Asp.net-mvc – Does a view exist in ASP.NET MVC

asp.net-mvc

Is it possible to determine if a specific view name exists from within a controller before rendering the view?

I have a requirement to dynamically determine the name of the view to render. If a view exists with that name then I need to render that view. If there is no view by the custom name then I need to render a default view.

I'd like to do something similar to the following code within my controller:

public ActionResult Index()
{
    var name = SomeMethodToGetViewName();

    // The 'ViewExists' method is what I've been unable to find.
    if (ViewExists(name))
    {
        retun View(name);
    }
    else
    {
        return View();
    }
}

Best Answer

 private bool ViewExists(string name)
 {
     ViewEngineResult result = ViewEngines.Engines.FindView(ControllerContext, name, null);
     return (result.View != null);
 }

For those looking for a copy/paste extension method:

public static class ControllerExtensions
{
    public static bool ViewExists(this Controller controller, string name)
    {
        ViewEngineResult result = ViewEngines.Engines.FindView(controller.ControllerContext, name, null);
        return (result.View != null);
    }
}

Related Solutions

Asp.net-mvc – Compile Views in ASP.NET MVC

From the readme word doc for RC1 (not indexed by google)

ASP.NET Compiler Post-Build Step

Currently, errors within a view file are not detected until run time. To let you detect these errors at compile time, ASP.NET MVC projects now include an MvcBuildViews property, which is disabled by default. To enable this property, open the project file and set the MvcBuildViews property to true, as shown in the following example:

<Project ToolsVersion="3.5" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews>
  </PropertyGroup>

Note Enabling this feature adds some overhead to the build time.

You can update projects that were created with previous releases of MVC to include build-time validation of views by performing the following steps:

Open the project file in a text editor.
Add the following element under the top-most <PropertyGroup> element: <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews>
At the end of the project file, uncomment the <Target Name="AfterBuild"> element and modify it to match the following:

<Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(MvcBuildViews)'=='true'">
    <AspNetCompiler VirtualPath="temp" PhysicalPath="$(ProjectDir)\..\$(ProjectName)" />
</Target>

C# – How to create a dropdownlist from an enum in ASP.NET MVC

For MVC v5.1 use Html.EnumDropDownListFor

@Html.EnumDropDownListFor(
    x => x.YourEnumField,
    "Select My Type", 
    new { @class = "form-control" })

For MVC v5 use EnumHelper

@Html.DropDownList("MyType", 
   EnumHelper.GetSelectList(typeof(MyType)) , 
   "Select My Type", 
   new { @class = "form-control" })

For MVC 5 and lower

I rolled Rune's answer into an extension method:

namespace MyApp.Common
{
    public static class MyExtensions{
        public static SelectList ToSelectList<TEnum>(this TEnum enumObj)
            where TEnum : struct, IComparable, IFormattable, IConvertible
        {
            var values = from TEnum e in Enum.GetValues(typeof(TEnum))
                select new { Id = e, Name = e.ToString() };
            return new SelectList(values, "Id", "Name", enumObj);
        }
    }
}

This allows you to write:

ViewData["taskStatus"] = task.Status.ToSelectList();

by using MyApp.Common