MVC Areas - View not found

Question

I have a project that is using MVC areas. The area has the entire project in it while the main "Views/Controllers/Models" folders outside the Areas are empty barring a dispatch controller I have setup that routes default incoming requests to the Home Controller in my area.

This controller has one method as follows:-

public ActionResult Index(string id)
    {
        return RedirectToAction("Index", "Home", new {area = "xyz"});
    }   

I also have a default route setup to use this controller as follows:-

routes.MapRoute(
            "Default",                                              // Default route
            "{controller}/{action}/{id}",
            new { controller = "Dispatch", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
        );   

Any default requests to my site are appropriately routed to the relevant area. The Area's "RegisterArea" method has a single route:-

context.MapRoute(
            "xyz_default",
            "xyz/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
            new { action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }

My area has multiple controllers with a lot of views. Any call to a specific view in these controller methods like "return View("blah"); renders the correct view. However whenever I try and return a view along with a model object passed in as a parameter I get the following error:-

Server Error in '/DeveloperPortal' Application.
The view 'blah' or its master was not found. The following locations were searched:
~/Views/Profile/blah.aspx
~/Views/Profile/blah.ascx
~/Views/Shared/blah.aspx
~/Views/Shared/blah.ascx 

It looks like whenever a model object is passed in as a param. to the "View()" method [e.g. return View("blah",obj) ] it searches for the view in the root of the project instead of in the area specific view folder.

What am I missing here ?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Add the RouteArea attribute on the Controller class so MVC knows to use the "XYZ" Area for the views (and then you can set the AreaPrefix to empty string so routes do not need to start with "XYZ").

[RouteArea("Xyz", AreaPrefix = "")]
public class XyzController : Controller   
{
...
}