Update 2017-03-09
Things have changed a bit in Visual Studio 2017 using MS Build. Luckily it's much simpler. Here's how to get this to work:
In the external assembly, add this to the csproj file:
<ItemGroup>
<EmbeddedResource Include="Views/**/*.cshtml" />
</ItemGroup>
In the main web project, add this NuGet package:
Microsoft.Extensions.FileProviders.Embedded
Then in Startup, add the external assembly to the list of File Providers:
services.Configure<RazorViewEngineOptions>(options =>
{
options.FileProviders.Add(new EmbeddedFileProvider(
typeof(SampleClassInAssembly).Assembly
# Prior to .Net Standard 2.0
# typeof(SampleClassInAssembly).GetTypeInfo().Assembly
));
});
I'll leave the original answer below for now, in case people are still trying to get this to work with older versions of .Net Core and project.json
.
================================================================
Here are the steps to make this work.
- Make sure your view structure in the components assembly is the same as your web project. Note that there was a mistake in the screenshot that I posted along with my question.
Register CompositeFileProvider
in Startup.cs
of the web project:
services.Configure<RazorViewEngineOptions>(options =>
{
options.FileProvider = new CompositeFileProvider(
new EmbeddedFileProvider(
typeof(BookOfTheMonthViewComponent).GetTypeInfo().Assembly,
"BookStore.Components"
),
options.FileProvider
);
});
Both CompositeFileProvider
and EmbeddedFileProvider
are new, so you'll need to get these from the aspnetvnext
NuGet feed. I did this by adding this source:
Add the dependencies in project.json
:
"Microsoft.AspNet.FileProviders.Composite": "1.0.0-*",
"Microsoft.AspNet.FileProviders.Embedded": "1.0.0-*",
Lastly, add this to the project.json
of the Components
assembly:
"resource": "Views/**"
That should be enough to get this working.
Here is a working demo:
https://github.com/johnnyoshika/mvc6-view-components/tree/master
This answer was formulated from this discussion here: https://github.com/aspnet/Mvc/issues/3750
Update 2016-01-15
There is currently one painful problem with external view components. Any changes you make to the view cshtml file does not automatically get recompiled. Even a forced Visual Studio clean and rebuild doesn't do it. You need to change a .cs file in the components assembly in order to trigger a view recompilation, but it looks like this is something that will be corrected in the future. The reason for this problem is explained here: https://github.com/aspnet/Mvc/issues/3750#issuecomment-171765303