MVC3 View Routing and partial view not found - asp.net-mvc

Question

I know what my problem is but not sure how to fix it so I was hoping the geniuses here could help. I have a controller that I want to grab a piece of info from the url then redirect to the site. My controller does it's thing and returns the view but the view has a partial in it and the view engine can't find it?
So here is the setup.
The controller is mapped route as:
//marketing/tracking
routes.MapRoute("CampaignTracking",
"{save}/{campaignid}",
new { controller = "CampaignTracking", action = "Index" });
This works great. So next my controller:
public ActionResult Index(Int32 campaignID)
{
var model = new ...snip...
return View("../Customer/Login", model);
}
Now I originally got the error couldn't find view as it was looking in a CampaignTracking folder and I had :
return View("Customer/Login", model);
So I changed it as seen above with the ../ to get to the correct location. Now it finds the Login.cshtml but in login.cshtml it renders a partial and again it is looking to find the partial in the Campaigntracking.
I could abolish the CampaignTracking controller and move the action result into the CustomerController but would prefer to keep it in its own controller as this will likely grow and doesn't really group under customer.
As per nicu Janga
I changed in my controller:
return View(#"~/Views/Customer/Login.cshtml", model);
and in my login.cshtml the partials:
#Html.Partial(#"~/Views/Customer/...etc.cshtml")
but I am wondering why. I can understand how the view engine gets confused coming out of the controller but once corrected with return View(#"~/Views/Customer/Login.cshtml", model); shouldn't the proper path propagate as well to the login.cshtml???
Obviously not but what don't I understand??

Answer 1

You can try this one:
return View(#"~/Views/Customer/Login.cshtml",model);
it works?

Answer 2

Let me see if I can fill in some details for you. First up, let's say we've just added the following controller to an empty project:
public class HomeController : Controller
{
public ActionResult Index()
{
return View();
}
}
Now, let's also assume that we didn't bother to add the Index.cshtml view, so when we run this, it will tell us the view is missing. Take a look at the message that accompanies that exception:
The view 'Index' or its master was not found or no view engine supports
the searched locations. The following locations were searched:
~/Views/home/Index.aspx
~/Views/home/Index.ascx
~/Views/Shared/Index.aspx
~/Views/Shared/Index.ascx
~/Views/home/Index.cshtml
~/Views/home/Index.vbhtml
~/Views/Shared/Index.cshtml
~/Views/Shared/Index.vbhtml
These are the exact locations that are searched when MVC is trying to locate a view. For the most part, if you're using C# with MVC, the only two you need to care about are:
~/Views/home/Index.cshtml
~/Views/Shared/Index.cshtml
That means if you don't provide a path when specifying the name of your view, it will always check both of these locations. So if we did this from our HomeController:
return View("Test");
MVC will look for this view at ~/Views/Home/Test.cshtml and then ~/Views/Shared/Test.cshtml. The great thing about this is it's consistent. It always looks for the views in the same way.
Now, let's use a more complicated example (again, assuming we're in our HomeController):
return View("../SomeDirectory/Test.cshtml");
This is going to be looked for in the following ways:
~/Views/Home/../SomeDirectory/Index.cshtml
~/Views/Shared/../SomeDirectory/Index.cshtml
Taking a look at ~/Views/Home/../SomeDirectory/Index.cshtml first , this would actually mean it's searching for the view here: ~/Views/SomeDirectory/Index.cshtml. Obviously, this isn't where your view is, and the same applies to where ~/Views/Shared/../SomeDirectory/Index.cshtml ends up.
The important thing to remember here is ~ means the relative root of your site. It will always work from the root of your site, which means you can always be sure exactly what's going on. By doing this
return View("~/Views/Home/Index.cshtml");
you are telling MVC exactly where to find your view, rather than letting MVC's rules of convention decide for you. That means whenever you specify a location for MVC to find your view, it will only search that location. So return View("~/Views/Home/Index.cshtml") will only search for the view at ~/Views/Home/Index.cshtml. If it cannot find the view there, you'll get the same exception as before, but it will give you a slightly different message:
The view '~/Views/Home/Index.cshtml' or its master was not found or no view
engine supports the searched locations. The following locations were searched:
~/Views/Home/Index.cshtml
Notice how it hasn't searched for the view in the other locations.