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I have defined some custom helpers in my MVC3 Razor application (ASP.NET) and in the ViewStart code I would like to access my custom helpers.

I noticed that they are not accessible in _ViewStart which then seems understandable as ViewStart derives from ViewStartPage and not WebViewPage.

So I tried to define the helper in a custom ViewStart class but as it turns out I then need access to a ViewDataContainer to be able to initialize the helper.

So, the question is, how can I access my custom helper from ViewStart (or a custom ViewStartPage) and if not, can I then initialize the viewDataContainer constructor property with NULL. I don't expect needing any ViewData access in my custom ViewStartPage.

I also tried implementing the custom ViewStart class but it gives me this error:

CustomViewStart does not implement inherited abstract member 'System.Web.WebPages.WebPageExecutingBase.Execute()'

what should I do in that execute method? I don't want to do anything fancy in the customViewStart, just access my helper.

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2 Answers 2

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OK, it is after all possible as I suspected, just needed some nitty gritty technical details sorted out first.

public abstract class CustomViewStartPage : System.Web.Mvc.ViewStartPage {
    public Helpers.InvariantHelper ConfigHelper { get; private set; }

    public CustomViewStartPage() : base() {
        ConfigHelper = new Helpers.InvariantHelper();
    }
}

Now, I have defined several custom helpers in my WebViewPage custom base page and they do their work for views. However, in the ViewStart I needed to do certain stuff (here is only a trivial example) that did not require accessing the ViewContext (as I originally thought).

So, with this I can now have this in my _ViewStart.cshtml:

@* Views/_ViewStart.cshtml *@
@inherits MyNamespace.Web.Mvc.CustomViewStartPage
@{
    var something = ConfigHelper.DisableParentLayout;
}

Sure, one can also use static members of a class as @MortenMertner indicated (a fresh view at the problem from outside) but in some cases that may not be what you truly want. This example here is senseless but serves as purpose to indicate how it could be accomplished for those who need.

If on the other hand a ViewContext needs to be accessed (another valid scenario) you may want to look at the post in my comment above which describes how to modify this custom view start page to access the context without errors.

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From what I understand, the _ViewStart file is not a regular view. It can only be used to set defaults, such as the layout view, for other views.

For instance, this is the complete contents of my _ViewStart file:

@{ Layout = "~/Views/Shared/Layouts/Wide.cshtml"; }

If this holds true there would be no need for custom helpers in the file, and you're likely trying to solve a problem that you shouldn't have in the first place.

As an aside, you can add assemblies and namespaces in Web.config to avoid having to import them in specific views. I use this to import my models, enums and extension methods.

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4 Comments

that I understand but my helper simply needs to access some stuff, in particular defining some layout characteristics. For that reason I mentioned "custom" web helpers rather than the default HTML helper.
that I know, that's why I said it is a custom web helper (not the HTML helper). My helper does something I need to access in my View Start. See stackoverflow.com/questions/10872649/…
I see. Why don't you just set the layout using a static method on some class, like @{ Layout = ThemeHelper.GetLayout(); }? (as opposed to creating your own inherited ViewStart and creating extensions for that)
not quite what I want(ed) because then I would need to explicitely pass a context to my static method but it is definitely a workaround. Especially considering that it doesn't even recognize the inheritance chain of ViewStartPage.

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