Razor Pages Vs ASP.NET Core MVC in .net core 6.0

Question

I am attending an online training about ASP.NET Core MVC (.net 6.0), and the instructor mentioned that Razor Pages is the Microsoft recommended framework to work with compared to ASP.NET Core MVC. So is this true? and can we say that Razor Pages is taking over MVC? or each framework support different business need? for example if we want to build a document management system then should we go with Razor Pages or MVC? and why ?

Thanks

Answer 1

Hi @john john ,

You can check the following articles: MVC and Razor Pages, Razor Pages vs ASP.NET Core MVC and Compare Razor Pages to ASP.NET MVC

ASP.NET Core MVC offers many features that are useful for building web-based APIs and apps. The term MVC stands for "Model-View-Controller", a UI pattern that breaks up the responsibilities of responding to user requests into several parts. In addition to following this pattern, you can also implement features in your ASP.NET Core apps as Razor Pages.
Razor Pages are built into ASP.NET Core MVC, and use the same features for routing, model binding, filters, authorization, etc. However, instead of having separate folders and files for Controllers, Models, Views, etc. and using attribute-based routing, Razor Pages are placed in a single folder ("/Pages"), route based on their relative location in this folder, and handle requests with handlers instead of controller actions. As a result, when working with Razor Pages, all of the files and classes you need are typically colocated, not spread throughout the web project.

Why Razor Pages?

Razor Pages is the default approach for new web applications in Visual Studio. Razor Pages offers a simpler way of building page-based application features, such as non-SPA forms. Using controllers and views, it was common for applications to have very large controllers that worked with many different dependencies and view models and returned many different views. This resulted in more complexity and often resulted in controllers that didn't follow the Single Responsibility Principle or Open/Closed Principles effectively. Razor Pages addresses this issue by encapsulating the server-side logic for a given logical "page" in a web application with its Razor markup. A Razor Page that has no server-side logic can only consist of a Razor file (for instance, "Index.cshtml"). However, most non-trivial Razor Pages will have an associated page model class, which by convention is named the same as the Razor file with a ".cs" extension (for example, "Index.cshtml.cs").
A Razor Page's page model combines the responsibilities of an MVC controller and a viewmodel. Instead of handling requests with controller action methods, page model handlers like "OnGet()" are executed, rendering their associated page by default. Razor Pages simplifies the process of building individual pages in an ASP.NET Core app, while still providing all the architectural features of ASP.NET Core MVC. They're a good default choice for new page-based functionality.

When to use MVC

*If you're building web APIs, the MVC pattern makes more sense than trying to use Razor Pages. If your project will only expose web API endpoints, you should ideally start from the Web API project template. Otherwise, it's easy to add controllers and associated API endpoints to any ASP.NET Core app. Use the view-based MVC approach if you're migrating an existing application from ASP.NET MVC 5 or earlier to ASP.NET Core MVC and you want to do so with the least amount of effort. Once you've made the initial migration, you can evaluate whether it makes sense to adopt Razor Pages for new features or even as a wholesale migration. For more information about porting .NET 4.x apps to .NET 6, see Porting Existing ASP.NET Apps to ASP.NET Core eBook. *

So, whether you choose to build your web app using Razor Pages or MVC views, your app will have similar performance and will include support for dependency injection, filters, model binding, validation, and so on. It's just personal preference.

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Best regards,
Dillion