Adding sub-directory to "View/Shared" folder in ASP.Net MVC and calling the view

Question

I'm currently developing a site using ASP.Net MVC3 with Razor. Inside the "View/Shared" folder, I want to add a subfolder called "Partials" where I can place all of my partial views (for the sake of organizing the site better.

I can do this without a problem as long as I always reference the "Partials" folder when calling the views (using Razor):

@Html.Partial("Partials/{ViewName}")

My question is if there is a way to add the "Partials" folder to the list that .Net goes through when searching for a view, this way I can call my view without having to reference the "Partials" folder, like so:

@Html.Partial("{ViewName}")

Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

Solved this. To add the "Shared/Partials" sub directory I created to the list of locations searched when trying to locate a Partial View in Razor using:

@Html.Partial("{NameOfView}")

First create a view engine with RazorViewEngine as its base class and add your view locations as follows. Again, I wanted to store all of my partial views in a "Partials" subdirectory that I created within the default "Views/Shared" directory created by MVC.

public class RDDBViewEngine : RazorViewEngine
{
    private static readonly string[] NewPartialViewFormats = 
    { 
        "~/Views/{1}/Partials/{0}.cshtml",
        "~/Views/Shared/Partials/{0}.cshtml"
    };

    public RDDBViewEngine()
    {
        base.PartialViewLocationFormats = base.PartialViewLocationFormats.Union(NewPartialViewFormats).ToArray();
    }       

}

Note that {1} in the location format is the Controller name and {0} is the name of the view.

Then add that view engine to the MVC ViewEngines.Engines Collection in the Application_Start() method in your global.asax:

ViewEngines.Engines.Add(new RDDBViewEngine()); 

Answer 2

Thank you for your answers. This has organized my Shared folder, but why do you create a new type of view engine? I just made a new RazorViewEngine, set it's PartialViewLocationFormats and added it to the list of ViewEngines.

ViewEngines.Engines.Add(new RazorViewEngine
{
    PartialViewLocationFormats = new string[]
    {
        "~/Views/{1}/Partials/{0}.cshtml",
        "~/Views/Shared/Partials/{0}.cshtml"
    }
});