Home/ Questions/Q 7418401
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-29T07:52:48+00:00

I’m writing a custom Orchard module with a custom Theme. I would like to

  • 0

I’m writing a custom Orchard module with a custom Theme. I would like to pass data from the View back to the Layout to change the layout based on data determined in the View.

In my example, I have a left-nav in my theme – certain views should be able to instruct the layout not to render this left-nav.

In standard mvc 3 I would just pass the value up through the ViewBag, but this doesn’t seem to be working within Orchard – I’m guessing that the layout code is executed before the View is rendered?

I’ve looked into using a Shape to move this data around but looks like it might be a little heavyweight for what i’m trying to achieve.

What’s the best practice for passing data around like this as an alternative to ViewBag?

Update: After playing around with it a bit more i’ve just noticed that TempData is being picked up in the Layout – can anyone explain why TempData is transmitted, but ViewData isn’t? And is it safe to use from an Orchard POV?

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    It’s easier than that… All templates have access to the Layout shape, which is a dynamic object. This means that you can modify it on the fly, add it properties, etc.
    In your specific case, suppressing a zone, you may even be able to just set that to null: zones are just shapes, and in the case of top-level zones they are expandos on Layout. So if you have a zone named Foo, setting Layout.Foo to null should do the trick. As a matter of facts, I’m doing exactly that in one of my themes, to suppress the side bars from my error pages without having to create a specific widget layer:

    Layout.AsideFirst = null;
Layout.AsideSecond = null;
    • 0