ASP.NET MVC: Display dynamic data on master pages

If you play with the MVC 2 bits for a while you will come to a very simple question: How can I display dynamic data on my master page?

The structur of an MVC App (this is my demo app) :

Each controller has it´s own View-Folder and render the specific view (EntryController route to Views\Entry\VIEW).

But if you try to add a dynamic control (a dynamic menu, news-ticker, overviews…) on a master page you have a problem: A master page has no real controller itself (maybe a master page could have a controller – but for this problem there is a very easy way to do this).

The CTP 2 includes a special controller – the "ComponentController":

I use the "ComponentController" in my demo app to display the whole category list and the tagcloud.

My "EntrySideBarController" inherit from "ComponentController"

    public class EntrySidebarController : ComponentController
    {
        public void CategoryList()
        {
            ... viewdata = ...
            RenderView("CategoryList", viewData);
        }

        public void TagCloud()
        {
            ... viewdata = ...
            RenderView("TagCloud", viewData);
        }
    }

The views "CategoryList" & "TagCloud" are located in a special folder (root\Components\CONTROLLERNAME\Views\VIEWNAME):

To render these components just use the "Html.RenderComponent" method (is similar to a usercontrol) :

    <%=Html.RenderComponent<EntrySidebarController>(component => component.CategoryList())%>
    <%=Html.RenderComponent<EntrySidebarController>(component => component.TagCloud())%>

Result:

For more information about the ComponentController, look at this post:

Using the ComponentController in ASP.NET MVC CTP 2

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2 Responses

1. 

   Harry

   November 5, 2008

   RenderComponent seems gone in MVC Beta. Which method has been created to do the same?

   Reply
2. 

   Robert Muehsig

   November 8, 2008

   The RenderComponent (or how it´s named in the actual version of ASP.NET MVC) is gone to the ASP.NET MVC Future – just link the future DLL.

   Reply