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You're reading from Learning ASP.NET Core MVC Programming

Product typeBook

Published inNov 2016

Reading LevelIntermediate

PublisherPackt

ISBN-139781786463838

Edition1st Edition

Languages

Tools

.NET Core

Concepts

Server Side Web Development

Authors (2):

Mugilan T. S. Ragupathi

Anuraj Parameswaran

View More author details

Chapter 8. Beautifying ASP.NET MVC Applications with Bootstrap

You might have created an application with all the required functionalities. It may even work perfectly without any issues in all scenarios. But the success of your application depends on how well your users can access it. Your application should look good (if not great) and be user-friendly in order for it to be a success.

In this chapter, you are going to learn about the following topics:

Role of HTML and CSS in the ASP.NET Core application
Characteristics of front-end frameworks and different frameworks available
Bootstrap and its grid system along its features
CSS classes available in Bootstrap for form elements such as input and select elements
CSS classes for different types of HTML elements such as table
Using Bootstrap in your ASP.NET Core application

Before discussing how to make our application look good, let us take a step back and discuss the roles that HTML and CSS play in your application.

Knowing HTML and CSS

As mentioned earlier, all browsers can only understand HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. So, the applications that you build should produce output as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This holds true for web applications built using other technologies such as Java or Ruby on Rails. Having said that, we will only discuss HTML and CSS.

HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is used to structure the content in your web pages. For example, you can add content in a title tag so that it will be available in a browser's tab or window. Let us see an example.

Open any text editor (you can even use Notepad), type the following HTML content and the save file as Bootstrap.html. Please note the extension .html:

<!DOCTYPE html> 
<html> 
<head> 
    <title> Beautify your ASP.NET MVC applications using Bootstrap </title> 
</head> 
<body> 
    <h1> Bootstrap </h1> 
    <p> 
        Bootstrap is the most popular...

Bootstrap

Bootstrap is the most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile-first projects on the web and you can access it at http://getbootstrap.com/ .

Bootstrap has many features that meet the various needs of a web application. It has different CSS classes for each of the HTML elements so that you can use it without touching any CSS code. However, if you wish to override it, you can do so.

Let us look at each of the features of Bootstrap in brief.

Bootstrap Grid system

The grid system in Bootstrap helps you to create a responsive layout for your application. This feature makes your application look great in all devices of different shapes including mobile devices.

Bootstrap provides a fluid grid system, which scales up to twelve columns as the device or viewport size increases. You can think of grid system as being like columns in an Excel sheet (like the one in the following screenshot):

We can combine multiple columns to create a wider column. In the second...

Using Bootstrap in your ASP.NET MVC application

There are different ways to get Bootstrap for your application:

Refer to the Bootstrap file available at the CDN (Content Delivery Network) in your application
Download the source code
Install with Bower
Compile with Grunt

Of these options, the easiest option is the first one.

Open the layout file (_Layout.cshtml) in the application that we created earlier. Include the CSS files at the top (within the head tag) and the scripts at the bottom (at the end of the body tag):

<!DOCTYPE html> 
 
<html> 
<head> 
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" /> 
    <title>@ViewBag.Title</title> 
    <!-- Latest compiled and minified CSS --> 
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.3.6/css/bootstrap.min.css" integrity="sha384-1q8mTJOASx8j1Au+a5WDVnPi2lkFfwwEAa8hDDdjZlpLegxhjVME1fgjWPGmkzs7" crossorigin="anonymous"> 
    <...

Installing with Bower

Right click on the Project menu and select the Manage Bower Packages option from the context menu:

Once you select Manage Bower Packages, you will be able to install or uninstall the Bower package just as you installed or uninstalled the NuGet package.

HTML doctype

Bootstrap makes use of certain HTML elements and CSS properties that require the use of HTML 5 doctype. By default, the view that you create in ASP.NET Core will have HTML 5 doctype only. So, we do not need to do anything regarding this.

 
<!DOCTYPE html> 
 
<html lang="en"> 
... 
</html>

Let us make the following changes to our screen to make use of Bootstrap:

Apply the CSS class form-horizontal to the form.
For the label, input, and validation error spans use the CSS col-sm-2, col-sm-4, and col-sm-3 classes respectively
For labels, apply the CSS class control-label
For input HTML elements, the form-control CSS class is applied
For each of the form groups (containing the HTML elements such as label and input), apply the CSS class form-group
For all validation error messages, apply the text-danger CSS class so that they will be shown in red
Apply the table, table-bordered CSS class to style the table

The following is the complete updated...

Summary

In this chapter, we have learned about the role of HTML and CSS in any web application including the ASP.NET Core application. We have analyzed the needs of a frontend framework and discussed the features of Bootstrap—the most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile-first projects on the web. We have discussed CSS and components available in Bootstrap for different types of HTML elements with examples. Finally, we have discussed how to incorporate Bootstrap in our ASP.NET Core application.

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Authors (2)

Mugilan T. S. Ragupathi

Mugilan T. S. Ragupathi has been working on building web-based applications using Microsof technology for more than a decade. He is active in the ASP.NET community and is running a successful blog, www.dotnetodyssey.com, to help his fellow .NET developers. His free beginners' course for ASP.NET MVC 5 (http://www.dotnetodyssey.com/asp-net-mvc-5-free-course/) was well received and is referred to as a concrete reference for beginners. He can be seen on subreddit / Stack Overflow in the C# section. He has written two free micro e-books, The 7 Most Popular Recipes of jQuery with ASP.NET Web Forms and Value & Reference types in C# (http://www.dotnetodyssey.com/freeebooks/). His books have received good responses. He is also an active contributor to the ASP.NET community on Quora (https://www.quora.com/profile/Mugil-Ragu). He likes to help readers with queries regarding ASP.NET.
Read more about Mugilan T. S. Ragupathi

Anuraj Parameswaran

Anuraj Parameswaran is a seasoned IT expert with over 19 years of experience, starting in 2004, with a strong focus on Azure and .NET technologies. Currently serving as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Socxo Solutions Pvt. Ltd., he has received seven prestigious Microsoft MVP awards. Anuraj actively participates in mentoring programs, delivers speeches at various events, and contributes extensively to both Microsoft and Azure communities. His commitment to sharing knowledge and embracing lifelong learning is exemplified by his involvement as a technical reviewer for Packt books.
Read more about Anuraj Parameswaran

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