MVC Layout VS MVC Master Page

Question

I'm starting learning MVC4. I came across the two possibilities of creating a View based on a Razor template or a Master Page.

I would like to understand the practical differences between the two.

For now, I can see that if I create a View using a Master Page, I can override several sections. For example, if my Master defines a "left column" placeholder and a "body" placeholder I can not only define the body for a specific View, but I can also render contents in the "left column" section for example to display controls that are bound to the context in which the page is (from a search box to a stock quote viewer). Also, Master Pages cannot be defined by making use of Razor templates, which are much less verbose than other syntax (partially wrong: someone managed to hack this aspect).

With Razor Layouts, I can only define one contiguous block of the page that can be overridden by specific View, and I should use multiple layouts (breaking DRY) for little changes in other parts of the page. Is my previous statement correct or am I missing something?

Obviously I can render contents in any part of the page by making good use of jQuery, but that's another matter

Answer 1

You could use sections with Razor. Scott Gu blogged about them here: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/12/30/asp-net-mvc-3-layouts-and-sections-with-razor.aspx

In your Layout you could define as many sections as you wish:

<div id="leftMenu">
    @RenderSection("LeftMenu", required: false)
</div>

which you could override in your views:

@section LeftMenu {
    <div>... here comes the left menu for this view ...</div>
}

You could also test whether a section has been defined in a view and if not provide some default content:

@if (IsSectionDefined("LeftMenu")) { 
    @RenderSection("LeftMenu")
}
else { 
    <div>Some default left menu</div>
}