Creating a View Before the Controller in ASP.NET MVC

Question

I created a Razor View by creating a new folder in my Solution under the Views folder, and then I right clicked that folder and selected "Add View".

Later, I went to my Controller folder and right clicked it, selecting "Add Controller". However, now I want to attach the view I created to my controller and it Visual Studio does not recognize that my view exists when I do:

return View("MyViewName");

How do I make Visual Studio recognize my already existing view? I would rather not resolve the issue by using Resharper to create my Razor view (since I've already created the view).

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

No need to write something, your folder must be named as controller. If you want other folder name, then type full path:

return View("~/Views/MyCustomFolder/MyViewName.cshtml");

Answer 2

This is convention over configuration concept of ASP.NET MVC Your controller action should be called the same as view:

public class MyBeautifulController : Controller
{
  public ActionResult MyActionIndex()
  {
    return View();
  }
}

thank your view should be called and located like this: ~/Views/MyBeautiful/MyActionIndex.cshtml

Basically you dropping the last "Controller" in your controller class name.

This is COC (Convention Over Configuration). Now, if you want to call a view that is not called like your action, you will do the following in your action:

public class MyBeautifulController : Controller
{
  public ActionResult MyActionIndex()
  {
    return View("ViewCalledDifferently", new MyModel());
  }
}

and in this case, your view will be called and located like this: ~/Views/MyBeautiful/ViewCalledDifferently.cshtml and will accept MyModel as model type.

Hope this helps.