MVC 3 Area route not working

Question

I created a Area in my MVC 3 application called 'Blog'.

In global.asax I have the following code.

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 = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
        );
    }

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

        RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);
        RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);

    }

This is the code of my Area

public class BlogAreaRegistration : AreaRegistration
{
    public override string AreaName
    {
        get { return "Blog"; }
    }

    public override void RegisterArea(AreaRegistrationContext context)
    {
        context.MapRoute(
            "Blog_default",
            "Blog/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
            new { action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
        );
    }
}

When I go to the following url http://localhost/CMS/blog I get the following error.

The view 'Index' or its master was not found or no view engine supports the searched locations. The following locations were searched: ~/Views/blog/Index.aspx ~/Views/blog/Index.ascx ~/Views/Shared/Index.aspx ~/Views/Shared/Index.ascx ~/Views/blog/Index.cshtml ~/Views/blog/Index.vbhtml ~/Views/Shared/Index.cshtml ~/Views/Shared/Index.vbhtml

How do I solve this?

Answer 1

I found what I consider to be a bug in the framework, with a workaround. If you are trying to map a default route to an MVC 3 app with areas, your global.asax file might have something like this:

VB:

routes.MapRoute(
      "Default",
      "{area}/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
      New With {.area = "MyArea", .controller = "Home", .action = "Index", .id = UrlParameter.Optional}
)

C#:

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

If you go to your app root in the URL, you may get a runtime error like this:

The view 'Index' or its master was not found or no view engine supports the searched locations. The following locations were searched:

For some reason, the view engine does not appear to look in the area folder for the view file the same as if you type in the whole link. The strange thing is the code reaches the controller action. Here is the fix: Put this code in your controller action:

VB:

If Not Me.ControllerContext.RouteData.DataTokens.ContainsKey("area") Then
                Me.ControllerContext.RouteData.DataTokens.Add("area", "MyArea")
            End If

C#

  if (!this.ControllerContext.RouteData.DataTokens.ContainsKey("area"))
{
        this.ControllerContext.RouteData.DataTokens.Add("area", "MyArea")
 }

Answer 2

The registration in your area appears to be wrong. You specify a default for your action but not for the controller. Since you typically have Home as the name of the controller you'd need to specify that.

Also it could be you don't have your folders setup correctly since you should have physically setup:

• /Areas/Blog
• /Areas/Blog/Controllers
• /Areas/Blog/Views

... and once you have fixed your blog area route you'll also need:

• /Areas/Blog/Views/Home << Put your index view in here

The error you get seems to pretty clearly indicate this is the issue.

Answer 3

I'm using Phil Haack's routedebugger to troubleshoot problems such as this one. It conveniently shows all registered routes and how the entered URL matches your configuration.

It works by overriding the regular application flow, which you enable by adding this line at the end of Application_Start:

RouteDebug.RouteDebugger.RewriteRoutesForTesting( RouteTable.Routes );

Answer 4

Relax! This can save you hours of reading, make a coffee and watch this 3 minutes video, everything will be clear to you. http://www.asp.net/mvc/videos/mvc-2/how-do-i/aspnet-mvc-2-areas (I belive it also works for mvc3, mvc4, and mvc2035)