MVC HTML Helper, get parent view of current partial view

Question

I am writing an Html extension to render partial views dynamically (view name/path is provided by CMS at runtime).

Within my extension I need to determine the name or path to the outermost view containing the partial in the case where a view contains a partial contains another partial contains yet another partial- I need to learn the identity of the parent view.

Within the extension method I know I can get the immediate parent through the HtmlHelper.ViewDataContainer property. That tells me the context of the the currently executing extension. What I need to be able to do is iterate up to its parent view if there is one.

Answer 1

If you search for controller and action, you can get it like so:

string action = html.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString();
string controller = html.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString();
string url = "~/" + controller + "/" + action;

To get the immediate view (including partial), it is like so:

var webPage = HtmlHelper.ViewDataContainer as WebPageBase;
var virtualPath = webPage.VirtualPath;

To get the first view path (the master view containing all partial views):

var viewPath = ((System.Web.Mvc.BuildManagerCompiledView)(htmlHelper.ViewContext.View)).ViewPath;

Answer 2

I know this has been answered and it's over a year old, but would using ViewData to pass the view names down from the top to the furthest nested partial view work? So in the ParentView you'd do something like:

@{
    ViewData["ResourcePath"] = "ParentView";
    Html.RenderPartial("Partial1", Model, ViewData);
}

And then in your Partial1 view:

@{
    ViewData["ResourcePath"] = ViewData["ResourcePath"] + "_Partial1";
    Html.RenderPartial("Partial2", Model, ViewData);
}

And so on until you reach the level where you need to get the string resource.