Asp.Net MVC layout and partial views

Question

let's consider two views that use the same layout composed of:

• A left column containing a "body" (which is filled differently by both views)
• A right column that displays general information (passed via the model)

Instead of defining the right part twice, I wondered if I could create a PartialView to link directly from the layout page.

The problem is that the partial views implicitely inherit their models from the view that is being rendered. And since each view has its own model, I end up with a model type mismatch in the partial view.

From here I see two solutions:

• I could insert the common part of the view model in the ViewBag. Unfortunately this means that each view that uses this layout has to implement this "convention" but nothing warns the developer about it at compile time...
• I could use polymorphism to make each view model inherit from the same base class (edit: or interface) that the Partial Views uses. This would work up to a certain extend but would potentially exponentially increase in complexity as soon as I have a second partial view in the same layout.

So here are the questions:

• Am I right with the assumptions above?
• Do you see any other possibility?
• Any return on experience on this?

Thanks a lot, TB.

Answer 1

Use an Interface and implement it on the two models, this is exactly the kind of thing they're used for.

Here is an example of two different Views using two different Models that both implement an interface. This is subtyping instead of ad-hoc polymorphism.

public class ViewModelOne : IReusableView
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Something { get; set; }
    public int ANumber { get; set; }
}

public class ViewModelTwo : IReusableView
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Thing { get; set; }
    public string SomethingElse { get; set; }
    public int ANumber2 { get; set; }
}

public interface IReusableView
{
    string Name { get; }
}

So we have the really simple partial view here that is 'InnerPartialView':

@model TestIntegration.Models.IReusableView
<div>
    @Model.Name
</div>

Which is used in the home and about pages of this example controller:

    public class HomeController : Controller
    {
        public ActionResult Index()
        {
            ViewBag.Message = "Welcome to ASP.NET MVC!";

            return View(new ViewModelOne() { Name = "hello", Something="sdfsdfs", ANumber = 1 });
        }

        public ActionResult About()
        {
            return View(new ViewModelTwo() { Name = "hello 2", SomethingElse = "aaaddd", ANumber2 = 10, Thing="rand" });
        }
    }

The home view:

@model TestIntegration.Models.ViewModelOne
@{
    ViewBag.Title = "Home Page";
}

<h2>@ViewBag.Message</h2>
<p>
    To learn more about ASP.NET MVC visit <a href="http://asp.net/mvc" title="ASP.NET MVC Website">http://asp.net/mvc</a>.
    @Html.Partial("InnerPartialView")
</p>

The about view:

@model TestIntegration.Models.ViewModelTwo
@{
    ViewBag.Title = "About Us";
}

<h2>About</h2>
<p>
     Put content here.
         @Html.Partial("InnerPartialView")
</p>