Question

In Asp.net MVC Razor we can use the _ViewStart.cshtml file to define the default layout for our views. That is fine, but why did we loose the web.config setting that was available with web forms engine in system.web > pages.masterPageFile setting?

Why is that important? Because web.config allow automatic environment transformations.

Manual solution

Of course we can put the default layout name in either appSettings and refer to that in the _ViewStart.cshtml or if we have application specific configuration section add additional property which makes things a bit more clear and polished…

But is there any other way that doesn’t include code?

Asp.net MVC team should add the layoutFile configuration setting to system.web.webPages.razor > pages element, shouldn’t they?

The main question is

Am I missing something that is built-in and I don’t know about? Something that requires no code at all similar to WebForms engine?

Answer 1

Asp.net MVC team should add the layoutFile configuration setting to
system.web.webPages.razor > pages element, shouldn’t they?

Feel free to open a ticket on the MS Connect site.

But while waiting for your ticket to be analyzed by the development teams and probably added in a future version of the ASP.NET MVC framework and the WebPages you could always do the following in your _ViewStart.cshtml:

@{
    Layout = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Layout"];
}

and then define the layout in your web.config file:

<appSettings>
    <add key="Layout" value="~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml" />
    ...
</appSettings>

Another possibility is to write a custom razor view engine in which you set the layout dynamically.