ASP.MVC in Umbraco 6

Umbraco 6 brings new lots of improvements for developers, new datalayer, new API’s and complete support for Asp.net MVC 4. This means developers will have greater control, simpler code and higher productivity when developing with Umbraco.

As the umbraco blog says, in Umbraco 6 we have:

• MVC support, 
• Native Razor support
• Strongly typed views  
• Building custom controllers
• Whole new shiny API
• Customizing routes.
• and many more..

Download the latest version 6.0.0. from http://umbraco.codeplex.com/releases .

Create a blank MVC4 Application, and add the downloaded files to the newly created website. so that it will make the debugging easier.

OR run NuGet Package Manager Command : PM> Install-Package UmbracoCms

Now we can enable the mvc in ~/config/umbracoSettings.config 

<defaultRenderingEngine>Mvc</defaultRenderingEngine> by default it will be web forms change it to Mvc.

Add another blank MVC4 project to the existing project, and add reference to umbraco.dll, businesslogic.dll, and interface.dll. these dlls can be found in umbraco bin folder, and now are ready to create controller, or business logic that we will be using in our Umbraco project.

Create the controller that inherits from SufraceController, and add the logic what you would like to see in your page.

e.g: 

public class CommentsController : Umbraco.Web.Mvc.SurfaceController

{

        [HttpGet]

        public ActionResult Comments()

        {

            List<CommentViewModel> model = LoadComments();

            return View(model);

        }

}

Add a partial view to render this model, Build the MVC project, and copy the dll, and Views to Umbraco Bin and Views folder.

We are set now, add the controller, as action in the Umbraco Template. You could see the created controller and view getting fired on the Umbraco Page.

More information can be seen at http://our.umbraco.org/documentation/reference/mvc/