what is _ViewStart.cshtml and why it uses ?

Question

Nilesh Lonkar · Answer

In the default template of ASP.NET MVC we get _ViewStart.cshtml page that is used to almost similar to MasterPage in ASP.NET Web Form or like a layout template. The code of ViewStart executes before the actual view code executes. By default _ViewStart template is applied to all view files of this or any sub directory under this directory. The _ViewStart.cshtml file contains following code. @{Layout=~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml} As this code runs before any view code so we have flexibility to specify a different Layout for a particular view. Because this code runs before any view a view can override the Layout property and choose a different.

Pankaj Kumar Choudhary · Answer

Hello @shuvojit Starting with the ASP.NET MVC 3 Beta release you can now add a file called _ViewStart.cshtml (or _ViewStart.vbhtml for VB) underneath the \Views folder of your project: The _ViewStart file can be used to define common view code that you want to execute at the start of each View’s rendering. For example we could write code within our _ViewStart.cshtml file to programmatically set the Layout property for each View to be the SiteLayout.cshtml file by default: Because this code executes at the start of each View we no longer need to explicitly set the Layout in any of our individual view files (except if we wanted to override the default value above). Important: Because the _ViewStart.cshtml allows us to write code we can optionally make our Layout selection logic richer than just a basic property set. For example: we could vary the Layout template that we use depending on what type of device is accessing the site – and have a phone or tablet optimized layout for those devices and a desktop optimized layout for PCs/Laptops. Or if we were building a CMS system or common shared app that is used across multiple customers we could select different layouts to use depending on the customer (or their role) when accessing the site. This enables a lot of UI flexibility. It also allows you to more easily write view logic once and avoid repeating it in multiple places you can refers this site http://brockallen.com/2012/08/31/sharing-a-single-_viewstart-across-areas-in-asp-net-mvc/

Upendra Pratap Shahi · Answer

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9300410/where-and-how-is-the-viewstart-cshtml-layout-file-linked http://www.brainthud.com/cards/5218/19522/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-viewstartcshtml-file-and-how-is-it-used Read above article.

Manoj Bhoir · Answer

Hi The _ViewStart.cshtml file will execute at the start of each view's rendering. Any code contained within the code block in this file will execute before any code in the view. Typically this file will set the layout template to be used by the views in the application: @{ Layout = ~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml; } An MVC application can have multiple _ViewStart.cshtml files. The order in which these files execute is dependent upon the location of the files in the folder hierarchy and the particular view being rendered. The MVC Runtime will first execute the code in the _ViewStart.cshtml file located in the root of the Views folder. It will then work its way up the folder hierarchy executing the code in each _ViewStart.cshtml file it finds along the way. For example if we had_ViewStart.cshtml files in the following locations: 1) View\_ViewStart.cshtml 2) View\Home\_ViewStart.cshtml 3) View\Products\_ViewStart.cshtml and we render a view in the Views\Home folder the MVC Runtime will first execute the code in file 1 and then execute the code in file 2. Since file 3 is not in the hierarchy of the Views\Home folder the code in file 3 will not get executed. Reference : http://www.brainthud.com/cards/5218/19522/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-viewstartcshtml-file-and-how-is-it-used