I want to define a custom renderer as a lambda in my MVC view that I can use it in a partial to render the same thing multiple times. I plan to store it in the view data. So far I have created this extension method to store the renderer:
public static class HtmlHelperExtensions
{
public static void DefineRenderer<TModel>(this HtmlHelper<TModel> html, string rendererName, Action renderer)
{
html.ViewData["_Renderer" + rendererName] = renderer;
}
}
I'm trying to define the renderer in my view, but it isn't working; I assume my syntax is off. Could somebody tell me what I'm doing wrong here? I just want it to render the test paragraph when called:
@Html.DefineRenderer("AnalysisTableHeader", () => {
<p>test paragraph</p>
@});
The DefineRenderer
-method needs to return anything else than void, e.g. IHtmlString
to call it with the razor @
-syntax or else you will need to call it like this:
@{
Html.DefineRenderer("AnalysisTableHeader", () => {
<p>test paragraph</p>
});
}
Edit: Sorry, I've seen that the renderer
parameter is of type System.Action
. I think it must be of type System.Func<dynamic, HelperResult>
and you need to call it
@{ Html.DefineRenderer("AnalysisTableHeader", @<text><p>test paragraph</p></text>); }
for example. You can then later render it like this: render(null).ToHtmlString()
. Anyway beware that you might get problems with partial view caching if you do stuff like this in views.
I'm still not 100% sure if that's what you need but maybe it'll help.
Define @helper in your partial view and based on value from Model decide which version to render:
Declare enum with header types in your code
public enum HeaderTypes
{
AnalysisTable,
SomethingElse
}
Then in your view
@helper RenderHeader(HeaderTypes headerType) {
switch (headerType)
{
case HeaderTypes.AnalysisTable:
@: <p>your html</p>
break;
default:
@: <p>default</p>
break;
}
}
@RenderHeader(HeaderTypes.None)
@RenderHeader(HeaderTypes.AnalysisTable)
Or you can just do switch based on string value or something else.
With some inspiration from @mariozski's comment, I managed to get the behaviour I wanted to work. I use a @helper
as the renderer. The model I pass to the partial contains the result of the helper render, ie. a HelperResult
. So it looks like this:
public class AnalysisResponseTableViewModel {
public HelperResult HeaderTypeRowRenderer { get; set; }
public List<AnalysisUserResponseViewModel> Responses { get; set; }
}
Then, the calling view calls the partial like this:
@helper RenderHeaderTypeRow() {
<tr class="headerTypeRow">
<td>Header type row</td>
<td>Goes here</td>
</tr>
}
@Html.Partial("AnalysisResponseTableContentsPartial",
new AnalysisResponseTableViewModel {
Responses = Model.OverallCaseStudyUserResponses,
HeaderTypeRowRenderer = RenderHeaderTypeRow()
}
)
And finally the partial itself can render the 'header type row' multiple times like this:
@Html.Raw(Model.HeaderTypeRowRenderer.ToHtmlString())
@{bool reachedSummaryRows = false;}
@foreach (var response in Model.Responses) {
if (!reachedSummaryRows && !response.IsPass.HasValue) {
reachedSummaryRows = true;
@:@Html.Raw(Model.HeaderTypeRowRenderer.ToHtmlString())
}
// other table rows here
}