How to change View & partial view default location

Question

i am new in MVC and very curious about to know that how could i change view & partial view location.

we know that view & partial view store in view folder. i

Answer 1

If you want to have a special views locations for specific controllers, in your case you want ProductController views to go to MyProduct folder, you need to to override FindView and FindPartialView methods of RazorViewEngine:

public class MyRazorViewEngine : RazorViewEngine
{
    public override ViewEngineResult FindView(ControllerContext controllerContext, string viewName, string masterName, bool useCache)
    {
        if (controllerContext.Controller is ProductController)
        {
            string viewPath = "/Views/MyProduct/" + viewName + ".cshtml";
            return base.FindView(controllerContext, viewPath, masterName, useCache);  
        }

        return base.FindView(controllerContext, viewName, masterName, useCache);
    }

    public override ViewEngineResult FindPartialView(ControllerContext controllerContext, string partialViewName, bool useCache)
    {
        if (controllerContext.Controller is ProductController)
        {
            string partialViewPath = "/Views/MyProduct/Partials/" + partialViewName + ".cshtml";
            return base.FindPartialView(controllerContext, partialViewPath, useCache);
        }

        return base.FindPartialView(controllerContext, partialViewName, useCache);
    }
}

And if you maybe want to prepend "My" to every controller views folder, your view engine should look like this

public class MyRazorViewEngine : RazorViewEngine
{
    public override ViewEngineResult FindView(ControllerContext controllerContext, string viewName, string masterName, bool useCache)
    {
        string viewPath = "/Views/My" + GetControllerName(controllerContext) + "/" + viewName + ".cshtml";
        return base.FindView(controllerContext, viewPath, masterName, useCache);
    }

    public override ViewEngineResult FindPartialView(ControllerContext controllerContext, string partialViewName, bool useCache)
    {
        string partialViewPath = "/Views/My" + GetControllerName(controllerContext) + "/Partials/" + partialViewName + ".cshtml";
        return base.FindPartialView(controllerContext, partialViewPath, useCache);
    }

    private string GetControllerName(ControllerContext controllerContext)
    {
        return controllerContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString();
    }
}

And than in your Global.asax

protected void Application_Start()
{
    //remove unused view engines, for performance reasons as well
    ViewEngines.Engines.Clear();
    ViewEngines.Engines.Add(new MyRazorViewEngine());
}

Answer 2

You can modify RazorViewEngine's ViewLocationFormats and PartialViewLocationFormats properties in your Global.asax startup code. Something around the lines below should work:

protected void Application_Start(object obj, EventArgs e)
{
   var engine = ViewEngines.Engines.OfType<RazorViewEngine>().Single();
   var newViewLocations = new string[] { 
       "~/SomeOtherFolder/{1}/{0}.cshtml", 
       "~/GlobalFolder/{0}.cshtml"      
   };
   engine.ViewLocationFormats = newViewLocations;
   engine.PartialViewLocationFormats = newViewLocations;
}

IIRC, {1} would correspond to controller and {0} to view name, you can look at existing properties to make sure.

If you want to keep existing search locations you need to copy them into your new array.