# Why Content View and not a Partial?
**URL:** https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/why-content-view-and-not-a-partial/26912
**Category:** support
**Created:** [July 13, 2020, 12:06pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/why-content-view-and-not-a-partial/26912 "2020-07-13T12:06:55Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@danboyle8637](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/danboyle8637)
#### Post date: [July 13, 2020, 12:06pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/why-content-view-and-not-a-partial/26912/1 "2020-07-13T12:06:55Z")
I understand what a content view is but why would you use one over a partial?
---
### Author:  [@jmooring](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/jmooring)
#### Post date: [July 13, 2020, 2:13pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/why-content-view-and-not-a-partial/26912/2 "2020-07-13T14:13:19Z")
There is a defined [lookup order](https://gohugo.io/templates/views/#which-template-will-be-rendered) for content views.
Let’s say you have three content types:
```txt
content
├── article
│ ├── article-1.md
│ └── article-2.md
├── photo
│ ├── photo-1.md
│ └── photo-2.md
└── video
├── video-1.md
└── video-2.md
```
And, when displaying a _mix_ of content types on a list page, you want to format each item’s summary based on its type.
### Using Partials
layouts/\_default/list.html:
```html
{{ define "main" }}
{{ .Content }}
{{ range .Site.RegularPages }}
{{ partial (printf "summary/%s.html" .Type) . }}
{{ end }}
{{ end }}
```
Then create a directory structure for the partials:
```txt
layouts/
└── partials
└── summary
├── article.html
├── photo.html
└── video.html
```
### Using Content views
layouts/\_default/list.html:
```html
{{ define "main" }}
{{ .Content }}
{{ range .Site.RegularPages }}
{{ .Render "summary" }}
{{ end }}
{{ end }}
```
```txt
layouts/
├── _default
│ ├── baseof.html
│ ├── list.html
│ ├── single.html
│ └── summary.html
├── photo
│ └── summary.html
└── video
└── summary.html
```
Notice that I did not define a “summary” content view for articles. When rendering an article it falls back to `_default/summary.html`.
Now, let’s say that I want the summary for photos to be different when rendering RSS pages:
```txt
layouts/
├── _default
│ ├── baseof.html
│ ├── list.html
│ ├── single.html
│ └── summary.html
├── photo
│ ├── summary.html
│ └── summary.rss.xml <--
└── video
└── summary.html
```
### Additional References:
> [@What is different between .Render and partial?](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/what-is-different-between-render-and-partial/17004):
>
> I think both of them are functions that copy code from other files to the working file. So what is the difference? And when should I use .Render (or partial)?
> [@Hugo Theme Engine: \`{{ .render }} \` vs \`{{ partial }}\`](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/hugo-theme-engine-render-vs-partial/3018/):
>
> I am wondering what the real difference is, between including reusable html snippets in a hugo page tempate when using something like {{ .Render "single-item" }} vs using something like {{ partial "pagination.html" $paginator }} As far as I can tell, the single-item is a file that goes by the name ofsingle-item.html and that resides in the \_default folder, whereas pagination.html is a file that goes by the name of pagination.html and that resides in the \partial folder. I am seeing this co…
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### Author:  [@system](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2020, 2:13pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/why-content-view-and-not-a-partial/26912/3 "2020-07-15T14:13:30Z")
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