MVC 4 Getting the current Area, Controller and Action

Question

In my Layout.cshtml I call RenderAction to show the menu for every page request:

 Html.RenderAction("NiceMenu", "Widgets", new {area = ""});

The WidgetController needs to know the parent executing Controller and Action calling it so that it can render the menu with the right item highlighted.

How can the Widget Controller's NiceMenu action know this?

Answer 1

this is how we do it

var action = (ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"] ?? "").ToString().ToLower();
var controller = (ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"] ?? "").ToString().ToLower();
var area = (ViewContext.RouteData.DataTokens["area"] ?? "").ToString().ToLower();

Answer 2

You can use ParentActionViewContext property of ViewContext in the child action's view:

var parentRouteValues = ViewContext.ParentActionViewContext.RouteData.Values;
@Html.RenderAction("NiceMenu", "Widgets",
             new
             {
                 area = parentRouteValues["area"],
                 controller = parentRouteValues["controller"],
                 action = parentRouteValues["action"]
             })