Asp.net-mvc – MVC 4 @Scripts “does not exist”

asp.net-mvcrazor

I have just created an ASP.NET MVC 4 project and used Visual Studio 2012 RC to create a Controller and Razor Views for Index and Create Actions.

When I came to run the application, and browsed to the Create view, the following error was shown:

Compiler Error Message: CS0103: The name 'Scripts' does not exist in
the current context

The problem is the following code which was added automatically to the bottom of the View:

@section Scripts {
    @Scripts.Render("~/bundles/jqueryval")
}

Why does Scripts not exist?

I looked at the base Web Page class in Assembly System.Web.Mvc.dll, v4.0.0.0

I can see the following helper properties available:

  • Ajax
  • Html
  • Url

But nothing named Scripts.

Any ideas?

EDIT:

My Web.config file looks like this (untouched from the one that Visual Studio created):

  <system.web.webPages.razor>
    <host factoryType="System.Web.Mvc.MvcWebRazorHostFactory, System.Web.Mvc, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" />
    <pages pageBaseType="System.Web.Mvc.WebViewPage">
      <namespaces>
        <add namespace="System.Web.Mvc" />
        <add namespace="System.Web.Mvc.Ajax" />
        <add namespace="System.Web.Mvc.Html" />
        <add namespace="System.Web.Routing" />
      </namespaces>
    </pages>
  </system.web.webPages.razor>

EDIT #2:

People are blogging about using the @Scripts helper:

Yet having just installed Visual Studio 2012 RC onto a fresh Windows 8 install I am still unable to use @Scripts even though Visual Studio adds it to the generated View!

Solutions are presented below.

I am not sure how to close this, because in the end an update seemed to resolve the issue. I double checked I had performed a clean install, using a new project. But the same failing project I had made works fine now after various updates and no manual obvious intervention. Thanks for all of the thoughts but there was definitely an issue at the time 😉

Best Answer

The key here is to add 

 <add namespace="System.Web.Optimization" />

to BOTH web.config files. My scenario was that I had System.Web.Optimization reference in both project and the main/root web.config but @Scripts still didn't work properly. You need to add the namespace reference to the Views web.config file to make it work.

UPDATE:

Since the release of MVC 4 System.Web.Optimization is now obsolete. If you're starting with a blank solution you will need to install the following nuget package:

Install-Package Microsoft.AspNet.Web.Optimization

You will still need to reference System.Web.Optimization in your web.config files. For more information see this topic:

How to add reference to System.Web.Optimization for MVC-3-converted-to-4 app

As many pointed out, restart of VS could be required after the above steps to make this work.

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