Question

I have set up the Display Mode in Application Start event as

DisplayModeProvider.Instance.Modes.Insert( 0, new DefaultDisplayMode( "iPhone" ){
ContextCondition = ( context => 
    context.GetOverriddenUserAgent( ).IndexOf( 
        "iPhone", 
        StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase ) >= 0 ) } );

Then in the controller I have return View where I specify the view name:

return View( “~/Views/Common/User/Login.cshtml”, viewModel );

And if I visit the page from the iPhone it will go directly to Login View

If I do not specify the view name:

return View( viewModel );

In this case from the iPhone I see the Login.iPhone.cshtml

Question: Is it possible to specify the name of the view but some how the DisplayModeProvider will select general or iPhone version of the cshtml file?

Answer 1

I don’t normally like to resurrect old questions but as this one was never answered and this is one I had particular trouble finding an answer to myself, it may be worth having an answer for anyone else who comes across the same problem.

You could add your additional locations to the ViewLocationFormats and PartialViewLocationFormats collections for the ViewEngines you are using. This way you could just specify the view name as tvanfosson suggests and MVC would find the file correctly, which should allow the mobile overriding to work it’s magic.

Here is some code I use to override the PartialViewLocationFormats, you could also do the same using ViewLocationFormats. This is added in global.asax as part of application_start

            ViewEngines.Engines.Clear();
            var razorViewEngine = new RazorViewEngine
            {
                PartialViewLocationFormats = new[]
                {
                    "~/Views/{1}/{0}.cshtml",
                    "~/Views/Shared/{0}.cshtml",
                    "~/Views/{1}/EditorTemplates/{0}.cshtml",
                    "~/Views/{1}/DisplayTemplates/{0}.cshtml",
                    "~/Views/Shared/DisplayTemplates/{0}.cshtml"
                }
            };

Because this method involves clearing the viewengines collection, you will need to add in all locationFormats, even the standard ones, for all the view engines you are using.