Question

For an ASP.NET MVC application, I saw this blog article.
The author ScottGu adds @section to the Index.cshtml.

I have a couple of questions (referring to the article above):

• Is Index.cshtml a shared View?
• The example code uses @section code in a particular view. Why?

Can someone please explain why and when I would use @section in a View?

Answer 1

@section is for defining a content are override from a shared view. Basically, it is a way for you to adjust your shared view (similar to a Master Page in Web Forms).

You might find Scott Gu’s write up on this very interesting.

Edit: Based on additional question clarification

The @RenderSection syntax goes into the Shared View, such as:

<div id="sidebar">
    @RenderSection("Sidebar", required: false)
</div>

This would then be placed in your view with @Section syntax:

@section Sidebar{
    <!-- Content Here -->
}

In MVC3+ you can either define the Layout file to be used for the view directly or you can have a default view for all views.

Common view settings can be set in _ViewStart.cshtml which defines the default layout view similar to this:

@{
    Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml";
}

You can also set the Shared View to use directly in the file, such as index.cshtml directly as shown in this snippet.

@{
    ViewBag.Title = "Corporate Homepage";
    ViewBag.BodyID = "page-home";
    Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout2.cshtml";
}

There are a variety of ways you can adjust this setting with a few more mentioned in this SO answer.