Razor Pages Fixes to Tag Helpers Issues

Recently when adding Razor Pages to an existing ASP.net Core MVC web application I had issues with the Tag Helpers not working. No markup was being produced. Not only were the tag helpers (i.e. asp-for) not doing their job of but I also noticed that the markup was not being formatted in bold in Visual Studio as it should be.

At this point I checked for a _ViewImports.cshtml file which I found before checking some other things (see the list below), however I failed to notice that as this was an MVC application with Razor Views there is already a _ViewImports.cshtml file but in the wrong place for my Razor Pages. The _ViewImports.cshtml file must be in the root of the Pages folder where your Razor pages reside, and so you will need one in both the Pages folder for your Razor Pages and also in the Views folder for your MVC Razor Views.

The _ViewImports.cshtml file must contain:

@addTagHelper *, Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.TagHelpers

Adding a new _ViewImports.cshtml file under the Pages folder resolved my problem, but in the meantime here are some additional things to try if you have other Tag Helper problems:

• Update all dependency Packages
• Add/re-add Microsoft.AspNetCore.MVC.TagHelpers package if its missing
• Check your _ViewImports.cshtml file is in the Pages folder or a parent folder of your Razor Pages. You may need one in the Areas folder if you have one.
• Check that the _ViewImports.cshtml file includes a reference to Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.TagHelpers. If it does try removing it, rebuilding the solution and then re-adding it, and rebuilding again.
• Check the namespace in the _ViewImports.cshtml file is correct.
• Should all these fail, try turning on the developer exception page and see if that helps to narrow down the problem.