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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-21T07:17:27+00:00

On my MVC3 _Layout.cshtml page I show a banner image like this <body> <div

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On my MVC3 _Layout.cshtml page I show a banner image like this

    <body>
    <div id="page">
        <div id="nonFooter">
            <div id="header">
               <img id="headerBanner" src="@Url.Content("~/Content/Images/banner.jpg")" alt="Banner" />
            </div> ....

Simple enough.

What I want to do is display a different image for each client using the site, most likely this will be determined by the url, eg: http://www.mysite.com/clientA/Home (clientA determines which image to be used)

Essentially the desired functionality is a bit CMS like but we don’t need a full blown CMS, we just need to replace a few images and colors.

So the question is what is the best way to do this?

My thinking so far is to use jQuery to update the src like this

<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function () {
    $('#headerBanner').attr('src', whatToPutHere? );
});

But I’m stuck on ‘best practice’ for the whatToPutHere.

Should it be…

  • An image put in the ViewBag in the serverside code (eg. @ViewBag.BannerImage)?
  • An image put in the ViewModel?
  • Some kind of server call to get/load the image (logic to determine which image to use must be server side)…(would this be another round trip though?)?
  • …another approach?

Any help much appreciated 🙂

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I would use only server side code to generate the user specific image URL. I would not use ViewBag or model to pass the data to View, since it’s in the _Layout page. In the example below there are static methods for simplicity. If you bother about unit testing it need refactoring with non-static methods instead.

    In _Layout.cshtml:

    <img src="@AccountServices.BannerUrl" alt="Banner" />

    In AccountServices.cs

    public class AccountServices
{
   public static string BannerUrl
   {
      get{
          // Your code to form the image URL, may be the following:
          var bannerPathTemplate = "/images/banners/user-{0}.jpg";
          var user = CurrentUser;              
          if (user != null)
          {
              return string.Format(bannerPathTemplate, user.Id);
          }
          return string.Format(bannerPathTemplate, "unauthorized");              
      }
   }

   const string sessionKeyUser = "session-current-user";

   public static User CurrentUser
   {
       get{
           if (HttpContext.Current.Session[sessionKeyUser]==null){
               // HERE insert code to get the current **user** object from db                   
               HttpContext.Current.Session[sessionKeyUser] = user;
           }
           return (User)HttpContext.Current.Session[sessionKeyUser];
       }
   }

}

    Another approach to get the banner HTML I would use is @Html.RenderAction(“your action”, “your controller”).

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