return view() for all actions in controller .net mvc

Question

I have one controller HomeController.cs.

In this controller I have some actions like about,contact etc.

If I want that will work I have to defined function to each view:

public ActionResult Index()
    {
        return View();
    }

    public ActionResult About()
    {
        return View();
    }

I want that for all the requests to the controller it will be return the View(), so I will not have to defined a function to each view.

*Update I want to know if there is some handler that will work something like this:

protected override void OnActionCall()
    {
        return View();
    }

What's the point here? This goes against the MVC structure principles. — emerson.marini, Mar 11 '15 at 10:27
Why? I have the same functionality in some actions. What's wrong? — Mosh Feu, Mar 11 '15 at 10:28
So you're not being very clear on what you're trying to achieve. Please elaborate. — emerson.marini, Mar 11 '15 at 10:29
I don't understand what's not clear. I don't want to take care of each View that I add to the controller because in all the cases I just want to present the View but not change anything in the controller. — Mosh Feu, Mar 11 '15 at 10:32
What you're doing is exactly that. Responding to an `action` by presenting a `view`, via the `controller`. What's to change here? — emerson.marini, Mar 11 '15 at 10:34
How can you expect to have an _orphan_ `action` with nothing on the `controller` to respond to? — emerson.marini, Mar 11 '15 at 10:37
You mean to say, if you're not doing anything in your action method except that single return statement, then you don't want to have that action method in your controller, is it? — Mox Shah, Mar 11 '15 at 10:37
I think you'll need a custom `controller` factory: [Adding a controller factory to ASP MVC](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/568137/adding-a-controller-factory-to-asp-mvc) — emerson.marini, Mar 11 '15 at 10:38
Have a look at @jumpingcode answer, it answers your question. — Mox Shah, Mar 11 '15 at 10:41

ediblecode · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-11T10:46:40.727

3

WARNING: I would strongly advise against this as it pretty much defeats the purpose of using MVC but...

You could create a general action that will find the view for you:

public ViewResult Page(string urlSlug)
{
    if (!this.ViewExists(urlSlug))
    {
        throw new HttpException(404, "Page not found");
    }

    return this.View(urlSlug);
}

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

You will need to edit your RouteConfig though:

routes.MapRoute(
            name: "Home_Page",
            url: "{urlSlug}",
            defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "Page" },
            constraints: new { urlSlug = @"[A-Za-z0-9-]{1,50}" }
        );

Now if you look for /about it will look for that view. You will run into problems when you want to use Model data though. I think the time spent asking this question and implementing this solution would take a lot longer than simply having return View()

edited Mar 11 '15 at 10:46

answered Mar 11 '15 at 10:39

ediblecode

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while this surely works, this is the kind of thing that goes against MVC conventions, and will be very hard to troubleshoot and maintain. – Claies Mar 11 '15 at 10:42
@Claies I wholeheartedly agree - I will put a warning at the top of my answer. – ediblecode Mar 11 '15 at 10:43
Honestly, I do not like that people use this argument. This is true, but sometimes this kind of solutions actually prevent problems. I think that the idea of the code is to find common ground, and this solution really find common ground. I would prefer to have a built-in .NET solution of course. – Mosh Feu Mar 11 '15 at 10:46
@mosh If you want a bunch of static pages...why not use static pages? – ediblecode Mar 11 '15 at 10:49
@jumpingcode I want to use other aspects of MVC like templates routs and other staff. – Mosh Feu Mar 11 '15 at 10:52

return view() for all actions in controller .net mvc

1 Answers1