Question

Is it possible to define more folders for ASP.NET MVC to search for Views or Partials?

For example, if I browse to /Home/Index and the Index action returns View(), ASP.NET MVC will look at the following locations:

• ~/Views/Home/Index.aspx
• ~/Views/Home/Index.ascx
• ~/Views/Shared/Index.aspx
• ~/Views/Shared/Index.ascx
• ~/Views/Home/Index.cshtml
• ~/Views/Home/Index.vbhtml
• ~/Views/Shared/Index.cshtml
• ~/Views/Shared/Index.vbhtml

I want to create another folder, say ~/Views/PartivalViews/, that will be searched.

Obviously I’m looking for this as a tidy way to store my PartialViews.

Answer 1

You could write a custom view engine where you could specify additional folders where ASP.NET MVC will look for views.

The idea here is to write a class deriving from RazorViewEngine and in its constructor set the various properties such as:

• AreaViewLocationFormats
• AreaMasterLocationFormats
• AreaPartialViewLocationFormats
• ViewLocationFormats
• MasterLocationFormats
• PartialViewLocationFormats

Here are the default values that you could feel free to override:

public RazorViewEngine(IViewPageActivator viewPageActivator) : base(viewPageActivator)
{
    base.AreaViewLocationFormats = new string[] { "~/Areas/{2}/Views/{1}/{0}.cshtml", "~/Areas/{2}/Views/{1}/{0}.vbhtml", "~/Areas/{2}/Views/Shared/{0}.cshtml", "~/Areas/{2}/Views/Shared/{0}.vbhtml" };
    base.AreaMasterLocationFormats = new string[] { "~/Areas/{2}/Views/{1}/{0}.cshtml", "~/Areas/{2}/Views/{1}/{0}.vbhtml", "~/Areas/{2}/Views/Shared/{0}.cshtml", "~/Areas/{2}/Views/Shared/{0}.vbhtml" };
    base.AreaPartialViewLocationFormats = new string[] { "~/Areas/{2}/Views/{1}/{0}.cshtml", "~/Areas/{2}/Views/{1}/{0}.vbhtml", "~/Areas/{2}/Views/Shared/{0}.cshtml", "~/Areas/{2}/Views/Shared/{0}.vbhtml" };
    base.ViewLocationFormats = new string[] { "~/Views/{1}/{0}.cshtml", "~/Views/{1}/{0}.vbhtml", "~/Views/Shared/{0}.cshtml", "~/Views/Shared/{0}.vbhtml" };
    base.MasterLocationFormats = new string[] { "~/Views/{1}/{0}.cshtml", "~/Views/{1}/{0}.vbhtml", "~/Views/Shared/{0}.cshtml", "~/Views/Shared/{0}.vbhtml" };
    base.PartialViewLocationFormats = new string[] { "~/Views/{1}/{0}.cshtml", "~/Views/{1}/{0}.vbhtml", "~/Views/Shared/{0}.cshtml", "~/Views/Shared/{0}.vbhtml" };
    base.FileExtensions = new string[] { "cshtml", "vbhtml" };
}

And then simply register your custom view engine in Application_Start:

ViewEngines.Engines.Clear();
ViewEngines.Engines.Add(new MyRazorViewEngine());

In this example I have removed all other default view engines (WebForms and Razor) before registering our custom one.