Return a view from a different area

Question

I have my ASP.NET MVC 2 application divided into few areas. One of them is a default area in the main catalog, and the other is an Account area in the Areas catalog. Now, the problem is that I need to use the same view in controllers from both of these areas.

If they were in the same area, I would just return View("ViewName"), but what can I do to return a view from my default area in a controller from my Account area? Any ideas?

Answer 1

You could specify the relative location of the view:

return View("~/Views/YourArea/YourController/YourView.aspx");

But when a view is shared among multiple areas I would recommend you to use the ~/Views/Shared folder which serves better this purpose.

Answer 2

This is an old question but still a relevant issue in MVC I think, so here is how I solve it in a DRY fashion that lets you easily change the server path, and have all your dependent actions update automatically:

public class FooController : Controller
{

    private ActionResult FooView(string name, string extension = "cshtml") { 
        return View("~/Areas/Bar/Views/Foo/" + name + "." + extension); }
    }


    public ActionResult SomeAction(){

      return FooView("AreaSpecificViewName");

    }

    public ActionResult SomeOtherAction(){

      return FooView("AnotherAreaSpecificViewName", "aspx");

    }

}

This is neat because it defaults to Razor (.cshtml) View files, but it can be set explicitly by supplying the second parameter, as seen in SomeOtherAction().

It's simple but handy, especially during development when the path of your Area might change or something.

Hope that helps someone.