'How do I solve a "view not found" exception in asp.net core mvc project

I'm trying to create a ASP.NET Core MVC test app running on OSX using VS Code. I'm getting a 'view not found' exception when accessing the default Home/index (or any other views I tried).

This is the Startup configuration

    public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app) {

        // use for development
        app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage();
        app.UseDefaultFiles();
        app.UseStaticFiles();

        app.UseMvc( routes => {
            routes.MapRoute(
                name: "default",
                template: "{controller=Home}/{action=Index}"
            );
        });
    }

And I have the view defined in Views/Home/index.cshtml, and I have the following packages included on project.json

"dependencies": {
"Microsoft.NETCore.App": {
  "version": "1.0.0-rc2-3002702",
  "type": "platform"
},
"Microsoft.AspNetCore.Razor.Tools" : "1.0.0-preview1-final",
"Microsoft.AspNetCore.Diagnostics": "1.0.0-rc2-final",
"Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc": "1.0.0-rc2-final",
"Microsoft.AspNetCore.Server.IISIntegration": "1.0.0-rc2-final",
"Microsoft.AspNetCore.Server.Kestrel": "1.0.0-rc2-final",
"Microsoft.AspNetCore.StaticFiles": "1.0.0-rc2-final",
"Microsoft.AspNetCore.Routing": "1.0.0-rc2-final"
},

And finally, this is the exception I get.

System.InvalidOperationException: The view 'Index' was not found. The following locations were searched:
    /Views/Home/Index.cshtml
    /Views/Shared/Index.cshtml
    at Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.ViewEngines.ViewEngineResult.EnsureSuccessful(IEnumerable`1 originalLocations)
    at Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.ViewResult.<ExecuteResultAsync>d__26.MoveNext()
    --- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown --- ...

Any suggestions of what I might be missing ?

c++sharp asp.net-core

Solution 1:^[1]

I found this missing piece. I ended up creating a ASP.NET Core project in VS2015 and then compare for differences. It turns out I was missing .UseContentRoot(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory()) from WebHostBuilder in main.

After adding this:

public static void Main(string[] args)
{
    new WebHostBuilder()
        .UseKestrel()
        .UseContentRoot(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory())
        .UseStartup<Startup>()
        .Build()
        .Run();
}

I then got an exception regarding missing preserveCompilationContext. Once added in project.json my view shows correct.

"buildOptions": {
    "preserveCompilationContext": true,
    "emitEntryPoint": true
},

Solution 2:^[2]

In my case, the build action was somehow changed to Embedded resource which is not included in published files.

Changing Embedded resource to Content resolves my issue.

Solution 3:^[3]

Check your .csproj file. Make sure your file(s) are not listed like:

<ItemGroup>
   <Content Remove="Views\Extractor\Insert.cshtml" />
   <Content Remove="Views\_ViewImports.cshtml" />
</ItemGroup>

If it is listed like above, remove the ones you need. Sometimes, that happens when we do right click and change build setting to Compile.

Solution 4:^[4]

I just upgraded from .net core 2.2 to 3. Two ways to resolve I found:

Either call AddRazorRuntimeCompilation() when configuring mvc, like:

services.AddControllersWithViews()
    .AddRazorRuntimeCompilation(...);

more info here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/migration/22-to-30?view=aspnetcore-3.0&tabs=visual-studio#opt-in-to-runtime-compilation

Or remove the following lines from the .csproj:

<RazorCompileOnBuild>false</RazorCompileOnBuild>
<RazorCompileOnPublish>false</RazorCompileOnPublish>

Solution 5:^[5]

I have to add in project.json this:

"publishOptions": {
    "include": [
        "wwwroot",
        "**/*.cshtml",
        "appsettings.json",
        "web.config"
    ]
},

Solution 6:^[6]

The solution of my project was by
1- Adding AddRazorRuntimeCompilation() such as services.AddControllersWithViews().AddRazorRuntimeCompilation(); into StartUp ConfigureServices.

