Home/ Questions/Q 4568712
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-21T19:06:56+00:00

I have MVC 3 C# project with Razor engine. What are the ways and,

  • 0

I have MVC 3 C# project with Razor engine. What are the ways and, I guess, the best practices to write dynamic data to the _Layout.cshtml?

For example, maybe I’d like to display user’s name in the upper right corner of my website, and that name is coming from Session, DB, or whatever based on what user is logged in.

UPDATE: I’m also looking for a good practice on rendering certain data into the element of the Layout. For example, if I need to render a specific CSS file depending on the logged-in user’s credentials.

(For the example above, I thought of using Url Helpers.)

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The default internet application created by visual studio use _LogOnPartial.cshtml to do exactly this.

    The user Name value is set in the LogOn action of the HomeController

    Code for _LogOnPartial.cshtml

    @if(Request.IsAuthenticated) {
    <text>Welcome <strong>@User.Identity.Name</strong>!
    [ @Html.ActionLink("Log Off", "LogOff", "Account") ]</text>
}
else {
    @:[ @Html.ActionLink("Log On", "LogOn", "Account") ]
}

    User.Identity is part of the aspnet Membership provider.

    Code for the _Layout.cshtml

    <!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <title>@ViewBag.Title</title>
    <link href="@Url.Content("~/Content/Site.css")" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
    <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery-1.5.1.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/modernizr-1.7.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>
</head>
<body>
    <div class="page">
        <header>
            <div id="title">
                <h1>Test</h1>
            </div>
            <div id="logindisplay">
                @Html.Partial("_LogOnPartial")
            </div>
            <nav>
                <ul id="menu">
                </ul>
            </nav>
        </header>
        <section id="main">
            @RenderBody()
        </section>
        <footer>
        </footer>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

    Code for the AccountController Logon Action

    [HttpPost]
        public ActionResult LogOn(LogOnModel model, string returnUrl)
        {
            if (ModelState.IsValid)
            {
                if (Membership.ValidateUser(model.UserName, model.Password))
                {
                    FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(model.UserName, model.RememberMe);
                    if (Url.IsLocalUrl(returnUrl) && returnUrl.Length > 1 && returnUrl.StartsWith("/")
                        && !returnUrl.StartsWith("//") && !returnUrl.StartsWith("/\\"))
                    {
                        return Redirect(returnUrl);
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        return RedirectToAction("Index", "Home");
                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    ModelState.AddModelError("", "The user name or password provided is incorrect.");
                }
            }

            // If we got this far, something failed, redisplay form
            return View(model);
        }

    Code for ApplicationViewPage class

    public abstract class ApplicationViewPage<T> : WebViewPage<T>
    {
        protected override void InitializePage()
        {
            SetViewBagDefaultProperties();
            base.InitializePage();
        }

        private void SetViewBagDefaultProperties()
        {
            ViewBag.LayoutModel = new LayoutModel(Request.ServerVariables["SERVER_NAME"]);
        }

    }

    The above code allow me to have a ViewBag.LayoutModel that hold an instance of my LayoutModel class in every page.

    Here is a code for my LayoutModel class

    public class LayoutModel
    {
        public string LayoutFile { get; set; }
        public string IpsTop { get; set; }
        public string IpsBottom { get; set; }
        public string ProfileTop { get; set; }
        public string ProfileBottom { get; set; }

        public LayoutModel(string hostname)
        {
            switch (hostname.ToLower())
            {
                default:

                    LayoutFile = "~/Views/Shared/_BnlLayout.cshtml";
                    IpsBottom = "~/Template/_BnlIpsBottom.cshtml";
                    IpsTop = "~/Template/_BnlTop.cshtml";
                    ProfileTop = "~/Template/_BnlProfileTop.cshtml";
                    break;

                case "something.com":
                    LayoutFile = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml";
                    IpsBottom = "~/Template/_somethingBottom.cshtml";
                    IpsTop = "~/Template/_somethingTop.cshtml";
                    ProfileTop = "~/Template/_somethingProfileTop.cshtml";
                    break;
            }
        }
    }

    Here is the code to the View

    @{
    ViewBag.Title = "PageTitle";
    Layout = @ViewBag.LayoutModel.LayoutFile; 
}
@using (Html.BeginForm())
{
    <span class="error">@ViewBag.ErrorMessage</span>
    <input type="hidden" name="Referrer" id="Referrer" value="@ViewBag.Referrer" />
    html stuff here       
}

    Refer to the following question for more detail. Make sure you modify your web.config as described there: How to set ViewBag properties for all Views without using a base class for Controllers?

    • 0