Simple ASP.NET MVC views without writing a control

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 to swap in more dynamic information, so I've decided to go ahead and build a web application using ASP.NET MVC2 and the Spark view engine. There will be a couple of controllers that will have to do actual work (like in the /products area), but most of it will be static.

I want my designer to be able to build and modify the site without having to ask me to write a new controller or route every time they decide to add or move a page. So if he wants to add a "http://example.com/News" page he can just create a "News" folder under Views and put an index.spark page within it. Then later if he decides he wants a /News/Community page, he can drop a community.spark file within that folder and have it work.

I'm able to have a view without a specific action by making my controllers override HandleUnknownAction, but I still have to create a controller for each of these folders. It seems silly to have to add an empty controller and recompile every time they decide to add an area to the site.

Is there any way to make this easier, so I only have to write a controller and recompile if there's actual logic to be done? Some sort of "master" controller that will handle any requests where there was no specific controller defined?

Answer 1

I think you can create your own controller factory that will always instantiate the same controller class.

Answer 2

You will have to write a route mapping for actual controller/actions and make sure the default has index as an action and the id is "catchall" and this will do it!

    public class MvcApplication : System.Web.HttpApplication {
        public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) {
            routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");

            routes.MapRoute(
                "Default", // Route name
                "{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
                new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = "catchall" } // Parameter defaults
            );

        }

        protected void Application_Start() {
            AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();

            RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);

            ControllerBuilder.Current.SetControllerFactory(new CatchallControllerFactory());

        }
    }

public class CatchallController : Controller
    {

        public string PageName { get; set; }

        //
        // GET: /Catchall/

        public ActionResult Index()
        {
            return View(PageName);
        }

    }

public class CatchallControllerFactory : IControllerFactory {
        #region IControllerFactory Members

        public IController CreateController(System.Web.Routing.RequestContext requestContext, string controllerName) {

            if (requestContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString() == "catchall") {
                DefaultControllerFactory factory = new DefaultControllerFactory();
                return factory.CreateController(requestContext, controllerName);
            }
            else {
                CatchallController controller = new CatchallController();
                controller.PageName = requestContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString();
                return controller;
            }

        }

        public void ReleaseController(IController controller) {
            if (controller is IDisposable)
                ((IDisposable)controller).Dispose();
        }

        #endregion
    }

Answer 3

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:

<a href="@Url.RouteUrl("Public", new { name = "YourPublicPage" })">YourPublicPage</a> <!-- and this will point to Public/YourPublicPage.cshtml because of the routing we set up in step 3 -->

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

Answer 4

Couldn't you create a separate controller for all the static pages and redirect everything (other than the actual controllers which do work) to it using MVC Routes, and include the path parameters? Then in that controller you could have logic to display the correct view based on the folder/path parameter sent to it by the routes.

Allthough I don't know the spark view engine handles things, does it have to compile the views? I'm really not sure.

Answer 5

This link might be help,

If you create cshtml in View\Public directory, It will appears on Web site with same name. I added also 404 page.

[HandleError]
    public class PublicController : Controller
    {
        protected override void HandleUnknownAction(string actionName)
        {
            try
            {
                this.View(actionName).ExecuteResult(this.ControllerContext);
            }
            catch
            {
                this.View("404").ExecuteResult(this.ControllerContext);
            }
        }
    }