Opening up a Html Page When Clicking an A Tag Or Link in a Cshtml Razor Page

Question

I have a razor .net core 3 project where I am using Razor pages for the views, I will have a few html pages that will not be cshtml and I need to be able to open up a straight up html page when I click on a link or A tag

I have tried using in my _Layout.cshtml in the navbar to open the TestPage.html

<li>
 <a asp-page="/Content/TestPage">Content</a> 
</li>

This though does not generate any html when i inspect the page so nothing happens when i click the link. I do know it works if the page im looking for is a Razor page with the @page at the top

I have also tried

<li>
  <a href="/Content/TestPage">Content</a> 
</li>

this though always gives the error "Localhost page cant be found" even though its the exact path to it. I know that if i just made the html page a cshtml page it would work but in this specific instant for the project I am working on it has to be a html page and nothing is working.

The TestPage.html is under the Pages folder with the other razor views and then its in a Content Folder finally.

Any help is appreciated if you need more context feel free to ask

TestPage.html

<div>Test Text To Show</div>

Answer 1

If you want to use a razor view rather than a razor page in a razor page project,you should not add a razor view into Pages folder.You need to create a Views folder and put a Shared folder which contains _Layout.cshtml into it.Also,you need to put _ViewImports.cshtml and _ViewStart.cshtml.

Folder structure:

_ViewImports.cshtml:

@using {YourProjectName}
@using {YourProjectName}.Models
@addTagHelper *, Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.TagHelpers

_ViewStart.cshtml：

@{
    Layout = "_Layout";
}

And then you need to add the routing of mvc to Startup.cs:

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
        {
            services.AddRazorPages();
            services.AddControllers();
            ...
        }

        // This method gets called by the runtime. Use this method to configure the HTTP request pipeline.
        public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IWebHostEnvironment env)
        {
            
            ...

            app.UseEndpoints(endpoints =>
            {
                endpoints.MapRazorPages();
                endpoints.MapControllerRoute(
                    name: "default",
                    pattern: "{controller=Home}/{action=Index}/{id?}");
            });
        }

Then add Controllers folder and add Content Controller and TestPage to it.

Folder structure:

Content Controller:

public class ContentController : Controller
    {
        public IActionResult TestPage()
        {
            return View();
        }
    }

result: