ASP.NET MVC3 Physical Location of View from controller

Question

What is the proper way to get the physical location of the View that will be served by a MVC action from inside the action?

I need the last modified time of the file for sending response headers.

Note, this question does not dupe http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4135450/determine-physical-location-of-razor-view-in-mvc3 that question is about being inside the view and not inside the controller. — Chris Marisic, Apr 12 '12 at 17:29
I may be wrong but that wont be avalaible until post-action execute, or OnActionExecuted. I suppose you could loop through all of the registered ViewEngines and try finding the views based on the ViewLocation collection, but thats all manual — Nick Bork, Apr 12 '12 at 17:35
Also does not dupe http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1529417/asp-net-mvc-getting-last-modified-date-fileinfo-of-view this question might be for MVC1, the Request.PhysicalPath returns an invalid file location, it just treats my route as if it was a file request. — Chris Marisic, Apr 12 '12 at 17:59

Mårten Wikström · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-12T20:07:05.220

4

The proper way to the get physical location of a view is to map its virtual path. The virtual path can be retrieved from the ViewPath property of BuildManagerCompiledView (RazorView derive from that class, and your IView instances will therefore typically have that property).

Here is an extension method that you can use:

public static class PhysicalViewPathExtension
{
    public static string GetPhysicalViewPath(this ControllerBase controller, string viewName = null)
    {
        if (controller == null)
        {
            throw new ArgumentNullException("controller");
        }

        ControllerContext context = controller.ControllerContext;

        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(viewName))
        {
            viewName = context.RouteData.GetRequiredString("action");
        }

        var result = ViewEngines.Engines.FindView(context, viewName, null);
        BuildManagerCompiledView compiledView = result.View as BuildManagerCompiledView;

        if (compiledView != null)
        {
            string virtualPath = compiledView.ViewPath;
            return context.HttpContext.Server.MapPath(virtualPath);
        }
        else
        {
            return null;
        }
    }
}

Use it something like this:

public ActionResult Index()
{
    string physicalPath = this.GetPhysicalViewPath();
    ViewData["PhysicalPath"] = physicalPath;
    return View();
}

or:

public ActionResult MyAction()
{
    string physicalPath = this.GetPhysicalViewPath("MyView");
    ViewData["PhysicalPath"] = physicalPath;
    return View("MyView");
}

edited Apr 12 '12 at 20:07

answered Apr 12 '12 at 18:48

Mårten Wikström

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How much work would caling `ViewEngines.Engines.FindView` be doing, so I could get this answer without actually needing to execute the result? – Chris Marisic Apr 12 '12 at 19:17
That should not be very expensive. Are you not intending to execute the view? – Mårten Wikström Apr 12 '12 at 19:21
@ChrisMarisic I've updated my answer. It now shows how to use the same approach but without executing the view. – Mårten Wikström Apr 12 '12 at 20:07
I was looking at something similar too, but your extension method is a very clean usage. I'm using the path to find to last modified time of the view to be used as part of a 304 not modified calculation. – Chris Marisic Apr 12 '12 at 20:14
@ChrisMarisic Great! Just keep in mind that any dynamic data rendered by the view could give you problems with such a calculation. – Mårten Wikström Apr 12 '12 at 20:35
If-None-Match for resource, If-Modified-Since for html. – Chris Marisic Apr 12 '12 at 21:06

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 09 '13 at 08:27

That could work:

private DateTime? GetDate(string controller, string viewName)
{
    var context = new ControllerContext(Request.RequestContext, this);
    context.RouteData.Values["controller"] = controller;
    var view = ViewEngines.Engines.FindView(context, viewName, null).View as BuildManagerCompiledView;
    var path = view == null ? null : view.ViewPath;
    return path == null ? (DateTime?) null : System.IO.File.GetLastWriteTime(path);
}

ASP.NET MVC3 Physical Location of View from controller

2 Answers2

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