Add my project namespace to MVC web.config

Question

Can I not add my project namespace to the web.config so that the Razor view engine includes my project namespace for all pages in my project? Like so:

<system.web.webPages.razor>
    <host factoryType="System.Web.Mvc.MvcWebRazorHostFactory, System.Web.Mvc, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" />
    <pages pageBaseType="System.Web.Mvc.WebViewPage">
      <namespaces>
        <add namespace="System.Web.Mvc" />
        <add namespace="System.Web.Mvc.Ajax" />
        <add namespace="System.Web.Mvc.Html" />
        <add namespace="System.Web.Optimization"/>
        <add namespace="System.Web.Routing" />

        <add namespace = "MyProjectNamespace.NestedNamespace"/>
      </namespaces>
    </pages>
  </system.web.webPages.razor>

It isn't working.

Answer 1

This is an old question, but apparently there is still a bit of a problem with Visual Studio (2015 2017 2019 as of right now). After adding the namespaces to the web.config file in your Views folder, close and re-open all views. The namespaces were not recognized and the views would continuously throw runtime errors until I closed them all.

Answer 2

The namespace needs to be added to the web.config file in your Views folder, not the root project's web.config. This will import the namespace for all cshtml files in that views folder only. If your project has MVC areas, each area will have its own Views folder and a separate views web.config file. To import the namespace into those views, you need to add the namespace to each area's view folder's web.config as well.