Question

I’m designing some web app, I went for some _layout.cshtml, which fragment:

//some html
<h4>Your account</h4>
@{ Html.RenderPartial("UserMenu"); }

is responsible for rendering menu views. It has 3 possible states – logged in as admin, logged in as mere user, not logged. I made this partial view like this:

@if (User.IsInRole("Admin"))
{
    @:Admin menu
}
else
{
    if (User.Identity.IsAuthenticated)
    {
        @:Normal menu
    }

    else
    {
        @Html.ActionLink("Login", "Logon", "Account");
    }
}

But I’m not satisfied with this solution as it has poor separation of logic and view. How do you suggest to improve it?

Answer 1

But I’m not satisfied with this solution as it has poor separation of logic and view

I don’t agree. For me this kind of logic is perfectly acceptable in the view. You could have written a custom HTML helper which could be used like this in your Layout:

<h4>Your account</h4>
@Html.Menu()

and put the logic in the helper instead of using this partial. And if you decide to implement it here’s how it might look:

public static class HtmlExtensions
{
    public static IHtmlString Menu(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper)
    {
        var user = htmlHelper.ViewContext.HttpContext.User;
        if (user.IsInRole("Admin"))
        {
            return new HtmlString("Admin menu");
        }

        if (user.Identity.IsAuthenticated)
        {
            return new HtmlString("Normal menu");
        }

        return htmlHelper.ActionLink("Login", "Logon", "Account");
    }
}