MR.AspNetCore.MvcPack

A better way for writing controller action filters, inspired by rails.

Usage

Configure

services
    .AddMvc(...)
    .InitializeMvcPack(); // Add this

services.AddMvcPack(); // Add this

Packs

A "pack" is a class that configures a certain controller. You can put them anywhere, but as this is inspired by rails I like to put them nested in the controller class:

public class SomeController : SomeBaseController
{
    public class Pack : MvcPackSupport<SomeController>
    {
        public Pack()
        {
            // Use this if you want to skip a filter configured in a base controller.
            SkipBeforeAction(x => x.AuthorizeSome);

            // Always run a filter.
            BeforeAction(x => x.Some1);

            // Use this to configure a filter to be run `only` when certain actions are selected.
            BeforeAction(x => x.Some2, only: L(
                nameof(SomeController.Get)));

            // Use this to configure a filter to be run on all except certain actions.
            BeforeAction(x => x.Some3, except: L(
                nameof(SomeController.Foo),
                nameof(SomeController.Bar)));
        }
    }

    // This should always be the prototype of method filters.
    protected Task Some1(ActionExecutingContext context)
    {
        // You can inspect action arguments, do authorization, set a result to shortcircuit if necessary, etc...
    }
}

Motive

This is all about factoring out specific controllers' cross cutting concerns and putting them inside reusable methods.

Creating custom filters for each business concern is tedious, and overriding a controller's "OnActionExecuting" loses its appeal when you're inheriting other custom controllers that also have concerns.

Rails solves this in a great way, a major part of it is due to the expressiveness of ruby as a language. Asp.Net Core doesn't give us that flexibility by default, but we can improvise.

Check the samples for more info.

NestedRouting

Using this together with NestedRouting will give you a great way for organizing your controllers.

Samples

Check out the samples under "samples/" for more practical use cases.