How do you use usercontrols in asp.net mvc that display an “island” of data?

Question

I am trying to find out how to use usercontrols in asp.net mvc. I know how to add a usercontrol to a view and how to pass data to it. What I haven\'t been able to figure out i

Answer 1

There are multiple ways to do it.

The basic approach is

• Populate the data for the view in the BaseController (OnActionExecuting event)
• Writing a custom action filter
• Writing an Application Controller (the eg. is in the below links).

An example of OnActionExecuting will be

   [HandleError]
    public class BaseController : Controller
    {
        CourseService cs = new CourseService();
        protected override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
        {
            List tags = cs.GetTags();
            ViewData["Tags"] = tags;
        }

    }

You can use the "tags" view data on any view. This is just an example of usercontrol being rendered as side content.

         
             <% Html.RenderPartial("Tags"); %>
         
   

I found the following URL to be useful.

http://weblogs.asp.net/stephenwalther/archive/2008/08/12/asp-net-mvc-tip-31-passing-data-to-master-pages-and-user-controls.aspx

http://blog.matthidinger.com/2008/02/21/ASPNETMVCUserControlsStartToFinish.aspx

http://www.aaronlerch.com/blog/2008/01/26/displaying-foo-on-every-page-of-an-aspnet-mvc-application/

http://blog.wekeroad.com/2008/01/07/aspnet-mvc-using-usercontrols-usefully/