passing viewdata to asp.net mvc masterpages

Question

I'm trying to pass ViewData to my asp.net mvc masterpage for an mvc usercontrol that I keep on a masterpage. For example, I created a dropdownlist of names as an mvc usercontrol and I put that in my masterpage.

The problem I am running into is passing the ViewData to the masterpage. I found this article from Microsoft which has a decent solution but I was wondering if there are other "better" solutions out there. The thing I don't like about the solution in the link is that I have to change every controller to inherit from a new controller class.

http://www.asp.net/learn/MVC/tutorial-13-cs.aspx

Edit: The problem I am looking at is the fact that if I place a user control in my masterpage that relies on ViewData, I have to REPEATEDLY include that ViewData for every single page that uses said masterpage. It's possible the solution in the link above is the best solution but I was hoping there were other alternatives.

Answer 1

The master page already has access to the ViewData. If you want strongly typed access to it, you need to do two things:

1. Put the master page stuff in a base class (e.g. CommonViewData)

2. Have you master page inherit from the generic ViewMasterPage<> class:

   " %>

Answer 2

Could you possibly use the OnActionExecuting method on a base controller class and populate the view data there?

Something like:

protected override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext context)
{
  context.Controller.ViewData.Model = GetDataForControl();
}

I haven't tried it so it's just a thought...

Answer 3

For what it's worth, I am using the method from that tutorial in a current project and it works very well.

What you can also do, if it is data that is somewhat static (like a menu that doesn't change much), is to put the object on the cache so your database isn't called for every controller initialisation.