Question

I have an ASP.NET MVC 3 application with 2 areas which are seperate projects referenced from the main application. Both the area projects sit with the Areas directory of the main application. I was wondering if i can call DisplayTemplates from one area in another.

For example i have added the following template in the ~/Areas/Area1/Views/Shared/DisplayTemplates/Test.cshtml file:

@model string
Test Display Template

Now within a view in the Area2 project i say:

@Html.Display("Test", "~/Areas/Area1/Views/Shared/DisplayTemplates/Test.cshtml")

But it doesn’t display anything. I was wondering if someone could let me know if this is possible and what i am doing wrong.

Thanks

Answer 1

If you would like to share templates across Areas, place the template in the root View directory.

Instead of;

/Areas/Area1/Views/Shared/DisplayTemplates/Test.cshtml

Place it here;

/Views/Shared/DisplayTemplates/Test.cshtml

Also, the second argument of your Display helper method call;

@Html.Display("Test", "~/Areas/Area1/Views/Shared/DisplayTemplates/Test.cshtml")

Should be this;

@Html.Display("Test", "Test")

As the second argument is your template name.
The MVC view engine will track down the template on name, not directory. This is a cleaner approach.