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How to Render different Layout in ASP.NET MVC

Posted Date: 17. June 2014 Posted By: Anil Sharma

Categories: ASP.NET MVC

Keywords: Layouts in ASP.NET MVC, Render different Layout, Layout at runtime in MVC, Dynamic Layout in MVC

t is very important to understand rendering Layouts in ASP.NET MVC. To understand Layouts Asp.Net MVC, we

can consider Layouts are like as Master Pages in Asp.Net Web Forms. That’s why, as Master Pages allow us to

maintain consistent look and feel across the ASP.NET Web Forms, Layouts are also help us to maintain consistent

look and feel across all the views within your Asp.Net MVC application. Like Master Pages, Layout may contain

common CSS, jQuery files across the multiple Views and one or more placeholders for which Views provide content.

You must read the article to understand layout and its components Layouts, RenderBody, RenderSection and

RenderPage in ASP.NET MVC.

By default In Asp.Net MVC, at application level we have _ViewStart file with in Views folder, allow us to define default

Layout page for your Asp.Net MVC application. In this article I will explore different ways to apply layout pages for

your application. To understand it, let assume that we have to render the layouts as shown in following figure by

using various ways.

7/16/2014 How to Render different Layout in . MVC

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Procedure 1 : Control Layouts rendering by using

_ViewStart file in the root directory of the Views folder

This method is the simplest way for beginners to control Layouts rendering in your ASP.NET MVC application. We

can identify the controller and render the Layouts as par controller, to do this we can write our code in _ViewStart

file in the root directory of the Views folder. Following is an example shows how it can be done.

Procedure 2 : Set Layout by Returning from ActionResult

One the the great feature of ASP.NET MVC is that, we can override the default layout rendering by returning the

layout from the ActionResult. So, this is also a way to render different Layout in your ASP.NET MVC application.

Following code sample show how it can be done.

Procedure 3 : View - wise Layout (By defining Layout

within each view on the top)

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@{

var controller = HttpContext.Current.Request.RequestContext.RouteData.Values["Controller"].ToString();

string cLayout = "";

if (controller == "Webmaster") {

cLayout = "~/Views/Shared/_WebmasterLayout.cshtml"; }

else {

cLayout = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml"; } Layout = cLayout;}

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public ActionResult Index()

{

SampleModel model = new SampleModel();

//Any Logic

return View("Index", "_WebmasterLayout", model);

}

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ASP.NET MVC provides us such a great feature & faxibility to override the default layout rendering by defining the

layout on the view. To implement this we can write our code in following manner in each View.

Procedure 4 : Placing _ViewStart file in each of the

directories

This is a very useful way to set different Layouts for each Controller in your ASP.NET MVC application. If we want to

set default Layout for each directories than we can do this by putting _ViewStart file in each of the directories with

the required Layout information as shown below:

Following figure show how it will looks in your ASP.NET MVC application.

Summary: In this article you are able to understand the methods to rendering different Layouts in your ASP.NET

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@{ Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_WebmasterLayout.cshtml";}

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@{ Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_WebmasterLayout.cshtml";}

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MVC application. It is very common requirement for any application to render different layout as par role or as par

features of your application. You must read the article to understand layout and its components Layouts,

RenderBody, RenderSection and RenderPage in ASP.NET MVC.

Keen to here from you...!

If you have any questions related to what's mentioned in the article or need help with any issue, ask it, I would love to

here from you. Please MakeUseOf Contact and i will be more than happy to help.

About the author

Anil Sharma is Chief Editor of dotnet-stuff.com. He's a software professional

and loves to work with Microsoft .Net. He's usually writes articles about .Net

related technologies and here to shares his experiences, personal notes,

Tutorials, Examples, Problems & Solutions, Code Snippets, Reference

Manual and Resources with C#, Asp.Net, Linq , Ajax, MVC, Entity

Framework, WCF, SQL Server, jQuery, Visual Studio and much more...!!!

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