Question

I have a shared view located in Shared/Header.aspx and I want to render this as part of the HeaderContent ContentPlaceHolder. My master page contains:

<asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="HeaderContent" runat="server" />

and I want to be able to tell MVC to populate that content place holder with the Shared/Header view, which contains:

<%@ Page Title="" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage" %>

<asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="HeaderContent" runat="server">
    ....
</asp:Content>

At the moment in each of the pages where I want the HeaderContent to be populated (and on some pages I don’t want it to be) I do this:

<asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="HeaderContent" runat="server">
    <% Html.RenderPartial("Header"); %>
</asp:Content>

Is there any way I can effectively do the above but from the Controller handling the request (or a child class of ViewPage)?

Answer 1

If you want to do this from the controller, then you could pass a property in the ViewData, which could be picked up from the layout page. E.g. in a controller action:

ViewData["ShowHeader"] = true;

Then in the layout page you could say

<% if(ViewData["ShowHeader"] != null && ((bool)ViewData["ShowHeader"]))
{
    Html.RenderPartial("Header");
} %>

That way you don’t need the extra content placeholder too.