ASP.NET MVC, partial views and data

Question

Can anyone elaborate on why you'd define ViewData["MenuData"] on every action for something like a dynamic menu?

I have a simple partial view which renders a menu, I render this menu from within a master page. This is intutive for me comming from ASP.NET WebForms, but the only way for me to populate the menu is to pass ViewData["MenuData"], but then I have to do this in every controller action. It does feel a bit stupid, that I would have to define this view data every time.

In terms of testability and what's ASP.NET MVC-ish how should I approach this?

Zhaph - Ben Duguid · Accepted Answer · 2010-06-24 15:00:05Z

Another option is to use the RenderAction method instead which will call an action (either on the current controller, or if you supply a controller name as well, that controller), which can then build the menu data for you, and call your ascx partial view:

So on my master page I can have:

<% Html.RenderAction("MenuArchiveList"); %>

Then in my controller:

public ActionResult MenuArchiveList() {
  return PartialView("BlogArchiveList",
                     _BlogRepository.GetArchiveYearPostCounts());
}

This then successfully finds the user control \Views\Shared\BlogArchiveList.ascx

If you want to ensure that your action is only ever called in the context of a partial view, then you should decorate it with the ChildActionOnlyAttribute.

This was added into System.Web.Mvc in version 2 from the "futures" namespace Microsoft.Web.Mvc.

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:30:38Z

0

You should use a base controller which handles the repeated population of your view model and then have all your controllers derive from it

see here ViewModel Best Practices

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:30

CommunityBot

11 silver badge

answered Jun 24, 2010 at 11:48

Mark

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