mvc3 architecture

Question

i want to develop a simple CMS.

i want to add the ability to add modules to the CMS.

1. what need to be the architecture for such a CMS?

   a solution and then a mvc project for the site and another for the admin? or one project with area for the admin?

in mvc each of my modules will have a controller,model and views. if i will put all in one project, then i will mix of all module,each module will be in 3 folders (controller,model and views).

how i need to arrange them so my code will be nice and clean?

Answer 1

Since you are only separating by type of user, you can surely (and easily) include in one project. all of your Admin controllers should have [Authorize(Roles="Admin")] on them to limit them only for the admin. Mixing them is fine, other applications mix user roles in an application on a regular basis, just limit the difference by security (and dont use url restrictions in your web.config - use the [Authorize] attribute on your controllers instead!! If you expect the differences in both applications to be huge then you can separate into another project, but I'm imagining you can get very good reuse by including them in the same project.

How to architect this is a very very broad question. For a basic project some include everything all in one project. I prefer to break out all my models and data access code into a separate project and try to code to interfaces as much as possible for unit testing purposes. I think that is all a bit beyond the scope of the posting here though. To start - work with the mentioned attribute and I think you will develop. Start unit testing early and I think that will help steer you into the right direction. Also read up on dependency injectiom, unit, ninject, etc for ways to dynamically bind to your implementation classes as this makes your unit test go quite a bit smoother as well.