View() vs. PartialView()

Question

The View() method can load Partial Views.

Is the difference between View() and PartialView() is that View() can

Answer 1

I think the biggest difference is about the use of the _Layout page:

• PartialView(): the razor engine will get the view (e.g. index.cshtml) without any layout page (_layout.cshtml).
• View(): the engine will get your view (e.g. index.cshtml) and then appends the content of this view inside the layout page (_layout.cshtml)

Answer 2

It's up to a view engine to decide if they want to treat partial views different from regular views.

For example, in the WebFormViewEngine there is no difference.

In the new ASP.NET MVC 3 RazorViewEngine there are some differences. Only regular views will have the "_viewstart.cshtml" pages run because they are meant for things such as setting up layout pages.

Answer 3

If you have Index.aspx and Index.ascx for the same controller having both methods might help disambiguate. But I agree that in general View is more commonly used. And PartialView can also be used to load full views, it's just that it's semantically wrong.