ASP.NET MVC 3 Razor Templates VS RenderPartial

Question

I just read this blog post on Razor Templating in ASP.NET MVC 3.

Put simply, i just dont get it!

That is, i don\'t see why we need this

Answer 1

A common misconception about Razor is that it can't be used outside the context of the ASP.Net MVC framework. It is the most common scenario, however the power of razor engine goes beyond that.

You can define razor templates in a console app or even a library. As a over simplified example, consider an app that sends automated HTML emails to clients. In old days, you would either resort to string concatenation or XSLT transform or something else. Either way, you cannot visually see your markup and manipulation becomes a maintenance nightmare.

With Razor templates, you can define your template as HTML markup where you can easily visualize and test it.

Here's an excellent article that demonstrates this capability: http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/2010/Dec/27/Hosting-the-Razor-Engine-for-Templating-in-NonWeb-Applications

Note: I'm not saying that the link you pointed is showing this, just an example of why you would want to go beyond the methods listed in @marcind's answer.