Should I make my ASP.NET MVC controller actions virtual?

Question

File -> New Project for ASP.NET MVC projects used to generate controllers with virtual actions. I'm not sure if that stopped with MVC 2 or MVC 3, but is this no longer a best practice?

Interesting question. I hadn't noticed the change but now that you mention it, that does sound vaguely familiar. — Jedidja, Jun 04 '11 at 19:24

score 8 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 11 '12 at 13:42

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T4MVC Does make action methods virtual. If you are using it, it should make action methods virtual, no other way it can work

edited Jul 11 '12 at 13:42

pdjota

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answered Jun 04 '11 at 20:30

archil

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yeah, I realized that, too. I have been wondering way though. Should dig into the features of virtual – tugberk Jun 04 '11 at 20:47
Making action methods virtual roughly saying is not the feature of asp.net mvc. That's more the c# language feature that T4MVC uses – archil Jun 04 '11 at 21:10
this was it. T4MVC added the virtual keyword to any action that didn't already have it. it also made my controllers partial classes – kenwarner Jun 05 '11 at 00:04

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 04 '11 at 19:22

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The current documentation for ASP.NET MVC 3 does not show virtual methods. I'm not really sure what making them virtual would gain you, as I've never subclassed controllers to override actions.

answered Jun 04 '11 at 19:22

Jedidja

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score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 19 '16 at 15:40

Generated code may be made virtual for various reasons. It's not good practice to make your own code virtual unless required by some tool. See Liskov Substitution Principle and Open/Closed Principle. I think some frameworks do this to facilitate creating proxies but I can't imagine any reason to make all of your methods virtual. To me it screams copy/paste or cargo cult programmer.

Should I make my ASP.NET MVC controller actions virtual?

3 Answers3

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