What is the best way to share MasterPages across projects

Question

Suppose you have two seperate ASP.NET Web Application projects that both need to use a common MasterPage.

What's the best way to share the MasterPage across projects without having to duplicate code? Preferably without having to resort to source control or file system hacks.

Answer 1

I have trying to accomplish the same thing. I look into a couple of solutions but I think using a virtual directory is probably the best way to share master pages.

Here are a couple sources that you can look at.

• Sharing Master Pages amongst Applications by Embedding it in a Dll
• Sharing Master Pages in Visual Studio
• ASP.Net 2.0 - Master Pages: Tips, Tricks, and Traps

The third bullets near the end the article tells you of possible ways you can share Masterpages also.

Answer 2

From K. Scott Allen's ASP.Net Master Pages: Tips, Tricks, and Traps article, on "Sharing Master Pages":

The first alternative is to copy shared master page files into a single location on an IIS web server. Each application can then create a virtual directory as a subdirectory and point the virtual directory to the real directory of master pages. The applications can then set the MasterPageFile property of a page to the name of the virtual directory, plus the name of the master page file. When we drop an updated master page file into the real directory, the new master page will appear in all the applications immediately.

A second approach is to use a version control system to share a set of master page files across multiple projects. Most source control / version control systems support some level of “share” functionality, where a file or folder can appear in more than one project. When a developer checks in an updated master page file, the other projects will see the change immediately (although this behavior is generally configurable). In production and test, each application would need to be redeployed for the update master page to appear.

Finally, the VirtualPathProvider in ASP.NET 2.0 can serve files that do not exist on the file system. With the VirtualPathProvider, a set of master pages could live in database tables that all applications use. For an excellent article on the VirutalPathProvider, see “Virtualizing Access to Content: Serving Your Web Site from a ZIP File”.