ASP.NET MVC view markup orientation

Question

I'm coming to grips with Microsoft's MVC SPA template. I've just done a tute on knockout, which seemed straightforward, and now I would like to know whether these tags, found at the beginning and end of views, are informational or functional.

<!-- ko with: register -->
    ...        
<!-- /ko -->

In this sample, the view is called _Register.cshtml and the AccountController does seem to have a method Register that takes a RegisterBindingModel, but there is also a file register.viewmodel.js the code in which looks a lot like the view models from the KO tute I just did.

Can someone explain to me how this works? I understand the MVC pattern but I'm still a little hazy on how SPA on MVC hangs together.

Are those tags perhaps some sort of RAZOR directive?

Answer 1

The comments are functional and useful in cases where you do not have a container element.

From the docs:

The and comments act as start/end markers, defining a “virtual element” that contains the markup inside. Knockout understands this virtual element syntax and binds as if you had a real container element.

More info