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Where is the best place in the project directory for the controllers for Shared partial views?

I have found similar question to: ASP.NET MVC: Correct place for Partial Views?

I can't decide if it is better to do something like /Controller/Shared/CONTROLLER_FOR_PARTIAL_VIEW or just create its separate folder like /Controller/CONTROLLER_FOR_PARTIAL_VIEW

The partial view is specifically for dropdownlistfor, and the model wont be used for anything other than to populate the dropdown. So if a site has many dropdown lists or just partial views in general, a shared folder seems to be the best option. If the preferred way it the Shared folder, do you use one controller for each partial view, or one controller for all partials? I appreciate any thoughts or feedback, thanks!

EDIT: To be clear, I m specifically asking about the directory for the CONTROLLERS not the VIEWS. Thanks!

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Casey O'Brien
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  • for what it's worth, projects I've been on it was at `/Area/Controllers/SharedPartialController.cs` and with that naming the view was at `/Area/Views/SharedPartial/_MenuDropdown.cshtml` – Don Cheadle Feb 10 '17 at 15:33
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    Possible duplicate of [ASP.NET MVC: Correct place for Partial Views?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4092884/asp-net-mvc-correct-place-for-partial-views) – jjj Feb 10 '17 at 15:35
  • @jjj Not a duplicate of that question. I am asking about the directory for the Controllers not the Views. But thanks for your input. – Casey O'Brien Feb 10 '17 at 15:36
  • @mmcrae Thanks for your input! – Casey O'Brien Feb 10 '17 at 15:37

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In one sense, it doesn't matter. There is no true standard or convention for this, so you have the freedom to do it however it makes the most sense to you and your application.

Having it under something like Controllers/Shared could make sense, if there's enough of these that that is worthwhile and it adds value to keep them separate from regular controllers. However, in terms of a project, everything is essentially shared, so there's no true distinction here. Personally, simply having it named something distinctive is probably the best route. For example, I have a number of child actions in one of my projects that are used in various parts of my layout. As a result, I created a LayoutController to house these.

The one thing to keep in mind is that, if you're using standard routing, any controller will be available to the routing infrastructure, regardless of where it's located in your project tree. You'd have to pretty much just know how to get to it, but if you named your shared controller something like SharedController, then with standard routing, its actions would be available via /shared/action. For things like child actions, this is easily solved by using [ChildActionOnly]. By adding that attribute to your child action, it will be divorced from the routing infrastructure for URL requests. Internally, MVC will still be able to get to it for the purposes of rendering it for a view, though.

Chris Pratt
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Projects I've been on it was at /Area/Controllers/SharedPartialController.cs and with that naming the view was at /Area/Views/SharedPartial/_MenuDropdown.cshtml

Hopefully you're using "areas" in your MVC project, in which case I would suggest doing one shared controller per Area.

I.e. /Order/Controllers/TabsPartialController.cs for one that relates to Order area, and then /User/Controllers/NavTabsPartialController.cs etc.

Don Cheadle
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