How does RenderPartial figure out where to find a view?

Question

Ok Probably Google is not working, and I recall it a while ago, but I can not find it.

I have a view and a partial view in different directories. In the view, I say @Html.RenderPartial("[partial view name]"); how does RenderPartial figure out where to look? It should be a convention, but what is it?

My opinion is in the WebRoot\Views\Admin\ folder and partially located in WebRoot\Views\Admin\Partials

Not sure if this is configured correctly.

I am using MVC 3 (Razor engine)

Answer 1

you can, but you need to register routes to tell the view engine where to look. For example, in Global.asax.cs you will have:

 ViewEngines.Engines.Add(new RDDBViewEngine()); 

and class:

 public class RDDBViewEngine : RazorViewEngine { private static string[] NewPartialViewFormats = new[] { "~/Views/Shared/Partials/{0}.cshtml" , "~/Views/{0}.cshtml" }; public RDDBViewEngine() { base.PartialViewLocationFormats = base.PartialViewLocationFormats.Union(NewPartialViewFormats).ToArray(); } } 

{0} for all subfolders with partial.

Answer 2

The localization of views depends on the ViewEngine object. WebFormViewEngine was the one originally shipped with MVC 1, and you can see the paths it is looking for in codeplex . Note that he is looking for the same paths for representations and partial representations.

CshtmlViewEngine (Razor) introduced with MVC 3 (or rather WebMatrix) looks for similar locations, but looks for different extensions.

Answer 3

Each view engine registered in your application has a list of file templates that will be executed when accessing the view using a simple name (you can also link to it using the full path, for example ~\Views\Admin\View.aspx )

In MVC 3, the properties of the viewer define the patterns to search (this applies to the Razor and WebForms viewers).

Answer 4

Instead of subclassing RazorView (as suggested by zdrsh), you can simply modify the existing RazorViewEngine PartialViewLocationFormats property. This code is in Application_Start:

 System.Web.Mvc.RazorViewEngine rve = (RazorViewEngine)ViewEngines.Engines .Where(e=>e.GetType()==typeof(RazorViewEngine)) .FirstOrDefault(); string[] additionalPartialViewLocations = new[] { "~/Views/[YourCustomPathHere]" }; if(rve!=null) { rve.PartialViewLocationFormats = rve.PartialViewLocationFormats .Union( additionalPartialViewLocations ) .ToArray(); }