CODEWITHSUNDEEP
asp.net-mvc
Kristian Damian
Kristian Damian

Reputation: 1356

How does ASP.NET MVC link views and controllers?

What code does Visual Studio add (and where is it put?) when you right-click the controller method to link to the view?

How can one do this (link the controller & view) without Visual Studio?

Upvotes: 25

Views: 42511

Answers (4)

Rajeesh
Rajeesh

Reputation: 4495

By default asp.net MVC uses FormViewEngine, which is an implementation of IViewEngine. IViewEngine has got two methods called "FindView" and "FindPartialView" which actually locates the view file from "Views/Controller/" folder.

Thanks,
Rajeesh

Upvotes: 5

Alexander Taran
Alexander Taran

Reputation: 6725

It is all by convention. You place your views in the Views/ControllerName folder for every controller and that's the default location for framework to look for. But it is not a must in any way.

When in your controller you write 

return View();

Framework assumes you want the view with the same name as action name and looks for it in Views/Controller/ folder. Then Views/Shared.

But in your actions you can write 

return View("ViewName");

Framework will look for a View named "ViewName" then in same folders.

So default name for a view would be the name of action being executed. And that's a convention.

Upvotes: 36

Neil T.
Neil T.

Reputation: 3320

Visual Studio uses templates to create the default views. The templates are located in the [Visual Studio Install Directory]\Common7\IDE\ItemTemplates[CSharp|VisualBasic]\Web\MVC\CodeTemplates folder.

If you wish to create an MVC .ASPX page manually, you need to simply create a blank page and provide a Page directive with the following attributes:

  • Language ("C#" or "VB")
  • MasterPageFile (default is ~/Views/Shared/Site.Master)
  • Inherits (for strongly-typed models, use ViewPage<ModelClassName>; otherwise ViewPage)

Example: 

<%@ Page Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master" Inherits="ViewPage<ListCompanyManagerDetailsViewModel>" %>

For user controls (.ASCX), the same rules apply, except the MasterPageFile attribute is not used and you inherit from ViewUserControl.

Example:

<%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="ViewUserControl<Contact>" %>

P.S. The reason that namespaces do not precede any of my class names is because I declared them in the section of my web.config.

Upvotes: 1

DM.
DM.

Reputation: 1847

Visual Studio will create a Folder (if it doesn't already exist) under ~/Views/{YourControllerName} and put your view in there. If it doesn't find it in there it will look in the ~/Views/Shared folder. If you want to manually create a view you need to add your page to one of those folders, preferably the ~/Views/{YourControllerName} folder. Hit up the NerdDinner tutorial to see this in action.

http://nerddinnerbook.s3.amazonaws.com/Intro.htm

Upvotes: 1

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