The Purpose of Views
Chapter 2 demonstrated how controllers can return strings, which are then output to the browser. That's useful for getting started with controllers, but in any non-trivial web application, you'll notice a pattern emerging very quickly: Most controller actions need to display dynamic information in HTML format. If the controller actions are just returning strings, they'll be doing a lot of string substitution, which gets messy fast. A templating system is clearly needed, which is where the view comes in.
The view is responsible for providing the user interface (UI) to the user. It is given a reference to the model (the information the controller needs displayed), and the view transforms that model into a format ready to be presented to the user. In ASP.NET MVC, the view accomplishes this by examining a model object handed off to it by the controller and transforming the contents of that to HTML.
Let's take a quick look at an example of a view. The following code sample shows a view named Sample.cshtml located at the path /Views/Home/Sample.cshtml. Don't worry about typing this; it's just for illustration.
Listing 3-1: Sample view — Sample.cshtml
@{ Layout = null; } <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head><title>Sample View</title></head> ...Get Professional ASP.NET MVC 4 now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
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