Update to date sample/tutorial

[Darren Kay]

I'm evaluating Magellan for a WPF project I have to start shortly.  After reading the Getting Started, Blog, Project Template and CodeProject article - I'm failing to build even the simplest of WPF/MVC applications.  Each source I read uses different methods or functionality, None seem to deal with a project with Model -> ViewModel -> View approach, usually everything is just a ViewModel with no persistent data.

Are there any up to date samples or articles on how to use Magellan?  I'd like to take a sample project and use it as a template for my evaluation.

Thanks, Darren

[Caleb Vear]

Hi Darren,

No one has been actively contributing to Magellan for awhile.  It is still quite usable, but that is probably why you have found it a little difficult to find the relevant information.  The best suggestion I can offer is to just checkout the sample projects in the source and go from there.  Usually you would put your data access in controllers, similar to what you would do in ASP.NET MVC.

Cheers,

Caleb

[Chris Carter]

Hi Darren,

My last WPF project was a couple of years ago and we used Magellan.  I still help out the guy left to maintain that project every now and again so I know what we built still works.  When I was building the architecture for the app I thought it would help to have a reference project to see the bare minimum of how the system worked, I put it up here: https://github.com/chrcar01/KillSwitchEngage. Since putting that up there I've repaved my laptop at least once, so starting off fresh just now, i created a local database named KillSwitchEngage, ran the script in the database folder, and the thing actually worked! I added a new company, the company contact bits broke but looking at the company stuff you can see how we do data access.  Note.  We were forced to use EntityFramework for this project by people who had bigger titles that me(not hard to beat "contractor" at a company). Because of that project, I have black listed EntityFramework from my tool list, nothing but headaches.

-c

ps. if you're doing data access directly within your controllers in asp.net mvc, please stop doing that. 

[Caleb Vear]

Chris, re data access: When I say data access I mean whatever it is you want use to load the data to populate create/load the model for the UI.  Sometimes that means a repository other times this might mean sending a command on a bus.  I'm not saying you should open a Sql connection in your controller :)

Caleb

[Chris Carter]

@Caleb, I figured you didn't mean that, i was kinda tryin to be funny, i think i need more caffeine.

[Darren Kay]

I've been checking out the project a bit more. Decided that with the lack of activity on it and the documentation not being up to date and correct, I'm not going to use it.  Yes it's usable but to develop a system that will be maintained for minimum of 5 years using a two year old framework, which may fall behind .net advances due to lack of commitment, is not a sound plan.

[Eduardo Molteni]

Even if you don’t use it fully, I recommend you to check out some very useful features in the framework:

·         Forms http://code.google.com/p/magellan-framework/wiki/Forms

·         Shared Layouts http://code.google.com/p/magellan-framework/wiki/Layouts

 

And good luck in your WPF project, you are going to need it J

 

Cheers!

Eduardo (a former WPF developer)

[Chris Carter]

I second @Eduardo's suggestion on checking out the features.  I was going to say though, that "lack of activity" isn't a necessarily a negative with projects that are feature complete, sometimes it just means there's nothing left to do: If it ain't broke why fix it? I see there are 6 minor outstanding issues, which I'd prolly drag my feet on fixing myself since they don't really look like issues as opposed to minor feature requests.  If I were going to start a new WPF project today I'd probably still pick Magellan.