MasterLocationFormats in WebFormViewEngine not used?

Question

I tried to make the ViewEngine use an additional path using:

base.MasterLocationFormats = new string[] {
    "~/Views/AddedMaster.Master"
};

in the constructor of the ViewEngine. It works well for aspx and ascx(PartialViewLocationFormats, ViewLocationFormats).

I still have to supply the MasterPage in web.config or in the page declaration. But if I do, then this declaration is used, not the one in the ViewEngine. If I use am empty MasterLocationFormats, no error is thrown. Is this not implemeted in RC1?

EDIT:

using:

return View("Index", "AddedMaster");

instead of

return View("Index");

in the Controller worked.

Answer 1

Your example isn't really complete, but I am going to guess that your block of code exists at the class level and not inside of a constructor method. The problem with that is that the base class (WebFormViewEngine) initializes the "location format" properties in a constructor, hence overriding your declaration;

public CustomViewEngine()
{
    MasterLocationFormats = new string[] {
        "~/Views/AddedMaster.Master"
    };
}

If you want the hard-coded master to only kick in as a sort of last effort default, you can do something like this:

public CustomViewEngine()
{
    MasterLocationFormats = new List<string>(MasterLocationFormats) {
        "~/Views/AddedMaster.Master"
    }.ToArray();
}