Retrieve the current view name in ASP.NET MVC?

Question

I have a partial view (control) that's used across several view pages, and I need to pass the name of the current view back to the controller - so if there's e.g. validation errors, I can re-draw the original view.

A workaround way to do it would be (in the controller methods)

var viewName = "Details"; // or whatever
ViewData["viewName"] = viewName;
return(View(viewName, customer));

and then in the partial itself, render it as

<input type="hidden" name="viewName" 
    value="<%=Html.Encode(ViewData["viewName"])%>" />

Question is - is there some property or syntax I can use to retrieve this directly instead of setting it from the controller? I've tried the obvious:

<input type="hidden" name="viewName" 
    value="<%=Html.Encode(this.Name)%>" />

but this doesn't work. What am I missing here?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Well if you don't mind having your code tied to the specific view engine you're using, you can look at the ViewContext.View property and cast it to WebFormView

var viewPath = ((WebFormView)ViewContext.View).ViewPath;

I believe that will get you the view name at the end.

EDIT: Haacked is absolutely spot-on; to make things a bit neater I've wrapped the logic up in an extension method like so:

public static class IViewExtensions {
    public static string GetWebFormViewName(this IView view) {
        if (view is WebFormView) {
            string viewUrl = ((WebFormView)view).ViewPath;
            string viewFileName = viewUrl.Substring(viewUrl.LastIndexOf('/'));
            string viewFileNameWithoutExtension = Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(viewFileName);
            return (viewFileNameWithoutExtension);
        } else {
            throw (new InvalidOperationException("This view is not a WebFormView"));
        }
    }
}

which seems to do exactly what I was after.

Answer 2

I had the same problem and that's how I solved it:

namespace System.Web.Mvc
{
    public static class HtmlHelperExtensions
    {
        public static string CurrentViewName(this HtmlHelper html)
        {
            return System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(
                ((RazorView)html.ViewContext.View).ViewPath
            );
        }
    }
}

Then in the view:

var name = Html.CurrentViewName();

or simply

@Html.CurrentViewName()

Answer 3

If you just want the action name then this would do the trick:

public static string ViewName(this HtmlHelper html)
{
    return html.ViewContext.RouteData.GetRequiredString("action");
}

Answer 4

If you want to get the filename from within a partial view, this seems to work:

public static class HtmlHelperExtensions
{
    public static string GetViewFileName(this HtmlHelper html, object view)
    {
        return @"\\"+ view.GetType().FullName.Replace("ASP._Page_", "").Replace("_cshtml", ".cshtml").Replace("_", @"\\");
    }
}

And in the partial view, you should do something like this:

var filename = Html.GetViewFileName(this);

or this:

@Html.GetViewFileName(this)

Please do comment if this is not a good approach - any alternatives?

Answer 5

Easiest solution is using ViewBag.

public ActionResult Index()
    {
        ViewBag.CurrentView = "Index";
        return View();
    }

On the cshtml page

@{
var viewName = ViewBag.CurrentView;
}

Or,

((RazorView)ViewContext.View).ViewPath

Answer 6

If you are looking for solution for asp.net core you can use:

@System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(ViewContext.View.Path)

This will return the current view name.

Answer 7

Shouldn't you be using a validation method like Nerd Dinner implements?

That way you don't actually need to do all this and you can just return the View.

Answer 8

I had the same issue recently and the snippet of code I came up with solved my issue.

The only downfall is that Request.UrlReferrer could be null in some cases. Bit late but seemed to work for me and I covered all the bases of Request.UrlReferrer not being null.

 if (Request.UrlReferrer != null)
 {
      var viewUrl = Request.UrlReferrer.ToString();
      var actionResultName = viewUrl.Substring(viewUrl.LastIndexOf('/'));
      var viewNameWithoutExtension = actionResultName.TrimStart('/');
 }

Answer 9

You can use Razor:

in your View header

@{
    ViewData["Title"] = "YourViewName";    
}

in your View HTML

@{
   var _nameCurrentView = ViewContext.ViewData["Title"];
}

use in your html the variable @_nameCurrentView

  <li class="breadcrumb-item active">@_nameCurrentView</li>

or use in your action

  ViewData["Title"]

Answer 10

Just wrote a blog thingy about this

http://www.antix.co.uk/A-Developers-Blog/Targeting-Pages-with-CSS-in-ASP.NET-MVC

  /// <summary>
  /// <para>Get a string from the route data</para>
  /// </summary>
  public static string RouteString(
      this ViewContext context, string template) {

   foreach (var value in context.RouteData.Values) {

    template = template.Replace(string.Format("{{{0}}}",
            value.Key.ToLower()),
            value.Value == null
                ? string.Empty
                : value.Value.ToString().ToLower());
   }

   return template;
  }

usage

<body class="<%= ViewContext.RouteString("{controller}_{action}") %>">

EDIT : Yes this is not going to give you the view name as the first comment states, it gives you the controller and action. But leaving it here as its valuable to know that it doesn't.