled" value="true"/>

</appSettings>

3.  Add these under compilation to your web.config

<   <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0">

  <assemblies>

    <add assembly="System.Web.Abstractions, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" />

    <add assembly="System.Web.Helpers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" />

    <add assembly="System.Web.Routing, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" />

    <add assembly="System.Web.Mvc, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" />

    <add assembly="System.Web.WebPages, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" />

  </assemblies>

</compilation>

4.  Add these namespaces in pages to your web.config

<system.web>

  <pages>

     <namespaces>

       <add namespace="System.Web.Helpers" />

       <add namespace="System.Web.Mvc" />

       <add namespace="System.Web.Mvc.Ajax" />

       <add namespace="System.Web.Mvc.Html" />

       <add namespace="System.Web.Routing" />

       <add namespace="System.Web.WebPages"/>

     </namespaces>

   </pages>

</system.web>

5.  Add this to your web.config. This is under the <configuration> node

<system.webServer>

    <validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false"/>

    <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true"/>

  </system.webServer>

6.  Add this to your Global.asax

public static void RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilterCollection filters)

{

        filters.Add(new HandleErrorAttribute());

}

public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)

 {

        routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");

        routes.MapRoute(

            "Default", // Route name

            "{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters

            new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults

        );

 }

protected void Application_Start()

{

        AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();

        RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);

        RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);

}


7.  If you want the default Webforms page to load first, add this line before the other routes.  Or else the MVC default page will render first.

            routes.MapPageRoute("MyWebFormDefault", "", "~/Default.aspx");

        

     8.  Make sure you add these to your Global.asax

using System.Web;

using System.Web.Mvc;

using System.Web.Routing;

Copy some MVC files into your Webforms project.  In my case, I copied the Controllers, Models, and Views folders.  For simple testing purposes, I removed files related to AccountController and its views.  I only left the HomeController and its views plus the Shared views.

Thats it!  If you run your application, you should see the default.aspx on the browser.  If you type in a friendly URL such as http://localhost:8023/Home you should see the MVC Home page.