Unfortunately I've had to use a bit of a hack so that I could move on with the project as I'm under an aggressive deadline, but if there is a better method and/or solution I'll test as I get the chance and mark as the answer.
To get it to work, I overwrote the Widget.Wrapper.cshtml file within my theme. There, I assigned a variable to the Display(Model.Child) call, and if the result is an empty string simply return. This removes any empty widget wrapping tags. (I personally feel Orchard should behave this way by default):
var child = Display(Model.Child);
// -- NOTE: shape tracing breaks this logic!
if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(child.ToString())) {
return;
}
Then simply replace the @Display(Model.Child)
between the header and footer with @(child)
I then added the following method to my Layout.cshtml file.
Func<dynamic, IHtmlString> CollapsableZone = x =>
{
var display = Display(x);
string zoneName = x.ZoneName;
if (string.Equals(display.ToString(), string.Format("<div class=\"zone zone-{0}\"></div>", zoneName.HtmlClassify()), StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase))
{
return new HtmlString(string.Empty);
}
return display;
};
Simple function that assigns the display call to a variable, checks if it is an empty zone tag, and returns. I then create variables for each zone assigned to the value of the function above. I replace all the @if (Model.ZoneName != null)
with @if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(zoneVariable))
, and replace the calls to @Zone(Model.ZoneName)
with @(zoneVariable)
.
This is working for the time being. It is quite a hack and brittle solution but I've had to move on to other things.