Can I conditionally render partial views in _Layout.cshtml?

Question

Suppose I have a _Layout.cshtml where I render a left sidebar, which is common to every page of my website. Something along these lines - a menu, for example

<div id="left-sidebar">
    @Html.Action("_MenuView", "LeftSideMenu")
</div>

A feature I would like to have would be to add another partial view, but only display it in certain sections of the website.

For example, in the blog section I may want to display a list of post categories or a treeview of the posts.

<div id="left-sidebar">
    @Html.Action("_MenuView", "LeftSideMenu")

    @if ("???")
    {
        @Html.Action("_BlogTreeView", "BlogEntries")
    }
</div>

How could I do that? I know that I want to display "_BlogTreeView" if the view I'm rendering is returned by BlogController ... where do I go from there?

Answer 1

In your layout, add this section

@RenderSection("blogEntries", false)

Then in every view where you want to show the partial view add this:

@section blogEntries {
    @Html.Action("_BlogTreeView", "BlogEntries")
}