I was wondering what is the best practice for enterprise level architecture based on MVC5. I mean selection between multiple layer or multiple project in one solution? and or ma
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Since my question has been visited a lot in the last year and there is no solid answer as I am aware of that, I decided to provide a comprehensive answer as much as possible. This answer is based on some actual projects experience and with few expert consultations:
right
and if
it doesn’t, it is wrong
. There are no rigid principals in software
design. There are Project needs and specifications
. But generally,
it has been accepted using Design Patterns and Principles
makes
project more robust
, reliable
and easy to maintain
and make
your code loosely coupled and highly cohesive
.Software Design and Architecture
is about how
you could manage your project easily and how you could maintain your
future changes. Think about which approach gives you best answer on
them. That will be the best for you. Don't think too much about
Professionalism
! .Your project grows by time and gets more mature.
So just think about your project!Separation of Concerns
or SoC
. It means you
should have different tiers for different layers of your project. It
is highly recommended to use different project in your
solution for Data Access Layer
, Domain Entities
, Business Layer
and Presentation Layer
. In MVC5 project, it is better to use Class Library Project
for Data Access Layer
, Domain Entities
, Business Layer
and a MVC project for Presentation Layer
.Data Access Layer
is the project that faces to database and database interactions. You could have all your Entity Framework
or similar entities in this project. Having separated layer for database layer means in the case of changing your project data warehouse, the only thing you need to change is changing this project and some minor changes on your Business Layer
. All other projects in your solution remain intact. So you could easily move from MS Sql to Oracle or from Entity Framework
to NHibernate
.Domain Entities
is the project I use to define all my solution
level interfaces, classes, enums and variables. This project keeps
integrity throughout my solution on my classes and my methods. My
all classes in whole solution are inherited from interfaces in this
project. So I have one place to change my classes or global
variables and it means Easy to Maintain
for future in my solution
and easy to understand for newly joined developers to the project.Business Layer
is the place I put my all business logic including
Business Entities
and Business Services
. The whole idea about
this layer is having one place to keep your all business methods and
interactions. All calculations, object modification and all logic
about data including saving, retrieving, changing and so on should
happen in this section. By having this layer in your project, you
could have different consumers at the same time, for example one
native MVC
and one Web API
layer. Or you could provide different
feeding based on different business services consumers
specifications. It is highly recommended to avoid putting any
business logic into controller section of MVC layer. Having any
business logic inside controllers means you using your presentation
layer as business logic layer and it violates Separation of Concerns
. Then it won’t be easy to change from one presentationlayer to other or having different type of consumers for your
solution. It is better to keep controller section in MVC as slim as
possible. The controllers should only have logic and methods
directly related to View Models
. For more information about View Models
refer to section 7
. One thing to remember, It is better to
have different Business Services
classes based on your solution
objects or Business Entities
.Presentation Layer
in MVC solution will be an MVC project. But
solution could have other type or more than one Presentation Layers
for different consumers or technology. For example you could have
one MVC layer and one Web API
in one solution. Generally Use
Presentation Layer to keep all presentation logic in it.
Presentation logic shouldn’t have anything related to business logic
or data logic. So question is what is Presentation logic
?
Presentation logic
is logic related to view models. View models
are objects customized for views or pages. In most cases, business
objects are not suitable to use in views. On the other hand,
presentation views usually need some validation logic or
presentation logic, for example display name different than original
object names. In these cases it is better keep presentation logic
separated than business logic to make it easy to change presentation
logic or business logic independently and even easy to switch
presentation layer for different UI design or changing business
logic for having more functionality without fear of any interruption
with presentation logic. In the case of using MVC project as
presentation layer for solution, all view models should be places in
Models
section of MVC project and all presentation logic should be
placed in Controllers
section of project.AutoMapper
, BLToolkit
, and EmitMapper
.Last word: please comment and score question
and my answer
to make it better!