Razor View Engine

The Razor View Engine

ASP.NET MVC 3 comes with a new view engine named Razor that offers the following benefits:

• Razor syntax is clean and concise, requiring a minimum number of keystrokes.
• Razor is easy to learn, in part because it's based on existing languages like C# and Visual Basic.
• Visual Studio includes IntelliSense and code colorization for Razor syntax.
• Razor views can be unit tested without requiring that you run the application or launch a web server.

Some new Razor features include the following:

• @model syntax for specifying the type being passed to the view.
• @* *@ comment syntax.
• The ability to specify defaults (such as layoutpage) once for an entire site.
• The Html.Raw method for displaying text without HTML-encoding it.
• Support for sharing code among multiple views (_viewstart.cshtml or _viewstart.vbhtml files).

Razor also includes new HTML helpers, such as the following:

• Chart. Renders a chart, offering the same features as the chart control in ASP.NET 4.
• WebGrid. Renders a data grid, complete with paging and sorting functionality.
• Crypto. Uses hashing algorithms to create properly salted and hashed passwords.
• WebImage. Renders an image.
• WebMail. Sends an email message.