How To Migrate MVC 3 Application To MVC 5

Introduction

In this article we discuss about how to migrate an MVC 3 application to MVC 5.

Step 1: Open your MVC 3 application in Visual Studio and change the .net framework to 4.5 as MVC 5 runs on this framework.

Project → Properties → Application → Target Framework → 4.5



Note: targetFramework in Web.Config will be changing to 4.5

Step 2: Install Asp.Net MVC 5 version through Package Manager Console.

Run this Command: Install-Package Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc -Version 5.2.3

Nuget Package Manage → Package Manager Console and run above command.



Step 3: Go to Web.Config(root level) and change,

<add key="webpages:Version" value="1.0.0.0" />
to
<add key="webpages:Version" value="3.0.0.0" />

Step 4: Check System.Web.Razor, System.Web.Helpers, System.WebPages.Razor versions. These all should be having versions 3.0.0.0. If they don't have Version 3.0.0.0, Install these packages using Nuget.

Step 5: Now, Build the solution. It this point you may get the following error

Error CS0104 'Compare' is an ambiguous reference between 'System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.CompareAttribute' and 'System.Web.Mvc.CompareAttribute'

to solve the above issue add using CompareAttribute = System.Web.Mvc.CompareAttribute; in the namespace.

Step 6: Now, Open Web.Config(root level) and change the System.Web.Mvc version to 5.0.0.0,