Why Partial View In ASP.NET MVC

Partial Views are a type of view which can be reused across the ASP.NET MVC application. It is same as User Control in ASP.NET which can reuse multiple times inside the different views. It is not bound to any particular action method.

When to create Partial View

When you think that the particular data is required again and again in different places it can be single view or different view. In that scenario, we need to create the Partial View. The main purpose of creating the Partial View, writing the code again and again for same output or same piece of information we can create a Partial View and place the data inside it. This can be used anywhere inside the View.

So, basically Partial View is used to reduce the duplication of the same type of data. We can know it as reusable view.

There are different places where we can use Partial View like website header and footer, menu bar, category list, comment section, etc.



How to create Partial View

Partial View exists inside the \Views\Shared folder. Because it is accessible to all controller. To add new Partial View, Right Click on Shared folder and choose Add and then choose View;



It will open a Add View window, where you can define the name of the Partial View and check the checkbox “Create as a Partial View” for making the view as partial view.



But in ASP.NET MVC 5, you can create different type of view directly as in the following image,



See the following code, which is used for menu bar. If I am going to create multiple view with menu bar then I need to write it multiple times but I can use Partial View here to make my view clear and understandable.

Menu bar HTML code