Defaulting a section in a Razor view
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25-09-2019 - |
Question
Here's the situation I'm trying to solve:
I have a main shared layout with a single section @RenderSection("Menu") that I want to default to a standard menu for the majority of my pages, but I would like to replace/override that section in a few sub pages. Is this possible with Razor at this stage in the game?
I was hoping I could possibly define the default implementation of that section in _ViewStart.cshtml but it doesn't seem to like it.
Would a Menu Partial view be better for this situation?
Edit:
I'm getting the following error with this code now: The following sections have been defined but have not been rendered for the layout page "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml": "menu".
_Layout.cshtml
<div id="menu">
@if (IsSectionDefined("menu"))
{
RenderSection("menu");
}
else {
<text>
<ul>
<li>@Html.ActionLink("Home", "Index", "Home")</li>
<li><a href="#">Lookups</a>
<ul>
@Html.ActionLink("Product","Index","Product")
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</text>
}
</div>
Index.cshtml
@section menu {
<ul>
<li>@Html.ActionLink("Product", "Index", "Product")</li>
<li>@Html.ActionLink("Form Type", "Index", "Product")</li>
<li>@Html.ActionLink("Supplier", "Index", "Product")</li>
</ul>
}
Solution
Ah... I was messing with this and found I could do it by just switching the logic around:
@RenderSection("Header", false)
@if (!IsSectionDefined("Header")) {
<header>
Default Header!
</header>
}
So if my pages don't define @section Header { ... }
, it renders the default.
OTHER TIPS
The IsSectionDefined
method should suite your needs:
@if(IsSectionDefined("Menu")) {
@RenderSection("Menu")
} else {
<text>
Default Menu Content.
</text>
}
Update: I wrote a blog post to better illustrate the available options: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/marcinon/archive/2010/12/08/Optional-Razor-Sections-with-Default-Content.aspx
I'm currently using multiple layouts to achieve this exact same scenario.
/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml
<html>
...
<body>
<div id="menu">@RenderSection("Menu", required:false)</div>
...
@RenderBody()
...
</body>
</html>
/Views/Shared/_LayoutWithDefaultMenu.cshtml
@{ Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml"; }
@section Menu { @Html.Partial("Menu") }
@RenderBody()
/Views/_ViewStart.cshtml
@{ Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_LayoutWithDefaultMenu.cshtml"; }
What this means is that, by default, all of my views get the layout with a default menu. However, on a view-by-view basis, I can set the Layout to _Layout.cshtml
and then implement @section Menu
myself.