The ASP.NET MVC framework is a free tool for building websites and web applications using .NET Framework and technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture, ASP.NET MVC 5 provides a flexible and efficient platform for web development.
Microsoft first introduced ASP.NET MVC as part of .NET 3.5, and since then, it has received numerous updates and improvements. In April 2009, Microsoft made the ASP.NET MVC framework open-source, releasing its source code under the Microsoft Public License (MS-PL). This code can be viewed, downloaded, or contributed to on the AspNetWebStack repository on GitHub.
| Version | Release Date | Key Features |
| ASP.NET MVC 1.0 | March 2009 | 1) MVC architecture with Web Forms Engine 2) URL Routing 3) HTML Helpers 4) Auto Binding 5) Ajax Helper |
| ASP.NET MVC 2.0 | March 2010 | 1) Area 2) Html helper methods with lambda expression 3) DataAnnotations attributes 4) Scaffolding 5) Custom template 6) Client-side validation 7) Asynchronous controller |
| ASP.NET MVC 3.0 | January 2011 | 1) Razor view engine 2) Global filters 3) Dependency resolver for IoC 4) ViewBag 5) Remote validation 6) Javascript validation |
| ASP.NET MVC 4.0 | August 2012 | 1) Bundling and minification 2) Mobile project template 3) Support for Windows Azure SDK |
| ASP.NET MVC 5.0 | October 2013 | 1) New scaffolding items 2) Authentication filters 3) ASP.Net Identity 4) Bootstrap support |
| ASP.NET MVC 5.2 | August 2014 | 1) Bug fixes and minor features update 2) Attribute-based routing |
| ASP.NET MVC 5.2.9 – Current | June 2022 |
To use ASP.NET MVC, it can be installed as a NuGet package. For more information on specific versions, check out nuget.org. In Visual Studio, when creating a new ASP.NET MVC project, the latest version of the framework will automatically be added as a NuGet package.
