Custom View Locations for Pages, Blocks and more

Background

In a typical Episerver, or MVC Applicaton for that matter, the Views specified in a Controller are resolved by paths defined in the System.Web.Mvc.RazorViewEngine.

The paths for Views are:

• "~/Views/{1}/{0}.cshtml"
• "~/Views/Shared/{0}.cshtml"

In Episerver Page Controllers, we need to specify an Index-method with the Page-type as method parameter, like this:

public class StartPageController : PageController<StartPage>
{
    public ActionResult Index(StartPage currentPage)
    {
        return View(currentPage);
    }
}

If we take a look at the paths above, the name of the Controller (except -"Controller") will be used at "{1}", and the name of the Action is used at "{0}", meaning default View path for our Controller above will be:

• "~/Views/StartPage/Index.cshtml"

Flooding of "Index.cshtml" files

If you like me, use ReSharper and namely the "Navigation -> Search Everywhere/Go to Type" function to navigate/find your Views files, the amount of Index.cshtml files you'd end up - by default - becomes annoying. You probably already know this, but the files and folders in your Website project, will be something like this:

• Views
  • StartPage
    • Index.cshtml
  • LandingPage
    • Index.cshtml
  • CasePage
    • Index.cshtml
  • ArticlePage
    • Index.cshtml
  • Etc. etc.

Thankfully, we can make up for that!

Creating a custom ViewEngine

Go ahead and create a new class that inherits System.Web.Mvc.RazorViewEngine. Like this:

public class EpiserverViewEngine : System.Web.Mvc.RazorViewEngine
{
}

To define your own paths for Views (Pages and Catalog-nodes) and PartialViews (Blocks, Partials), add a constructor and set the value of ViewLocationFormats and PartialViewLocationFormats. Like this:

public class EpiserverViewEngine : System.Web.Mvc.RazorViewEngine
{
    public EpiserverViewEngine()
    {
        var partialViewLocations = new[]
        {
            "~/Views/Blocks/{1}.cshtml",
            "~/Views/Shared/{0}.cshtml",

            "~/Views/Blocks/{1}/{0}.cshtml",
            "~/Views/Shared/{1}/{0}.cshtml"
        };

        var viewLocations = new[]
        {
            "~/Views/Pages/{1}.cshtml",
            "~/Views/Nodes/{1}.cshtml",
            "~/Views/Catalog/{1}.cshtml",

            "~/Views/Pages/{1}/{0}.cshtml",
            "~/Views/Nodes/{1}/{0}.cshtml",
            "~/Views/Catalog/{1}/{0}.cshtml"
        };

        PartialViewLocationFormats = partialViewLocations;
        ViewLocationFormats = viewLocations;
    }
}

The above paths are the ones I use, and it gives much more flexibility. 

Potential problem

I've seen other examples of this where the paths above, are all set to the ViewLocationFormats property - and that includes both Views and PartialViews. This results in Episerver/MVC potentially resolving PartialViews as regular Views. And as we know, a PartialView should not be rendered with a Layout, which also includes model inheriting being a requirement.

I was trying to render a ContentArea in which I had inserted a Block of mine, and that resulted in an exception with the message:

The model item passed into the dictionary is of type 'EPiServer.Core.ContentArea', but this dictionary requires a model item of type 'Namespace.IPageViewModel<T>'

It took me quite some time debugging why this became a problem suddenly. When it finally struck me, that the PartialView belonging to my Block was being resolved as a regular View. So talk about a eureka-experience!

Register your ViewEngine

To register your new EpiserverViewEngine, create an InitializationModule - like this:

[InitializableModule]
[ModuleDependency(typeof(EPiServer.Web.InitializationModule))]
public class ViewEngineInitializationModule : IInitializableModule
{
    public void Initialize(InitializationEngine context)
    {
        System.Web.Mvc.ViewEngines.Engines.Add(new EpiserverViewEngine());
    }

    public void Uninitialize(InitializationEngine context) {}
}

You are now ready to use it. You can leave your StartPageController (example above), and use paths like these instead:

• Views/
  • Pages/
    • StartPage.cshtml
    • LandingPage.cshtml
    • CasePage.cshtml
    • ArticlePage/ (Folder to bundle stuff together)
      • Index.cshtml
      • _MyArticlePagePartial.cshtml
  • Blocks/
    • NewsletterBlock.cshtml
    • TeaserBlock.cshtml

Feel free to use this, modify it and happy coding!

/Kristian