What is Razor in MVC?

It’s a light weight view engine. Till MVC we had only one view type, i.e., ASPX. Razor was introduced in MVC 3.

Why Razor when we already have ASPX?

Razor is clean, lightweight, and syntaxes are easy as compared to ASPX. For example, in ASPX to display simple time, we need to write:

<%=DateTime.Now%> 

In Razor, it’s just one line of code:

@DateTime.Now

So which is a better fit, Razor or ASPX?

As per Microsoft, Razor is more preferred because it’s light weight and has simple syntax.

Where is the route mapping code written?

The route mapping code is written in the “global.asax” file.

Can we map multiple URL’s to the same action?

Yes, you can, you just need to make two entries with different key names and specify the same controller and action.

How can we navigate from one view to another using a hyperlink?

By using the ActionLink method as shown in the below code. The below code will create a simple URL which helps to navigate to the “Home” controller and invoke the GotoHome action.

<%= Html.ActionLink("Home","Gotohome") %>  

How can we restrict MVC actions to be invoked only by GET or POST?

We can decorate the MVC action with the HttpGet or HttpPost attribute to restrict the type of HTTP calls. For instance you can see in the below code snippet the DisplayCustomer action can only be invoked by HttpGet. If we try to make HTTP POST on DisplayCustomer, it will throw an error.

[HttpGet]
public ViewResult DisplayCustomer(int id)
{
    Customer objCustomer = Customers[id];
    return View("DisplayCustomer",objCustomer);
} 

How can we maintain sessions in MVC?

Sessions can be maintained in MVC by three ways: tempdata, viewdata, and viewbag.

What is routing in MVC?

Routing helps you to define a URL structure and map the URL with the controller.

For instance let’s say we want that when a user types “http://localhost/View/ViewCustomer/”, it goes to the “Customer” Controller and invokes the DisplayCustomer action. This is defined by adding an entry in to the routes collection using the MapRoute function. Below is the underlined code which shows how the URL structure and mapping with controller and action is defined.

routes.MapRoute(

               "View", // Route name

               "View/ViewCustomer/{id}", // URL with parameters

               new { controller = "Customer", action = "DisplayCustomer", 

               id = UrlParameter.Optional }); // Parameter defaults   

What is the difference between “HTML.TextBox” vs “HTML.TextBoxFor”?

Both of them provide the same HTML output, “HTML.TextBoxFor” is strongly typed while “HTML.TextBox” isn’t. Below is a simple HTML code which just creates a simple textbox with “CustomerCode” as name.

Html.TextBox("CustomerCode")

Below is “Html.TextBoxFor” code which creates HTML textbox using the property name ‘CustomerCode” from object “m”.

Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.CustomerCode)

In the same way we have for other HTML controls like for checkbox we have “Html.CheckBox” and “Html.CheckBoxFor”.

What are HTML helpers in MVC?

HTML helpers help you to render HTML controls in the view. For instance if you want to display a HTML textbox on the view , below is the HTML helper code.

<%= Html.TextBox("LastName") %>

For checkbox below is the HTML helper code. In this way we have HTML helper methods for every HTML control that exists.

<%= Html.CheckBox("Married") %>

What is the difference between each version of MVC?

Below is a detailed table of differences. But during an interview it’s difficult to talk about all of them due to time limitation. So I have highlighted the important differences that you can run through before the interviewer.

MVC 2	MVC 3	MVC 4
Client-side validation Templated Helpers Areas Asynchronous Controllers Html.ValidationSummary Helper Method DefaultValueAttribute in Action-Method Parameters binding Binary data with Model Binders DataAnnotations Attributes Model-Validator Providers New RequireHttpsAttributeAction Filter Templated Helpers Display Model-Level Errors	Razor Readymade project templates HTML 5 enabled templates Support for Multiple View Engines, JavaScript, and AJAX Model Validation Improvements	ASP.NET Web API Refreshed and modernized default project templates. New mobile project template. Many new features to support mobile apps Enhanced support for asynchronous methods

Is MVC different from a three layered architecture?

MVC is an evolution of a three layered traditional architecture. Many components of the three layered architecture are part of MVC. So below is how the mapping goes:

Functionality	Three layered / tiered architecture	Model view controller architecture
Look and Feel	User interface	View
UI logic	User interface	Controller
Business logic /validations	Middle layer	Model
Request is first sent to	User interface	Controller
Accessing data	Data access layer	Data Access Layer

Figure: Three layered architecture