Question

I found this question Can’t use relative paths with areas in ASP.NET MVC 2 which is the same issue I am having. Is this still the case in MVC3?

Is there a way to keep content files in an area relative to the area?

So that a layout file in an area can have something like

Without having to either make a fully qualified link, requiring the areas directory and the area name or the solution of the above question which requires a check for each area on each request.

update/edit

I’ve decided to use both the solution in the above question and the one below (html helper) – depending on the project/situation. My implementation of the above uses app.setting to store the area names and the extensions so that I can just have the module as part of my library.

var context = HttpContext.Current;
var path = context.Request.Path;
var list = ...       //code that gets from app.config and then saves it
var extensions = ... // to the cache as non-removable with a dependency on web.config
foreach (var area in list)
{
   if (!path.Contains(area + "/")) continue;
   foreach (var extension in extensions)
   {
      if (path.EndsWith("." + extension))
      {
         context.RewritePath(path.Replace(area + "/", "Areas/" + area + "/"));
      }

    }
 }

Answer 1

You can try creating an extention on HtmlHelper to work this out:

public static string Image(this HtmlHelper html, string imagePath)
{
    var area = html.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["area"];
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(area))
        area = "Areas/" + area + "/";
    return VirtualPathUtility.ToAbsolute("~/" + area + "Content/img/" + imagePath);
}

so in your view you can use:

<img src="@Html.Image("myimage.png")" alt="..." />

I didn’t try the code so correct me if I’m wrong.