ASP.NET Razor web pages on large project?

Question

I'm on the point of starting a medium scale web application and I'm considering developing using ASP.NET Razor syntax Web Pages framework (not MVC). But as I've seen many people consider "Web Pages" to be tailored towards beginners.

I'm developing professional large scale web applications in ASP.NET Web Forms for several years now, but I've always inclined towards clean html/javascript code more than server side controls therefore I find Razor syntax very much appealing. I'm using Visual Studio and not considering web pages for helpers functions or other beginner eye candy features.

Having this in mind what are your opinions on scalability, speed, long term development on this approach?

Tollgate

Answer 1

But as I've seen many people consider "Web Pages" to be tailored towards beginners.

Go for the ASP.NET MVC 3 and the Razor view engine then. It provides you with the WebPages syntax coupled with the full power of the MVC pattern built on top of an established platform such as ASP.NET in terms of scalability and long term development. You can't dream for better as far as the Microsoft stack is concerned.

Zloty

I'm aware of this option but I like the freedom of controlling when and how everything flows and ASP.NET MVC although a great framework limits this from my point of view. I'm more curious if there are any downfalls of Web Pages framework – Tollgate

@Pasman, cough cough, could you explain in more details how are you limited in ASP.NET MVC and compared to what? – Zloty

I hope you don't understand me wrong, MVC is a great framework, I'm already using in in some projects, but I don't find it to fit this particular project, so the question actually is that if there are some obvious drawbacks in using the WebPages framework or it can support medium to large scale commercial web applications. – Tollgate

@Pasman, I hope you realize that when you say medium scale web application this actually doesn't provide any meaningful description about your project and what would be the most adapted framework for it. You will need to go into far far more details if you expect any constructive answer about whether ASP.NET WebPages would be a good choice or not for it. – Zloty

basically is a niche community website with users (profile, comments, uploads, posts), contests (submitting, voting) and so on, targeting 5k+ visitors per day. – Tollgate

Answer 2

In terms of performance WebPages is asp.net and gets compliled so performance should be similar to WebForms and MVC.

I'd say that any site that could be built using ClassicASP, PHP or WebForms (without using server controls) can be built just as well using WebPages.

I prefer WebPages over WebForms and MVC for my sites. You get full control over the HTML, don't need to worry about concepts like the page lifecycle and postsbacks unlike WebForms. On the other side you get a lightweight, simple framework where you don't need to use VS.net, solutions files, project files and 3+ files to serve up a single page and you don't need to compile the entire solution before deploying unlike MVC.

But what you use I think depends mostly on your detailed requirements and skillset.

Proposal

I agree, but eventually I moved the application to MVC 3. WebPages were great for the prototyping part and a lot of code was reused. The main reason for moving was to gain additional knowledge and the fact that there are a lot more resources available for MVC and the perspective on improvement are better. – Tollgate