ViewImports — Complete Guide

ViewImports — Complete Guide: free step-by-step lesson with examples, common mistakes, and interview tips — part of ASP.NET Core MVC Tutorial on Toolliyo Academy.

8 min read Updated 6/26/2026

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ASP.NET Core MVC Tutorial · Lesson 46 of 200

ViewImports

Getting Started ✓ → Core MVC ✓ → Data & Security → Production → Career

Intermediate · 4 — Models, Routing & DI · ~6 min · Section 4: Views & Razor

What is this?

A layout is a master page — usually Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml — with shared header, footer, and nav. Individual pages fill the middle via @RenderBody().

Why should you care?

Without a layout you would copy the same navbar HTML on 100 pages. Change the logo once in _Layout and every page updates.

See it live — copy this example

Create an MVC project (dotnet new mvc), add the code, and run dotnet run.

@* _Layout.cshtml *@
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
    <nav><a href="/">ShopNest</a></nav>
    <main>@RenderBody()</main>
    <footer>© 2026 ShopNest</footer>
    @await RenderSectionAsync("Scripts", required: false)
</body>
</html>

@* Index.cshtml *@
@{ Layout = "_Layout"; }
<h1>Welcome</h1>

Run Example »

Edit the code and click Run — like W3Schools Try it Yourself.

Code

Result

What happened?

_ViewStart.cshtml can set Layout = "_Layout" for all views automatically.
RenderBody is where page content goes.
Scripts section loads page-specific JS at the bottom.

Try it yourself

Edit _Layout.cshtml navbar text and refresh any page.
Add a footer line in the layout — confirm all pages show it.
Create a Scripts section in one view with a console.log script.
Change text or labels in the example and run again — watch the browser update.
Break the code on purpose (remove a semicolon), read the error message, then fix it.

Remember

_Layout.cshtml wraps every page. @RenderBody() is the page content slot. _ViewStart.cshtml sets default layout.

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