POCO Controllers in ASP.NET MVC 6

A new feature coming in ASP.NET MVC 6 is the ability to use POCO (Plain Old CLR Object) classes as controllers. Meaning no need for a base class or interface implementation

A class will be discovered as a valid controller if the following is true.

• Controller class has a Controller suffix

• Containing project references one of the following assemblies:

  • Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc
  • Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc.Core
  • Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc.ModelBinding
  • Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc.Razor
  • Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc.Razor.Host
  • Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc.TagHelpers

POCO controllers support property or constructor injection via the DefaultControllerFactory giving access to things like View DATA or the current HTTP request.

public class ExamplePOCOController
{
    private readonly IUrlHelper _urlHelper;
   
    public ExamplePOCOController(IUrlHelper urlHelper){
        _urlHelper = urlHelper;
    }
    
    public string SayHello()
    {
        return new ContentResult() { Content = "Hello, I'm a POCO controller" };
    }
}