How can I dynamically inject a partial view (or code) based on the current page (MVC3/Razor)?

Question

I'm not able to get a clear answer on my problem: I want to have one partial view but have 3 distinct code blocks within the partial with similar (not exactly the same) content. So that whatever view page is loaded will determine which of the 3 code blocks is displayed in the partial view.

I did something similar back in MVC2, but it was on the controller level (controller determined which of the 3 code blocks was displayed). Now I have a need to go deeper and do it on the page level.

I understand that a bunch of if/else statements in a view is not the MVC convention. But honestly, that's the only way I know how to do it. An alternative is to keep this if/else logic and create more than one controller and keep doing it the old way.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

There's at least 4 ways you could do this.

1. If/Else, like @StanK mentions
2. Invoke a child action from the main view. Build logic into the action to render a different partial based on said logic.
3. Create a custom HTML helper which extends @Html.Partial by checking your custom logic before rendering a different partial (essentially moving the if/else to the HTML helper)
4. Add some OO to your model. Create an abstract class, and a deriving class for each of the 3 "similar, but different" code blocks, and a matching editor template for each. Then in your main view, call @Html.EditorFor(model => model.SomethingDeclaredAbstract) and MVC will pick the right template.

Hard to advise on which one, given you haven't supplied much code and you haven't said what's different about the 3 pieces of content.

I usually go with option 4 because it's the cleanest and most versatile.