How to make ASP.NET Core compile modified views

ASP.NET Core 3.0 applications doesn’t build views automatically by default when changes are made. Views are built when application compiles and this is expected final state for views. It’s still possible to make ASP.NET Core application build views when changes are made. Most popular case is when application is running on Visual Studio and we are working on cosmetics of view.

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Precompiled views back in time

Precompiled views were also supported by previous versions of ASP.NET MVC although it was a bit tricky to make things work and there was a lot of confusion among developers because they often didn’t understood difference between building and precompiling views.

There were those who believed that building of views make things optimal and faster but it was just an compiler option to make it go through views and make validational build. It didn’t produce anything else but errors and warnings that will pop out when view is built by runtime.

You can find out more about old era from my blog post ASP.NET MVC: Precompiling views.

Precompiled views now

With ASP.NET Core things changed. Views are compiled by default to separate library and with ASP.NET Core 3.0 views are not build again when somebody makes changes to views. It comes down to best practices (don’t debug on live) and performance.

On the screenshot above in red rectangle there’s library of compiled views and its PDB-file.

Turn on runtime compilation of views

It’s still possible to make ASP.NET Core application to compile views when changes are made.

First add the following NuGet package to your application:

• Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Razor.RuntimeCompilation

To use runtime compilation you have to tell your application you want to use it. This is done in ConfigureServices() method of Startup class.

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
    services.AddDbContext<ApplicationDbContext>(options =>
    {
        options.UseSqlite("Data source=calendar.db");
    });
 
    services.AddControllersWithViews()
            .AddRazorRuntimeCompilation();
 
    services.AddScoped<ICalendarService, CalendarService>();
}

I want views to compile automatically when I build application. I run application in Visual Studio and I want to see changes in views immediately. I don’t want to stop application and then run it again.

Conditional runtime compilation

But I also don’t want to compile views on live machines. When release is made then things must not change due to manual changes. This is how I turn on runtime compilation only for debug builds.

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
    services.AddDbContext<ApplicationDbContext>(options =>
    {
        options.UseSqlite("Data source=calendar.db");
    });
 
    var mvc = services.AddControllersWithViews();
 
    #if (DEBUG)
    mvc.AddRazorRuntimeCompilation();
    #endif
 
    services.AddScoped<ICalendarService, CalendarService>();
}

It’s possible to make it also configurable although I don’t recommend to play with temptation to make manual changes to views in live possible again.

Wrapping up

Current way of handling view compilation in ASP.NET Core is perhaps the best one there has ever been. It’s easy to understand and easy to use. And what’s better – it’s also easy to control. It’s okay to runtime compilation at dev environments but for live turn it off. Say it’s not possible anymore or whatever. The less you have chance to make manual tweaks to system on live the better is your dev life.

References

• Razor file compilation in ASP.NET Core