2- and Keeping this <RazorCompileOnBuild>false</RazorCompileOnBuild>

in .csproj . Then Build the project.

Updated

Make sure you have this NuGet package added to your project:

Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Razor.RuntimeCompilation

Solution 7:^[7]

For anyone struggling with this, I had a different problem than all the above. My local version worked fine, but the live production version gave this error. It turned out the Unix filenames were different from the ones showing in Windows.

Git has a nasty setting that's enabled by default: core.ignorecasegit ( you can check this setting on the commandline with config --get core.ignorecase)

The solution was to rename the files to something else (e.g. xxx.cs ), commit and push, then rename them back to original with the correct casing/capitalization and commit and push again.

Solution 8:^[8]

I am using VS2017. In my case there was the view file at the proper place (with the proper name). Then I remembered that I renamed it before, (and the VS somehow did not asked me if I wanna change all the references as usual). So I finally deleted the view, then I made it again, and this solved my problem.

Solution 9:^[9]

I had the same problem in ASP.Net Core MVC (.Net 6). I simply updated my Visual Studio 2022 to the latest version which is 17.1.0 and that solved the error.

Solution 10:^[10]

if you are porting your project from a console app to a web app, you need to change this line in your .csproj file

from:

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">

to:

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Web">

Solution 11:^[11]

Same issue started happening for me after we migrated from .net 2.2 to 6. Locally it was fine but only deployed version was giving The view 'Index' was not found error.

It turns out windows-latest and latest visual studio in build pipeline wasn't actually mean windows 2022 and visual studio 2022 YET. And therefore published version wasn't supporting .net 6.

After specifying 2022 versions for both windows and visual studio it started working.

Here is the reference: https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/6907

Solution 12:^[12]

I had this same issue while building an Identity Server instance, everything worked great if I ran the project from Visual Studio but after publishing the project and running with the dotnet command I got the "View not found" error when Identity Server tried to serve up the Login view. I already had verified everything else mentioned here but it still wasn't working. I finally found that the problem was with how I Was running the dotnet command. I was running it from the parent folder, one level above my Identity Server instance and this affected the content root path, for example, running this:

dotnet myWebFolder/MyIdentityServer.dll

gave me the following output when Identity Server started:

$Output log showing Content root path set to C:\inetpub\aspnetcore$

So, the full path of my dll in this case is C:\inetpub\aspnetcore\myWebFolder\MyIdentityServer.dll and I ran the dotnet command from the C:\inetpub\aspnetcore\ folder.

To get the correct content root I had to make sure I ran the dotnet command from the same folder where the dll is, as in dotnet MyIdentityServer.dll. That change gave me this output:

$Output log showing Content root path set to C:\inetpub\aspnetcore\myWebFolder$

Now my content root path is correct and Identity Server finds the Login views at C:\inetpub\aspnetcore\myWebFolder\Views\Account\Login.cshtml

Solution 13:^[13]

Visual Code With dotnet version 2.2.300 gave an error message, so not a runtime exception.

My controller was derived from ControllerBase instead of Controller. So, I had to change ControllerBase to Controller.

Solution 14:^[14]

FWIW, In our case we received this error when accessing localhost:<port>/graphql even though the View/GraphQL/Index.cshtml was in the right place. We got the error because wwwroot/bundle.js and wwwroot/style.js was mistakenly not initially committed, since our .gitignore included wwwroot. Discovered it by inspecting the network traffic and seeing it was these files giving the 404 and not the Index.cshtml itself.

Solution 15:^[15]

Im my case it simply was a "forget" error...
I had the folder with view not named the same as the controller name.
Renamed the folder to the correct name.. and works...

Solution 16:^[16]

I also got similar error. I am using .Net Core 6.0 ASP .Net MVC project.

