在dll中集成ASP.NET MVC Razor Views

Question

I have ASP.NET MVC 5.2.6 project, In short, when I want to publish the website, I do not want to publish the Views as loose *.cshtml files in the Views folder, I want to integrate the Views inside a dll.

I found this question , it is talking about compiling the ASP.NET MVC Razor Views, I applied it and it worked for me, and I was able to compile the ASP.NET MVC Razor Views, but I could NOT get rid of them, when I deleted the *.cshtml files, the website is no longer working, that is mean that the views do not go inside a dll.

Here is the Error when I delete the Views folder

which is obviously, say that he could not find the view. Should I write some code to manipulate the Razor search Engine to enforce it to look inside the dll?

Answer 1

The link of the answer you aadded to your post is sufficient during developement process so it helps you to detects all compile errors and not on at execution where views are compiled on the fly.

It's is rare to compile the views into DLL during developement. You need to compile them per view, per folder, per page and control, or into one single DLL only during publishing your application.

So into your publishing profile settings which look like this:

Click on Configure link and after that you will have this dialog window:

In the winfow above you can choose which compiling option you want.

Again you don't need to compile your views into a DLL during developement process. During that process just modify the csproj and it is enough.

Answer 2

This is probably what you are looking for: https://github.com/RazorGenerator/RazorGenerator

This will generate your view files as a single dll for you.

Although I may not totally understand or agree with the reasoning's for this approach to your solution as this doesn't necessarily provide a better security mechanic as dll's can be decompiled and the source taken out. If you have good security within the server and follow best practices having the raw html files may be easier to manage.

Answer 3

After some thinking the only way I can think of even trying what you ask is generating the cshtml files on the fly in code. But I've never even thought of trying that before.

I think the real answers are getting the security policy changed as it is no fit for purpose. Or using something other than ASP.NET MVC.

After all ASP.NET MVC in the end is simply sending files to a client that has requested them.