Customizing View Engines in Asp.Net

Introduction

This article describes the customization of a view engine or adding a custom view engine. Let's see the search process during the loading of a webpage reducing by folds that somehow makes our app optimized.

Why Really is it Needed

When we forget to add a View page to any action method in the controller, we get an error like:



Just imagine that though some milliseconds, the searching of all these is worthless if we are using a specific View Engine, may it be Razor or Aspx in C# or VB.

Using the Code

It's very simple and easy. Let's peep into the code.

Step 1: Go to the Global.asax.

Global.asax is the heart of the application since it contains the App_start() method that starts our application.

protected void Application_Start()
{
   AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();
   WebApiConfig.Register(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration);
   FilterConfig.RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);
   RouteConfig.RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);
   BundleConfig.RegisterBundles(BundleTable.Bundles);
   AuthConfig.RegisterAuth();
}

Step 2: Add to the Application_Start() method

protected void Application_Start()
{
   ViewEngines.Engines.Clear();//This clears all the Web form view engines.
}

After this, when we run we get an error page denoting:



Step 3: After this Add

protected void Application_Start()
{
   ViewEngines.Engines.Clear(); //This clears all the view engines as mentioned earlier
   ViewEngines.Engines.Add(new RazorViewEngine()); //This RazorViewEngine() is present in the System.Web.Mvc namespace
}

Here after this, we get an error page denoting:



This is because we have added only RazorViewEngine(), that has the extension cshtml (for C#) and vbhtml (for VB). Just see that the search has been reduced in half.

Step 4: Now we create our own custom View Engine

Add a class to the App_Start folder (with any name that suits you). Then make the class inherit from RazorViewEngine.

public class "your viewengine

name":RazorViewEngine //This RazorViewEngine in present in the System.Web.Mvc namespace

Add the following code into the class:

ViewLocationFormats = new[]
{
   "~/Views/{1}/{0}.cshtml",
   "~/Views/Shared/{0}.cshtml"
};
MasterLocationFormats = new[]
{
   "~/Views/{1}/{0}.cshtml",
   "~/Views/Shared/{0}.cshtml"
};

We can similarly add for partialviews too (PartialViewLocationFormats = new...).

This is your custom ViewEngine before building and running your app. Don't forget to add:

ViewEngines.Engines.Add(new your viewengine name());

This helps your search by reducing it by folds from 8 to 2. That is: now only 2 are searched.



Conclusion

After removing the Webform Engines, the Razor View Engine will be twice as fast as the Webform Engines.

I hope this helps beginners like me. :).