It was resolved just by adding following in the program.cs

builder.Services.AddRazorPages().AddRazorRuntimeCompilation();

You will need to add following package reference in project file

<ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Razor.RuntimeCompilation" Version="6.0.3" />
</ItemGroup>

Solution 17:^[17]

Reply to @LukaszDev (dont think I can attach images to a comment) My view is Index.cshtml, typo from my side. See attached screenshot

My controller is as simple as can be. I get same error for both Index and Welcome

using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;

namespace app1 {

    [Route("[controller]")]
    public class HomeController : Controller {

        // default action, configured in Startup.cs route
        public IActionResult Index() {
            // handles route /home
            return View();
        }

        [Route("welcome")]
        public IActionResult WelcomeActionDoesNotHaveToMatchName() {
            // handles router /home/welcome
            return View("Welcome"); 
        }
    }
}

Solution 18:^[18]

In my case the problem was from <EnableDefaultContentItems>false</EnableDefaultContentItems> that I had set in my csproj

Solution 19:^[19]

In case of someone has a similar problem. It turned out that my csproj file has a few invalid references to my view. I deleted any record related to my view, I removed the csproj.user file from the project directory and I reloaded the project, then I included my view. things started working.

Solution 20:^[20]

I had the same problem under Arch Linux, Visual Studio Code and .NET Core 3.1 and 5.0.

I solved it by removeing the path to the csproj-file in the build section of the tasks.json file:

"tasks": [
    {
        "label": "build",
        "command": "dotnet",
        "type": "process",
        "args": [
            "build",
            // removed the following line:
            // "${workspaceFolder}/ProjectFoo.csproj",
            "/property:GenerateFullPaths=true",
            "/consoleloggerparameters:NoSummary"
        ],
        "problemMatcher": "$msCompile"
    },

Solution 21:^[21]

In my case after migrating from Core 2.2 to 3.1 my static html file was not being found. In my startup.cs file I had to add app.UseDefaultFiles() just before app.UseStaticFiles() to make it work. So something like this:

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
   .
   .
   .
   services.AddControllersWithViews();
   .
   .
   .
}


public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IWebHostEnvironment env)
{
   .
   .
   .
   app.UseDefaultFiles();
   app.UseStaticFiles();
   app.UseRouting();
   .
   .
   .
   app.UseEndpoints(endpoints =>
   {
          endpoints.MapControllerRoute(
          name: "default",
          pattern: "{controller=Home}/{action=Index}/{id?}");
   });
}

Solution 22:^[22]

I had this error on Ubuntu Linux and was trying to run it from the CLI for the first time, so I fixed it by running the dotnet build command with sudo dotnet build, so it turned out to be a permissions issue and the app started fine with dotnet bin/Debug/netcoreapp2.0/MyApp.dll. Sadly the build command didn't notify about the permissions issue.

Solution 23:^[23]

If anyone encountered this problem in VS 2022 when a new MVC ASP.NET project is created, I had to execute

dotrun watch run and than Debug the visual studio project. The problem went away.

I am not sure why doesn't dotrun start by default when in debug mode.

Solution 24:^[24]

To enable runtime compilation for all environments in an existing project:

Install the Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Razor.RuntimeCompilation NuGet package. Install-Package Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Razor.RuntimeCompilation
Update the project's Startup.ConfigureServices method to include a call to AddRazorRuntimeCompilation. builder.Services.AddRazorPages().AddRazorRuntimeCompilation();

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution	Source
Solution 1	Brian
Solution 2	Unheilig
Solution 3	Nirmal Subedi
Solution 4
Solution 5	Alexandre Swioklo
Solution 6
Solution 7	Kars Barendrecht
Solution 8	Agath
Solution 9	ouflak
Solution 10	Majid
Solution 11	suadinho
Solution 12	Tim
Solution 13	Tim
Solution 14	Magne
Solution 15	FredyWenger
Solution 16	Ajey
Solution 17	Jesper Kristiansen
Solution 18	Gerald Hughes
Solution 19	Ryan Tavan
Solution 20	klkn3103
Solution 21	Elnoor
Solution 22	Blaskowitz
Solution 23	devyJava
Solution 24	Ankursonikajen

'How do I solve a "view not found" exception in asp.net core mvc project

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