Professional ASP.NET MVC 4

Creating an MVC 4 Application

The best way to learn about how MVC 4 works is to get started with building an application, so let's do that.

Software Requirements for ASP.NET MVC 4

MVC 4 runs on the following Windows client operating systems:

• Windows XP
• Windows Vista
• Windows 7
• Windows 8

It runs on the following server operating systems:

• Windows Server 2003
• Windows Server 2008
• Windows Server 2008 R2

MVC 4 development tooling is included with Visual Studio 2012 and can be installed on Visual Studio 2010 SP1/Visual Web Developer 2010 Express SP1.

Installing ASP.NET MVC 4

After ensuring you've met the basic software requirements, it's time to install ASP.NET MVC 4 on your development and production machines. Fortunately, that's pretty simple.

Side-by-Side Installation with Previous Versions of MVC

MVC 4 installs side-by-side with previous versions of MVC, so you can install and start using MVC 4 right away. You'll still be able to create and update existing MVC 1, 2, and 3 applications, as before.

Installing the MVC 4 Development Components

The developer tooling for ASP.NET MVC 4 supports Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 2012, including the free Express versions of both products.

MVC 4 is included with Visual Studio 2012, so there's nothing to install. If you're using Visual Studio 2010, you can install MVC 4 using either the Web Platform Installer (http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/install.aspx?appid=MVC4VS2010) or the executable installer package (available at ...