ASP.NET MVC 3 Structure - Go to view in another project

Question

I\'ve got the following project setup

Project A (main)

1. Business
2. Data
3. View (asp.net mvc 3 project)

Project N

Answer 1

You could write a custom virtual path provider. Here's a nice blog post which shows an example of such a virtual path provider allowing you to embed Razor views into assemblies as resources and reusing them in multiple applications.

Unfortunately without a custom virtual path provider, you cannot cross reference views between multiple ASP.NET MVC applications. This simply is not allowed by the default provider which looks for views only inside the current application.

Answer 2

I do sugest another approach if possible. if I understood correctly, those projects are somehow ike plugins but they are not standalone applications.Also they now about each others so they are coupled. It's, let's say tricky, but I would use only 1 asp.net mvc project (the web ui). All the UI bits which belong to other projects I'd make them helpers (pretty much widgets). This means, that each project contains only the helpers which will be used to construct a view.

I think it's a bit of an architectural problem if you only want to keep the views in each project just for the sake of hosting them in a different assembly. Going the widgets' way it might seem mkore work, but I think you gain the most control and the separation level you want. The only thing is you don't have full Views defined, but why you would want to have full Views (partials, layouts) in separate places if they will be used in one place only?!

Now, if each project is indeed a plugin, independent of other plugins, then going with compiled views is the best way. But if Project B knows about the view of Project N, then I think the above solution is more suitable. That or the whole app is too over engineered. Separation is good when it doesn't create a whole new jungle to navigate it.