Question

I’m trying to give a model to the shared layout so the menu links are created dynamically from a database. Any ideas where I should start?

I am looking for maybe tutorials of how to use inheritance to do this?

Answer 1

You could do this:

Model

public partial class Menu
{
    public String[] items;

    public Menu(String[] items)
    {
        this.items = items;
    }
}

View (_Menu)

@model YourMVC.Models.Menu

<ul>
    @foreach (String item in Model.items)
    {
        <li>@item</li>
    }
</ul>

Place this in _Layout

@Html.Action("_Menu", "Home")

Controller (HomeController)

public ActionResult _Menu()
{
    String[] items = {"Item1", "Item2", "Item3", "Item4"};

    return PartialView(new Menu(items));
}

Of course in your actual implementation you would grab whatever you needed from the database in the controller _Menu() action.

I’m not sure if this implementation is the best practice, but it certainly works.