ASP.NET MVC - Set Master View accordingly with Controller

Question

By any chance, is there any easy way to set a default MasterView for all the actions inside a specific controller?

For example If I have the HomeController I want all the actions inside it to inherit the Site.Master as default, but If I am inside AccountsController I want all the action to inherit the Admin.Master and so on..

I managed to do it with:

return View("viewName", "masterName", objectModel);

But by doing this I have to apply it every time I call the View method.

I was looking for something simpler like on rails where we can declare:

class HomeController < ApplicationController

  layout 'site'

   def index
   end

   def create
   ...

end

class AccountsController < ApplicationController

  layout 'admin'

  def index
  end

  def create
  ...  

end

Is that possible?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

You could override OnActionExecuting in that Controller class.

protected override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext) 
{ 
    ViewData["MasterfileToUser"] = "site";
}       

Or if you like you can turn this into an ActionFilterAttribute you can apply on the controller or action level

using System;
using System.Web.Mvc;
public class MasterFileFilterAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute
{
    public string Master { get; set; }

    public override void OnActionExecuted( ActionExecutedContext filterContext)   
    {        
            if (filterContext.Result is ViewResult)
                    ((ViewResult)filterContext.Result).MasterName = Master;
    }
}

which you then in turn use like so:

[MasterFileFilterAttribute(Master = "site")] 
public class HomeController : Controller 
{ 
    // Action methods 
}