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Asked: 2026-05-11T02:42:17+00:00

Some texts on ASP.NET MVC state that there are no runat server tags, even

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Some texts on ASP.NET MVC state that ‘there are no runat server tags’, even this MSDN article says this, when, right above that statement there is a code example with a runat server tag in the HEAD element:

And on StackOverflow conversations I read

‘The fact that you want to use ‘runat=server’ controls means that you should be doing a traditional ASP.NET app.

And of course in the Site.Master page there are runat server attributes in the ContentPlaceHolders.

The only thing I see absent from ASP.NET MVC in terms of runat server is the ubiquitous FORM runat=’server’ tag on each .aspx page/view.

But what about the rest of the runat server tags in ASP.NET MVC, what do people mean when they say that ASP.NET MVC does not have these?

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  1. If you use a runat=’server’ tag on ANY element, such as a DIV it will render that code as a separate method in the compiled page.

    If you’re converting ‘legacy’ code its a good idea to remove all runat tags right up front otherwise you end up in a situation where code like the following gives you an error.

    <% foreach (var cat in cats) { %>     <div runat='server'>          <span class='name'> <%= cat.name %> </span> is a          <span class='breed'> <%= cat.breed %> </span>     </div>  <% } %>

    This code will fail telling you some craziness about 'cat' being out of scope. Eventually when you look at the full generated code you’ll see that the <div> has been generated as its whole own method – which is of course a different scope with no cats in sight.

    Back for a second to the default template for an MVC application:

    You’ll see the current template gives you this for the head :

    <head runat='server'>     <meta http-equiv='Content-Type' content='text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' />     <title><%= Html.Encode(ViewData['Title']) %></title>     <link href='../../Content/Site.css' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' /> </head>

    This left me wondering — if we’re using <%= syntax to write the title directly into the title tag – then why would we need to make it runat?

    It turns out as I suspected that the codebehind for head looks for an existing value inside the title tag (which would have been output here by <%= Html.Encode(ViewData['Title']) %>. If it finds one (which will be the case for the all sample views in the MVC template) then it won’t do anything further. If no title exists (if ViewData[‘Title’] is null or empty) it will default to whatever is defined in your view by the Title attribute :

    <%@ Page Language='C#' MasterPageFile='~/Views/Shared/RRMaster.Master'  Title='View Products' AutoEventWireup='true' CodeBehind='ViewProduct.aspx.cs' Inherits='RR_MVC.Views.Products.ViewProduct' %>

    In my master page I would have removed the runat='server' tag – since I dont think I’ll ever want to populate my page title from the view’s Title property. But I’m holding off doing this pending Phil’s promised blog post on the subject – in case the runat server gives me anything useful for my CSS and JS too.

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