Razor templates not found

Question

I am trying out ASP.NET Core RC2 for the first time. I managed to get routing to my controller working -- if the controller returns Content("hello world"), I see the string "hello world" returned to my browser.

If the controller returns View() though, I get an error that

The View 'Index' was not found. The following locations were searched: /Views/Controller/Index.cshtml ...

I confirmed the view is in the right place in the folder structure, following the typical convention. I know how to make this work in other versions of ASP.NET.

It's my first time using ASP.NET Core, though, and I'm trying to configure it all by hand, so I wonder what I'm missing - maybe I need something to register Razor in the pipeline, or to register the search path for the templates?

In my project.json I have dependencies for both Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc and Microsoft.AspNetCore.Razor.

Answer 1

A working Program.cs file for ASP.NET Core RC2 looks like this:

public class Program
{
    public static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var host = new WebHostBuilder()
            .UseKestrel()
            .UseContentRoot(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory())
            .UseStartup<Startup>()
            .Build();

        host.Run();
    }
}

If ASP.NET Core is complaining about not being able to find files, make sure that UseContentRoot(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory()) is present. This will set the "base" path that Razor uses to search for views.