Simple ASP.NET MVC views without writing a controller

Question

We\'re building a site that will have very minimal code, it\'s mostly just going to be a bunch of static pages served up. I know over time that will change and we\'ll want

Answer 1

Reflecting on Paul's answer. I'm not using any special view engines, but here is what I do:

1) Create a PublicController.cs.

// GET: /Public/
[AllowAnonymous]
public ActionResult Index(string name = "")
{
    ViewEngineResult result = ViewEngines.Engines.FindView(ControllerContext, name, null);
    // check if view name requested is not found
    if (result == null || result.View == null)
    {
        return new HttpNotFoundResult();
    }
    // otherwise just return the view
    return View(name);
}

2) Then create a Public directory in the Views folder, and put all of your views there that you want to be public. I personally needed this because I never knew if the client wanted to create more pages without having to recompile the code.

3) Then modify RouteConfig.cs to redirect to the Public/Index action.

routes.MapRoute(
    name: "Public",
    url: "{name}.cshtml", // your name will be the name of the view in the Public folder
    defaults: new { controller = "Public", action = "Index" }
);

4) Then just reference it from your views like this:

YourPublicPage 

Not sure if this is any better than using a factory pattern, but it seems to me the easiest to implement and to understand.