Define Custom View From Controller

Question

I've been exploring ASP.NET MVC 5 these days and got stuck into some basics. As an example, we create controller called 'HomeController' and in this regard, a view is created called 'Index' in the 'Home' folder. Now suppose we create another folder into the 'Home' folder named 'Data' and again it has a view called 'ViewData' . In the 'HomeController' , I've a method named 'ViewData' as follows (I want this method to be referred to the view 'ViewData'):

public ActionResult ViewData()
{  
   MainDbContext db = new MainDbContext();
   var con = (from c in db.Lists
              where c. Public == "No"
              select c). ToList();
   return View("Data/ViewData", con);
}

When I run the project, it works as desired I mean giving me the output and the URL looks like this: http://localhost:2361/Home/ViewNoData

But I want to show it like this: http://localhost:2361/Home/Data/ViewNoData as it is under 'Home' folder. One more thing - when I right click on the 'ViewData()' to match the view, it shows 'Unable to find the matching view'. How could I resolve it? Just to clarify if it is possible.

So below is the folder structure:

Views/Home/Data/ViewData.cshtml

And in the controller, the below:

Controllers/HomeController.cs

Answer 1

You can use ASP.NET MVC Areas to achieve this:

1. Right click the solution in Visual Studio -> Add -> Area
2. Call it Home
3. Go to the Controllers folder in the Home area -> Right click -> Add -> Controller
4. Call it DataController
5. Lastly create an action called ViewNoData in the DataController

Now you can access it like this - http://localhost:51118/Home/Data/ViewNoData

If you don't want to use Areas for some reason you could just tweak around with the routing in RouteConfig.cs

routes.MapRoute(
    name: "Default",
    url: "Home/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
    defaults: new { controller = "Data", action = "ViewNoData", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
);