Question

In a nutshell, I would like to simplify some of my MVC pages by creating a static class to get the data from a data store of some sort then return one of multiple views based on some internal flags.

internal static class StaticPageContent
{
    internal static ViewModels.Display GetPage(string Map = null, int? ID = null) {...}
    internal static ActionResult ReturnView(ViewModels.CMS.Display vm) {...}
}

Then, in any of my controller actions I could call it something like:

public ActionResult ActionName()
{
    var vm = StaticPageContent.GetPage("/Home");
    return StaticPageContent.ReturnView(vm);
}

Where the ReturnView() method would return one of multiple (shared) views:

internal static ActionResult ReturnView(ViewModels.CMS.Display vm)
{
    if (vm.useLoremIpsum)
        return View("LoremIpsum", vm);
    else
    {
        if (vm.canEdit)
            return View("ViewReadWrite", vm);
        else
            return View("ViewReadOnly", vm);
    }
}

What is the right way of returning a View(…) object from a non-Controller class? The above will not compile as the View(…) is part of the Controller class.

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NOTE:
I believe I got something like this working but the demands on my time sent me in another direction. I am hoping to be able to open this project back up to see what I did and post it here. Stay tuned!

Answer 1

Simply put, the right way is to not do it in a static class. (IMO, of course). Especially if you’re getting “data from a data store” – this should not be static.

In my opinion, create a protected method in a base controller, or use child actions and render them out using Html.Action.