Should I be calling each of my MVC views Index.aspx ?

Question

If I'm not mistaken - the conventions of ASP.NET MVC seem to want me to do the following for a controller view.

Thats to day I create 'Products' directory into which I place my 'Index' view. I then create a 'ProductsController' and create an 'Index' method on it which returns a View. Returning just View() with no arguments will go and fetch the 'Index.aspx' page because its the same name as the method.

 public class ProductsController : Controller
    {
        public ActionResult Index()
        {
            return View();   // looks for Index.aspx in Products directory
        }
    }

Now thats just fine. BUT I'll end up with a billion Index.aspx pages, and I'm one of these people that never closes any files so I'll end up going crazy.

Alternatively I can create Products/Products.aspx and change my controller to the following :

 public class ProductsController : Controller
    {
        public ActionResult Index()  // my default routing goes to Index (from sample project)
        {
            return View("Products");
        }
    }

I understand how that works, and that its completely fine within the MVC design pattern to do this. Its not a hack or anything like that.

My problem (after listening to this PDC video) is that convention over customizabiltity is favored in MVC (or whatever the correct phrase is).

So I'm wondering if I'm missing a third way, or if people are just fine with 50 Index tabs in Visual Studio?

Answer 1

It's just a pattern. Use the pattern, but make it work for you. Personally, I like to have my Views named by their function and I don't have many Index.aspx pages, because I don't have many indices.

Answer 2

I think you should name the method after the action and name the view (if it makes sense and it's not shared between actions, the same as the action). You should probably change your routing mechanism as Index isn't really a descriptive name. The action name should represent what it does (just like any method) and shouldn't be hardcoded to Index or something like that. Routing should be edited instead.

Answer 3

Having the default action for each controller have the same name just simplifies the routing (check global.asax). Also, it all things (Products, Books, Contacts, ...) use actions/views with the same name for the same function, then the code becomes much easier to navigate and understand. This use of convention is especially important when working as part of a team as it will encourage consistent code across developers.

While looking at another question, I ran across SimplyRestfulRouting in the MVCContrib project on codeplex. This might give you some ideas.