We posted a complete Contact Manager sample ASP.NET MVC Application at the www.ASP.net/mvc website. The source code is available in both C# and VB.NET.

The application is intentionally simple. The goal was to provide members of the ASP.NET community with an application that they could use to quickly learn how to build new applications with ASP.NET MVC.

The Contact Manager application is an address book application. The application enables you to list, create, edit, and delete contacts.

I built the application over multiple iterations. With each iteration, I gradually improved the application. The goal of this multiple iteration approach was to enable you to understand the reason for each change.

Iteration #1 – Create the application. In the first iteration, we create the Contact Manager in the simplest way possible. We add support for basic database operations: Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD).

Iteration #2 – Make the application look nice. In this iteration, we improve the appearance of the application by modifying the default ASP.NET MVC view master page and cascading style sheet.

Iteration #3 – Add form validation. In the third iteration, we add basic form validation. We prevent people from submitting a form without completing required form fields. We also validate email addresses and phone numbers.

Iteration #4 – Make the application loosely coupled. In this third iteration, we take advantage of several software design patterns to make it easier to maintain and modify the Contact Manager application. For example, we refactor our application to use the Repository pattern and the Dependency Injection pattern.

Iteration #5 – Create unit tests. In the fifth iteration, we make our application easier to maintain and modify by adding unit tests. We mock our data model classes and build unit tests for our controllers and validation logic.

Iteration #6 – Use test-driven development. In this sixth iteration, we add new functionality to our application by writing unit tests first and writing code against the unit tests. In this iteration, we add contact groups.

Iteration #7 – Add Ajax functionality. In the seventh iteration, we improve the responsiveness and performance of our application by adding support for Ajax.

Each iteration has an associated tutorial. You also can download the Visual Studio Solution associated with each iteration. Here is a direct link to the Contact Manager tutorials:

http://www.asp.net/learn/mvc/#MVC_SampleApp