Question

What’s the best way to render Navigation in MVC3? In my app the Controller has to decide what should be in the Navigation but as far as I know there’s no way to pass a Model up to the _Layout file (where the Navigation html lives) to give it this information.

Answer 1

You can make the model available to your layout.

1. Define a base class, MyBaseModel, with the properties you want available to the layout.
2. Have your models subclass MyBaseModel, and ensure that you populate the properties
3. Have your layout specify @model MyBaseModel
4. Use the properties

See also this blog post where a similar problem (“we often find ourselves needing to include the same information in every page”) is tackled.