I learned asp.net mvc recently, and the material I picked was
Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework by Steven Sanderson. This book is great for learning asp.net mvc.
During the short period since its publish on April 2009, it quickly earns five star rating on amazon with around 20 reviews. It's a solid evidence for the success of the book.
I can't say Steven has the deepest knowledge of asp.net mvc, but I'm sure he has the best skill to convey his knowledge to audience. As for my experience for learning new technology, I'd like to know:
- What does it do?
- What's the benefit of it?
- How to use it?
- What's the underlying working mechanism?
- Any best practice with it?
Steven's writing style perfectly matches my preference. It started off by a big picture of the asp.net mvc including what's it and the benefit of using it and comparison to other alternative technologies. In the following several chapters, Steven guides us through a classical web shopping example with best engineering practices that take advantage of asp.net mvc framework. Like unit testing and inversion of control, etc. After telling us how to use it, the most exciting part about the core architecture of asp.net mvc starts. With knowing what's happening under the hood, one can easily customize mvc to meet his requirements and debugging. The final part is about other practical issues we may encounter such as validation, security and deployment.
This book fully covers everything we want to know about asp.net mvc, in a clear way. I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in this technology.
Update:Here is a compare of currently available books about asp.net mvc:
http://www.mikesdotnetting.com/Article/112/ASP.NET-MVC-Battle-of-the-Books
