Injecting content into specific sections from a partial view ASP.NET MVC 3 with Razor View Engine

Question

I have this section defined in my _Layout.cshtml

@RenderSection("Scripts", false)

I can easily use it from a view:

@section Scripts { 
    @*Stuff comes here*@
}

What I'm struggling with is how to get some content injected inside this section from a partial view.

Let's assume this is my view page:

@section Scripts { 

    <script>
        //code comes here
    </script>
}

<div>
    poo bar poo
</div>

<div>
  @Html.Partial("_myPartial")
</div>

I need to inject some content inside the Scripts section from _myPartial partial view.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

Sections don't work in partial views and that's by design. You may use some custom helpers to achieve similar behavior, but honestly it's the view's responsibility to include the necessary scripts, not the partial's responsibility. I would recommend using the @scripts section of the main view to do that and not have the partials worry about scripts.

Answer 2

This is quite a popular question, so I'll post my solution up.

I had the same problem and although it isn't ideal, I think it actually works quite well and doesn't make the partial dependant on the view.

My scenario was that an action was accessible by itself but also could be embedded into a a view - a google map.

In my _layout I have:

@RenderSection("body_scripts", false)

In my index view I have:

@Html.Partial("Clients")
@section body_scripts
{
    @Html.Partial("Clients_Scripts")
}

In my clients view I have (all the map and assoc. html):

@section body_scripts
{
    @Html.Partial("Clients_Scripts")
}

My Clients_Scripts view contains the javascript to be rendered onto the page.

This way my script is isolated and can be rendered into the page where required, with the body_scripts tag only being rendered on the first occurrence that the razor view engine finds it.

That lets me have everything separated - it's a solution that works quite well for me, others may have issues with it, but it does patch the "by design" hole.