AspNetCore.Docs/aspnetcore/includes/mvc-intro/adding_view1.md

Adding a view to an ASP.NET Core MVC app

By Rick Anderson

In this section you modify the HelloWorldController class to use Razor view template files to cleanly encapsulate the process of generating HTML responses to a client.

You create a view template file using Razor. Razor-based view templates have a .cshtml file extension. They provide an elegant way to create HTML output using C#.

Currently the Index method returns a string with a message that's hard-coded in the controller class. In the HelloWorldController class, replace the Index method with the following code:

[!code-csharpMain]

The preceding code returns a View object. It uses a view template to generate an HTML response to the browser. Controller methods (also known as action methods) such as the Index method above, generally return an IActionResult (or a class derived from ActionResult), not a type like string.