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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-27T02:02:08+00:00

Let’s say I have the following structure in my ASP.NET MVC 3 application. Items

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Let’s say I have the following structure in my ASP.NET MVC 3 application.

  • Items
    • Index.cshtml
  • Categories
  • Shared
    • _Index.cshtml
    • _Site.cshtml
    • Index.cshtml

Both Index.cshtml files use _Index.cshtml as the layout page and _Index is nested within the _Site layout.

Items/Index implements the optional sections defined in _Index. Shared/Index is empty.

The Items/Index view works fine. Since Categories doesn’t have an Index, it uses the one in the Shared folder. This does not work.

It throws the error

The “RenderBody” method has not been called for layout page “~/Views/Shared/_Index.cshtml”.

If _Site calls RenderBody, and _Index inherits from _Site, doesn’t the content in _Index satisfy the required RenderBody call and Shared/Index.cshtml can be blank?

The reason I ask is because I have an ASP.NET MVC 1 application that implemented this structure using Master pages and it worked fine, but converting it to MVC 3 with Razor is causing this issue.

Here is the basic outline of what I’m describing:

_Site.cshtml

<!DOCTYPE html>
// head
<body>
  @RenderBody()
</body>

_Index.cshtml

@{
    Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Site.cshtml";
}

<div id="sub-menu">
  // Markup
</div>

// More markup

@RenderSection("SectionOne", required: false)

@RenderSection("SectionTwo", required: false)

Items/Index.cshtml (Working)

@{
    Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Index.cshtml";
}

@section SectionOne {
  // Markup
}

Shared/Index.cshtml (RenderBody error)

@{
    Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Index.cshtml";
}

// Rest of this file is empty
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I’m not sure i follow you completely, but ALL layout pages have to have a RenderBody(), even if they’re nested. RenderBody() renders the content for the “child”. When you have nested layout pages the nested layout is the child of the parent, and it’s output must be rendered in the RenderBody. Likewise, the child of the child has to render it’s body into the middle page.

    To put it another way, anything that’s not in a @section is considered the “body”. So, _Index.cshtml needs to render it’s body (Index.cshtml) and _Site.html has to render it’s body (_Index.cshtml). It goes up the chain.

    EDIT:

    It appears that a layout has to render at least one section, be it with a RenderBody() or a RenderSection(). While it may be true that the sections are optional, rendering at least one section is not. Either add an empty section to your Index.cshtml or add a RenderBody() to your _Index.cshtml.

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