Question

I want to display different navigation links based on the page that is loaded in my _layout.cshtml file.

I thought about checking the url and just calling Html.RenderPartial within an if block but that seems clunky.

Is there a way to control this with a controller?

Answer 1

If you truly need different navigation links on different pages then I think you should specify different layouts pages on these separate pages. These different layouts should then specify your _layout as their layout, making it the master layout

Ex:
_navlinks1.cshtml

@{
   Layout = "_layout"
 }

@RenderBody()

@section navlinks
{
    @*create navlinks specific to current page*@
}

Then in your _layout page you can put @RenderSection("navlinks", false) where you want the navigation links to go.

But, if for some reason you need a distinct set of navigation links for every single page, then putting navigation links in your layout might not make sense. Might be better off having all your models inherit a base model with a list of items containing navigation link data. Then call a partial view that processes this data into the correct links in your views.