Convention over configuration in ASP.NET MVC

Question

I am relatively new to ASP.NET MVC, and am very impressed with the clarity of the platform so far. However, there is one aspect that I find uncomfortable.

At first, I accepted the fact that when I say

return View();

I am calling a helper method that returns an ActionResult, and makes some assumptions about which view to present, route values, etc. But lately I have been writing code that looks more like this:

return View("Index", new { id = myID })

because it is immediately clear to me what's happening by reading that single line of code.

Lately I have been struggling with the fact that I can have an Index.ASPX view open on the tabs, and I can't immediately tell where it comes from because the IDE doesn't highlight the current tab in the Object Explorer. I haven't resorted to changing the names of the files to ControllerNameIndex.ASPX, but I do put a title in the view that is more specific. Still, it doesn't help much.

How do you deal with these kinds of ambiguities?

Answer 1

Given that you're doing the same as I am, maybe that's the answer! :)

Well, unless someone comes up with a better one.

Answer 2

I think you answered your own question.

There's no hard rule preventing you from calling your views very specific names, such as "ListOfFooBars" or "EditFizzBuzz" or "AddNewGeeblup". The naming convention for the default view engine only specifies that there's a folder corresponding to your model name under views, and there's an ASPX or ASPC file under that folder that corresponds to your view name.