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I have an ASP.NET MVC layout page that is used by all the views in my application. Each of these views defines a "PanelRight" section, that is rendered in the layout page. However, now I would like to replace that section with some other markup. I thought it'd be as easy as commenting out the RenderSection instruction and adding my new markup, but I keep getting an exception ("The following sections have been defined but have not been rendered for the layout page").
I understand what the exception means; I only want to know how to get rid of it. Id est, can I NOT render a certain section that is defined in the views? Because I'd much rather not go through all of them and removing the section.
EDIT
I'll try to be more clear.
Suppose this is my layout page:
<html>
<head> <!-- HEAD STUFF --> </head>
<body>
@RenderSection("RightPanel", false)
@RenderBody()
</body>
</html>
and this is one of my many views:
@section RightPanel {
<div>This is the markup of the section</div>
}
<div>This is the body of my view</div>
Now I decide that, rather than having a RightPanel section that can be customized by each view, I want to have a fixed content instead. So I "remove" the section and replace it with the markup I want to use - straight into the layout (actually it will be in another partial, but not in a section, that's the point).
Of course, I don't want to go through all of my many views to delete the @section RightPanel { }. I just want the layout page to ignore the section. To make a comparison, it's like I defined a class with a DoFancyStuff() method, and then in the client code I never call that method. Not a problem there, so I see no reason why it would be here.
To recap: the view defines a section, the layout doesn't intend to render it. This results in an error. Is there a way to do this?
642
No, you cannot have a section in your view that your layout does not implement. This will result in a runtime error, and there's no way around that. The reason everyone is telling you how to implement optional sections is because the layout must implement any section any view might want to use, but, by making it optional, you can allow some views to use some sections while other views use other sections.
So, if I want to "comment out" a RenderSection, if just for a test, do I really have to go through all views and remove that section definition?
Technically, yes. Although you could simply wrap the section in regular HTML comments <!-- -->, so while it's rendered, it's rendered as an HTML comment instead of actual DOM elements. Also, with layout inheritance, you can sort of short circuit the views' sections by defining an empty section. For example:
_Layout.cshtml
@RenderSection("Foo")
_SubLayout.cshtml
@{ Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml"; }
@section Foo {}
SomeView.cshtml
@{ Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_SubLayout.cshtml"; }
@section Foo
{
<!-- stuff here -->
}
The section Foo would be empty because the sub-layout implements Foo but doesn't also call @RenderSection("Foo") itself, so there's no opportunity for a view using it as a layout to alter that section. That won't really help you now much, but it's good to know for future reference.
I suppose you could create a new layout with a different name and move the stuff from your current layout there while making your current layout inherit from the new layout. That would allow you to implement this without having to update all your layout references in your views. However, it will likely be easier to just to use HTML comments to comment out your section in your layout for testing purposes.
UPDATE
Just one more thing. Now that I'm thinking about it, the layout inheritance approach I suggested as one potential method, may actually not work. It occurred to me that you may still get an error because the sub-layout doesn't call @RenderSection. It all depends on whether the initial call in the main layout is enough to satisfy. HTML comments are definitely the safest and easiest approach.
UPDATE BY OP
Accepted answer:
you could simply wrap the section in regular HTML comments <!-- -->, so while it's rendered, it's rendered as an HTML comment instead of actual DOM elements.
177
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