Adding Views

We were returning a simple string from the controller. Although that explains the concept of how the Controller and action method works, it is not of much practical use.

Let us create a new action method by the name, Index2:

public IActionResult Index2() { 
  return View(); // View for this 'Index2' action method 
}

Now, we have created the action method that returns a View. But we still have not added the View for the same. By convention, ASP.NET MVC would try to search for our View in the folder Views{ControllerName}{ActionMethod.cshtml}. With respect to the preceding example, it will try to search for ViewsHomeIndex2.cshtml. Please note that the name of the controller folder-is Home , not HomeController. Only the prefix is needed as per convention. As this folder structure and file are not available, you'll get a 500 Internal Server Error when you try to access this action method through the URL http://localhost:50140/Home/Index2.

So, let us create a folder structure. Right-click on the solution, select Add | New Folder from the context menu, create a folder called Views, and then create a subfolder by the name Home within the Views folder:

Adding Views

Right click on the Home folder, and select Add | New Item from the context menu. A dialog will appear as shown in the following screenshot. Give the name of the file as Index2.cshtml, as our action method name is Index2. cshtml is the razor view engine (this will be discussed in detail in the ViewEngines section of the Views chapter) extension used when you are using C#.

Adding Views

A file by the name Index2.cshtml will be created when you click the Add button in the preceding screen with the following content:

Adding Views

@* is the comment syntax in the razor view engine. You can write any C# code within the @{} block.

Let us add a simple HTML block after the generated code:

<html> 
  <body> 
    Hello! This is <b>my first View</b>  
  </body> 
</html>

Now, when you run the application, you will get the following output:

Adding Views

The following diagram explains the request flow and how we generate the response through the View:

Adding Views

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