Embedding View files as resource inside Binary

Question

I am trying to create a .Net Library with few Controllers, and i want to reuse them in Multiple web projects.

I'm half way through, But problem i'm getting is , Whenever i add the library to the new web project , i need to copy all corresponding view files separately to the new project. Whenever i update the library, i need to repeat the steps again.

Is there any way , i can embed View files inside dll as resource , and pass it to "View()" function as an embedded resource.

What i want to achieve is , I want to put controller and corresponding views inside single dll file, so that i can easily distribute/manage the library as a single dll file

( Oneway i already found , is creating custom view class with IView Interface and Render the output directly by writing to HTML Output Writer, But i prefer to use the View file.)

Answer 1

Phil Haack just posted a blog post a few days ago that would probably help you; He's using a database to store the views and ruby to process them, but I would think you could take his prototype and make it work for views stored in a separate assembly fairly easily.

Just a quick glance through the code and I think the magic sauce is going to be implementing VirtualPathProviderViewEngine (See the "RubyViewEngine" class for example) and inserting your ViewEngine into ViewEngines.Engines Collection (see Global.asax.cs).