Plugin Views won't load

My views won't load for my plugin that I'm developing. I have them as an embedded resource, but it keeps looking for them in the standard folder locations.

I created a new Product Template. I have:

@using Nop.Plugin.Misc.ProductDesigner

and I'm calling a controller action with:

@Html.Action("Designer", "MiscProductDesigner")

The debugger hits the "Designer" action in the controller, but when it returns the view:

Return View("Nop.Plugin.Misc.ProductDesigner.Views.MiscProductDesigner.Designer")

(Again, my views are set as an Embedded Resource, and the view structure in the project looks like:
Nop.Plugin.Misc.ProductDesigner
--Views
----MiscProductDesigner
------Designer.vbhtml

I get:

The view 'Nop.Plugin.Misc.ProductDesigner.Views.MiscProductDesigner.Designer' or its master was not found or no view engine supports the searched locations. The following locations were searched:
~/Themes/DarkOrange/Views/MiscProductDesigner/Nop.Plugin.Misc.ProductDesigner.Views.MiscProductDesigner.Designer.cshtml
~/Themes/DarkOrange/Views/MiscProductDesigner/Nop.Plugin.Misc.ProductDesigner.Views.MiscProductDesigner.Designer.vbhtml
~/Themes/DarkOrange/Views/Shared/Nop.Plugin.Misc.ProductDesigner.Views.MiscProductDesigner.Designer.cshtml
~/Themes/DarkOrange/Views/Shared/Nop.Plugin.Misc.ProductDesigner.Views.MiscProductDesigner.Designer.vbhtml
~/Views/MiscProductDesigner/Nop.Plugin.Misc.ProductDesigner.Views.MiscProductDesigner.Designer.cshtml
~/Views/MiscProductDesigner/Nop.Plugin.Misc.ProductDesigner.Views.MiscProductDesigner.Designer.vbhtml
~/Views/Shared/Nop.Plugin.Misc.ProductDesigner.Views.MiscProductDesigner.Designer.cshtml
~/Views/Shared/Nop.Plugin.Misc.ProductDesigner.Views.MiscProductDesigner.Designer.vbhtml
~/Administration/Views/MiscProductDesigner/Nop.Plugin.Misc.ProductDesigner.Views.MiscProductDesigner.Designer.cshtml
~/Administration/Views/MiscProductDesigner/Nop.Plugin.Misc.ProductDesigner.Views.MiscProductDesigner.Designer.vbhtml
~/Administration/Views/Shared/Nop.Plugin.Misc.ProductDesigner.Views.MiscProductDesigner.Designer.cshtml
~/Administration/Views/Shared/Nop.Plugin.Misc.ProductDesigner.Views.MiscProductDesigner.Designer.vbhtml

I've stepped through code, and when it gets to finding the embedded views in the EmbeddedViewTable (EmbeddedViewTable.cs lines 46-49), my plugin assembly is not listed in table of Views. Is there anything I might be missing that is preventing my plugin assembly from being loaded in there?

esutter wrote:
After each project build, clean the solution before making changes. Some resources will be cached and can lead to developer insanity.

Thank you for your response.

I have done clean, and rebuild, and even manually deleted leftover DLLs and ASP.NET Temporary files. Would the very fact that I'm developing the plugin with VB.NET have anything to do with it? I know the property pages between VB and C# projects are a tad different, and I just wonder if there's something in the project architecture itself that's not making the assembly visible to the Embedded Views Table?

esutter wrote:
I don't think so. I'll have a look at the plugin if you could share your solution.

That's very kind of you.

Do you want just the plugin project, or the entire solution with the nopcommerce source? I don't mind sharing it, there's no real code in it right now, not much more than a VB version of the blank plugin project.

Hi Eric,

After some investigation I found out that it's really a VB.NET issue. Have a look at \Presentation\Nop.Web.Framework\EmbeddedViews\EmbeddedViewResolver.cs file (GetEmbeddedViews method). Embedded views aren't loaded because C# and VB.NET generate distinct embedded resource paths. In a C# project embedded resources names follow this convention (RootNampeSpace).(Path).(FileName).(Extension) where Path is the folders path in which this resource exist Root/Folder/SubFolder/.../ResourceFile .In A VB.NET project embedded resources names follow this convention (RootNampeSpace).(FileName).(Extension) and the resource path does not affect its name.

Please find more info here

That's excellent, Andrei.  Based on that, I've got it working, but...

Do you foresee any problems with changing line 29 to:

if (!key.Contains(".cshtml") && !key.Contains(".vbhtml")) continue;

Then, in my controller I do

Return (View("Nop.Plugin.Misc.ProductDesigner.Designer", model))

I think I'm going to put my views in the Shared folder during development so that I can make quick changes in there during debug sessions without having to clean and build for each change to the view, then move them back to the plugin for deployment.

I suppose another option could be to name my views:

Designer.views.vbhtml
Configure.views.vbhtml

This wouldn't require any code changes to the nopCommerce code.