Compiling ASP.NET MVC on Mono 2.4.3

tom — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:52:17 +0000

Out of intellectual curiosity, I sparked up MonoDevelop and decided to see what would happen when I tried to compile the ASP.NET MVC source code. I figured that it would Just Work. After all, I can use the .NET compiled assembly with no problems on Mono, so there really shouldn’t be any problems trying to compile the code. Bad news is that there is one minor glitch. Good news is the glitch is easy to work around and has already been fixed so it shouldn’t be a problem for future version of Mono.

When you compile, here is what you get:

Compilation failed: 1 error(s), 0 warnings

/home/tom/Projects/MVC-MS-Pl-original/MVC-MS-Pl/Mvc/FormCollection.cs(25,6): error CS0246: The type or namespace name `FormCollectionBinder’ could not be found. Are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?

Build complete — 1 error, 0 warnings

So, this kind of surprised me. Looking at the code, I did see the FormCollectionBinder in the code, it’s an embedded class within System.Web.Mvc.FormCollection, check out lines 68-88 below:

   1: /* ****************************************************************************

   2:  *

   3:  * Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

   4:  *

   5:  * This software is subject to the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL).

   6:  * A copy of the license can be found in the license.htm file included

   7:  * in this distribution.

   8:  *

   9:  * You must not remove this notice, or any other, from this software.

  10:  *

  11:  * ***************************************************************************/

12:

  13: namespace System.Web.Mvc {

  14:     using System;

  15:     using System.Collections.Generic;

  16:     using System.Collections.Specialized;

  17:     using System.Diagnostics.CodeAnalysis;

  18:     using System.Globalization;

  19:     using System.Web.Mvc.Resources;

20:

  21:     [SuppressMessage("Microsoft.Usage", "CA2237:MarkISerializableTypesWithSerializable",

  22:         Justification = "It is not anticipated that users will need to serialize this type.")]

  23:     [SuppressMessage("Microsoft.Design", "CA1035:ICollectionImplementationsHaveStronglyTypedMembers",

  24:         Justification = "It is not anticipated that users will call FormCollection.CopyTo().")]

  25:     [FormCollectionBinder]

  26:     public class FormCollection : NameValueCollection {

27:

  28:         public FormCollection() {

  29:         }

30:

  31:         public FormCollection(NameValueCollection collection) {

  32:             if (collection == null) {

  33:                 throw new ArgumentNullException("collection");

  34:             }

35:

  36:             Add(collection);

  37:         }

38:

  39:         public IDictionary<string, ValueProviderResult> ToValueProvider() {

  40:             CultureInfo currentCulture = CultureInfo.CurrentCulture;

41:

  42:             Dictionary<string, ValueProviderResult> dict = new Dictionary<string, ValueProviderResult>(StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase);

  43:             string[] keys = AllKeys;

  44:             foreach (string key in keys) {

  45:                 string[] rawValue = GetValues(key);

  46:                 string attemptedValue = this[key];

  47:                 ValueProviderResult vpResult = new ValueProviderResult(rawValue, attemptedValue, currentCulture);

  48:                 dict[key] = vpResult;

  49:             }

50:

  51:             return dict;

  52:         }

53:

  54:         public virtual ValueProviderResult GetValue(string name) {

  55:             if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(name)) {

  56:                 throw new ArgumentException(MvcResources.Common_NullOrEmpty, "name");

  57:             }

58:

  59:             string[] rawValue = GetValues(name);

  60:             if (rawValue == null) {

  61:                 return null;

  62:             }

63:

  64:             string attemptedValue = this[name];

  65:             return new ValueProviderResult(rawValue, attemptedValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture);

  66:         }

67:

  68:         private sealed class FormCollectionBinderAttribute : CustomModelBinderAttribute {

69:

  70:             // since the FormCollectionModelBinder.BindModel() method is thread-safe, we only need to keep

  71:             // a single instance of the binder around

  72:             private static readonly FormCollectionModelBinder _binder = new FormCollectionModelBinder();

73:

  74:             public override IModelBinder GetBinder() {

  75:                 return _binder;

  76:             }

77:

  78:             // this class is used for generating a FormCollection object

  79:             private sealed class FormCollectionModelBinder : IModelBinder {

  80:                 public object BindModel(ControllerContext controllerContext, ModelBindingContext bindingContext) {

  81:                     if (controllerContext == null) {

  82:                         throw new ArgumentNullException("controllerContext");

  83:                     }

84:

  85:                     return new FormCollection(controllerContext.HttpContext.Request.Form);

  86:                 }

  87:             }

  88:         }

89:

  90:     }

  91: }

The version of Mono 2.4.3 I have doesn’t compile the class FormCollection because the FormCollectionBinderAttribute is inside the FormCollection class. This is the bug, and it has since been fixed. Easy ways to get around this:

Just use the binary assembly from Microsoft for ASP.NET MVC.
Build your own Mono with the fix included
Move the code for FormCollectionBinderAttribute class outside of the code for the FormCollection class.

Mono.Rocks

tom — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 07:38:00 +0000

For those getting into .NET 3.5, you might find Mono.Rocks of interest. I first saw this on Jean-Baptiste Evain blog. Basically, this is a collection of extension methods for the class libraries. They are covered under the MIT licence, so you can pretty much use it anywhere.

Opgenorth.NET » Mono

Compiling ASP.NET MVC on Mono 2.4.3

Mono.Rocks