Passing data to Master pages in ASP.NET MVC RSS

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  robconery

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  Re: Passing data to Master pages in ASP.NET MVC

  Dec 15, 2007 07:24 AM|LINK

  shinakuma

  if the usercontrol calls this service directly (bypassing a controller piece), aren't you breaking MVC?

   

  Yes and no. Yes in terms of the WebController concept - no in terms of a "ServiceController" concept. If you wanted to keep with the literal MVC here you could - you could have your control use something like Ajax or jQuery to call back to a "StatsController' and make a call to a List method that returns links. This is clean and nice - and works much the same way.

  I readily break rules to do what makes sense - Gravatar is an example of this. If you have an app that uses Gravatar, it has to go out to an external service after hashing a user's email, so the process has to go through a code layer in your app. This doesn't fit the MVC pattern exactly - but I think (my opinion) that this is OK, The Service model and MVC can fit together nicely.

  It's all up to you and what you think fits your scenario. The good thing is that there are ways to do it elegantly :). 

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  abombss

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  Re: Passing data to Master pages in ASP.NET MVC

  Dec 18, 2007 10:01 PM|LINK

   Coming from Monorail they have a similar concept with their ViewComponents.  The component has a Initialize and Render method that can be overridden, so you can give your components/controls some logic

  Two things strike me as a smelly: 

  1) Code Behind.  I don't think there should be any, it will just get confusing and you will end with people doing some crazy stuff trying to mush webforms into mvc.

  2) User Controllers.  Out of the box there is no IoC so the default factory will new them up with Activator.Createinstance... bad, bad, bad

  So what would my solution be.

  I would create a ViewComponent base class for handling all my setup.  It would probably just have an Initialize method taking ControllerContext.  All my presentation logic would go in there so it is testable.  all my domain logic would be done in services that get injected into the constructor of my ViewComponent.

  I would have a base ViewComponentControl that simply used IoC to locate the correct ViewComponent class and Initialize it.  Now my UserControls just inherit from my ViewComponentControl, use the view like normal, and create a separate ViewComponent subclass to handle any setup, config, and presentation logic.

  I would probably run fxcop rules to ensure my code behind files were empty.

  Adam Tybor -- abombss.com
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  [C.I.] Reman

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  Re: Passing data to Master pages in ASP.NET MVC

  Mar 31, 2008 05:55 PM|LINK

  Is in the Preview 2 a new way to passing data to master pages or is the only solution (for now) to use a special control?
  
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  rjcox

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  Re: Passing data to Master pages in ASP.NET MVC

  Apr 01, 2008 09:06 AM|LINK

  What's wrong with ViewData?

  (But see here if you want it strongly typed.) 

  Richard
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  [C.I.] Reman

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  Re: Passing data to Master pages in ASP.NET MVC

  Apr 01, 2008 09:21 AM|LINK

  The problem with viewdata is, that i only use viewdata on view pages.

  Each Controller has different Views (with there viewdata) - but the masterpage has no real "master-controller".

  That means, each controller must pass the "master-viewdata" for the masterpage - this isn´t a great solution in my opionion.

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  rjcox

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  Re: Passing data to Master pages in ASP.NET MVC

  Apr 01, 2008 09:43 AM|LINK

  Other than the defect in MVC (which is easily fixed... see the link in my last post above), make your MasterViewData the base of your controller specific ViewData types (you could even populate this, if common, in a shared MyControllerBase).
  

  Richard
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  [C.I.] Reman

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  Re: Passing data to Master pages in ASP.NET MVC

  Apr 01, 2008 10:00 AM|LINK

  Thanks - this could be a nice solution.

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  maartenba

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  Re: Passing data to Master pages in ASP.NET MVC

  Apr 02, 2008 06:28 AM|LINK

  Check http://weblogs.asp.net/mikebosch/ for using ComponentController class. It's very useful for displaying small blocks of data in a master page!

  Visit my blog at http://blog.maartenballiauw.be
  
  Order my book ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Quickly via http://www.packtpub.com/asp-net-model-view-controller-1-0-quickly/book
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  eliperelman

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  Re: Passing data to Master pages in ASP.NET MVC

  Aug 27, 2010 01:44 AM|LINK

  I know it's a little late for a reply, but for anyone else who runs across this:
  
  

  • Edited by eliperelman on Aug 27, 2010 03:24 AM
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  theuday

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  Re: Passing data to Master pages in ASP.NET MVC

  Mar 10, 2011 11:57 AM|LINK

  I came across the same situation when i wanted to create a menu in mastepage dynamically with data from a entity data model. I used

   

  this.HttpContext.Cache["Menus"] = dbContext.Menus.ToList();  //inside the HomeController's Index action method which
  is the default one in my case.
  
  and used it in the master page like
  
  <ul id="menu">
     <li><%: Html.ActionLink("Home", "Index", "Home")%></li>
     <li><% 
         if (HttpContext.Current.Cache["Menus"] != null)
         {  
          List<Models.Menus> liMenus = (List<Models.Menus>)HttpContext.Current.Cache["Menus"];
  	
  	   foreach (var item in liMenus)
  	   {%>  
                 <%: Html.ActionLink(item.MenuName, item.MenuAction, item.MenuController)%>
  	<% }
          } %>
     </li>
  </ul>
   
  please let me know if anything is wrong doing this.