Blog - Glass.Mapper.Sc and Sitecore MVC

Following my last blog post about Glass.Mapper.Sc and Sitecore MVC I have reorganised the Glass.Mapper.Sc assembly to create a MVC specific assembly.

Firstly a bit of background. Sitecore now supports 3 different versions of MVC depending on the Sitecore version you are using with this being a rough guide:

1. Sitecore 6.x + MVC 3
2. Sitecore 7.0-7.1 + MVC 4
3. Sitecore 7.2 + MVC 5

I have been packaging the MVC support for Sitecore within the Glass.Mapper.Sc assembly but this creates a problem. Glass.Mapper.Sc needs to be compiled against all three MVC versions but I only have one Nuget package to distribute the assemblies in. This creates a problem because it isn't possible to correctly distribute the assemblies.

The solution was to extract the Glass support for Sitecore MVC into it's own assembly and then distribute a Nuget package for each MVC framework. The new assembly is called Glass.Mapper.Sc.Mvc and comes in the following Nuget packages:

1. Glass.Mapper.Sc.Mvc-3
2. Glass.Mapper.Sc.Mvc-4
3. Glass.Mapper.Sc.Mvc-5

When setting up your Sitecore project or updating an existing project you will need to download one of these Nuget packages after installing Glass.Mapper.Sc v3.2+. No matter what version of the Nuget package you download the assembly added to your project will be called Glass.Mapper.Sc.Mvc. I have also kept the namespaces within the assembly the same so you shouldn't need to update any of your code.

Although this is an extra step in the setup of a Glass/Sitecore solution it gives the project more flexibility and allows for easier support of future MVC releases.

This update will be released next week but for those who want to get early access and start using Glass.Mapper.Sc with MVC 5 and Sitecore 7.2 you can download the packages from the Glass build server. See the download page for more information.

Please let me know immediately if there are any problems with the new packages.