Tech blog

We faced a problem when we added some PDF files into our media library of ASP.NET MVC website and noticed that these files are not Published automatically.
So you need in Visual Studio to click on each PDF file and under Properties (F4) just choose

• Build Action=Content
• Copy to Output Directory=Copy Always

Comparison: ASP .NET WebForms vs MVC

If you got this message you have missing web.config in Views directory.

You have this file in your development project – click on it in Visual Studio and set to Copy Local, so it will be copied when you click Publish.

1. If you want to host ASP.NET MVC on IIS7 don’t forget to copy also MVC DLLs to bin directory when publishing.
   • If you have ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 installed on server copy only System.Web.Mvc
   • If you don’t have ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 installed on server copy
     System.Web.Mvc
     System.Web.Routing
     System.Web.Abstractions
2. You need to copy also web.config that is under directory where your Views are – it is not included in your project by default so it will not be published. Copy this manually or include this web.config in your project and then Publish.

<%= Html.DropDownList(“Salutation”, (IEnumerable<SelectListItem>)ViewData["Salutation"])%>

We just did not use properties in our viewdata that had the same name as any of the dropdowns , so above example is wrong and it will not select value properly. Instead of this use something like this:

<%= Html.DropDownList(“Salutation”, (IEnumerable<SelectListItem>)ViewData["SalutationList"])%>

And in controller:

ViewData["SalutationList"] = new SelectList(userModel.Salutations, “Value”, “Title”, user.Salutation);