Asp – Accessing Application Settings in ASP.NET MVC view

asp.net-mvc

I'm trying to build a global menu into my ASP.NET MVC site.master, and I was wondering how I could go about accessing the Application Settings property from the site.master markup? Previously I probably would have instantiated a config object from my site.master's code-behind and then set a public property. But now I'm scratching my head…must need more coffee.

UPDATED with answer code

Added a string setting to the application propererties called baseurl and gave it a value of "http://mysite.com"

Made a model class of GlobalMenu.cs

   public class GlobalMenu
{
    private string _baseurl;
    public string baseurl
    {
        get { return _baseurl; }
        set
        {
            _baseurl = value;
        }
    }

}

Created a base controller class named BaseController and inherited from Controller, and overroad OnActionExecuted thusly:

     protected override void OnActionExecuted(ActionExecutedContext filterContext)
    {
        string baseurl = Properties.Settings.Default.baseurl;

        GlobalMenu menumodel = new GlobalMenu();
        menumodel.baseurl = baseurl;
        ViewData["menudata"] = menumodel;
        base.OnActionExecuted(filterContext);
    }

Created a partial view called ViewGlobalMenu in the Shared folder that was strongly typed to GlobalMenu that looks like this…but with more stuff obviously:

<%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl<MyApp.Web.Models.GlobalMenu>" %>

Finally in Site.Master I added this to where I wanted the menu to show:

<%Html.RenderPartial("ViewGlobalMenu", (MyApp.Web.Models.GlobalMenu)ViewData["menudata"]); %>

Best Answer

Here's the strategy that I would probably use. Create a base controller from which your other controller's will derive and have it derive from Controller. Override the ActionExecuted method in the base controller and have it access the application settings (and probably cache them). Generate ViewData for your menu as strongly-typed menu model class assigned to a particular key in the ViewData. You only need to provide the model to actions that are returning a ViewResult (and, perhaps, PartialViewResults).

Create a strongly-typed partial view that implements the global menu markup using the menu model class. Include this in the MasterPage definition via RenderPartial. Pass the ViewData item corresponding to the key as the Model to the partial view so that you can use the model's properties in your menu.

Related Solutions

Asp.net-mvc – Compile Views in ASP.NET MVC

From the readme word doc for RC1 (not indexed by google)

ASP.NET Compiler Post-Build Step

Currently, errors within a view file are not detected until run time. To let you detect these errors at compile time, ASP.NET MVC projects now include an MvcBuildViews property, which is disabled by default. To enable this property, open the project file and set the MvcBuildViews property to true, as shown in the following example:

<Project ToolsVersion="3.5" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews>
  </PropertyGroup>

Note Enabling this feature adds some overhead to the build time.

You can update projects that were created with previous releases of MVC to include build-time validation of views by performing the following steps:

Open the project file in a text editor.
Add the following element under the top-most <PropertyGroup> element: <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews>
At the end of the project file, uncomment the <Target Name="AfterBuild"> element and modify it to match the following:

<Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(MvcBuildViews)'=='true'">
    <AspNetCompiler VirtualPath="temp" PhysicalPath="$(ProjectDir)\..\$(ProjectName)" />
</Target>

C# – How to create a dropdownlist from an enum in ASP.NET MVC

For MVC v5.1 use Html.EnumDropDownListFor

@Html.EnumDropDownListFor(
    x => x.YourEnumField,
    "Select My Type", 
    new { @class = "form-control" })

For MVC v5 use EnumHelper

@Html.DropDownList("MyType", 
   EnumHelper.GetSelectList(typeof(MyType)) , 
   "Select My Type", 
   new { @class = "form-control" })

For MVC 5 and lower

I rolled Rune's answer into an extension method:

namespace MyApp.Common
{
    public static class MyExtensions{
        public static SelectList ToSelectList<TEnum>(this TEnum enumObj)
            where TEnum : struct, IComparable, IFormattable, IConvertible
        {
            var values = from TEnum e in Enum.GetValues(typeof(TEnum))
                select new { Id = e, Name = e.ToString() };
            return new SelectList(values, "Id", "Name", enumObj);
        }
    }
}

This allows you to write:

ViewData["taskStatus"] = task.Status.ToSelectList();

by using MyApp.Common