Change Layout(Master Page) of view in ASP.NET MVC without recreate it

Question

I'm using ASP.NET MVC 3 with Razor views. When you want to create a view you can choose a layout (master page) for your view, or leave it to choose Default (_Layout).

I am interesting in to change this layout after create a view without recreate it, is there any where to store the layout information about the views? and how can I change it?

Answer 1

In MVC3 you have _ViewStart.cshtml that stores all pages' Layout; you can change this element to change all pages' Layout or you can add new Layout element in top of target view pages in @{} block like the following to change the layout of the specific page:

@{
    Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_newLayout.cshtml";
    ViewBag.Title = "Index";
}

Answer 2

After creating your view in the top of cshtml file you can see your layout included.

@{
    Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml";
}

You can simply replace that for example with different layout

@{
    Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout2.cshtml";
}

Also, you can store this in the base layout (_ViewStart.cshtml) and then all your views will use that layout.

Answer 3

There are multiple ways to specify a different layout for a view, depending on your needs:

In the View

As mentioned in other answers, simply change the view's Layout property:

@{
    Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_CustomLayout.cshtml";
}

In _ViewStart.cshtml

MVC 3 added a default Views/_ViewStart.cshtml into which you can put logic which is shared by all views. You can also create additional _ViewStart.cshtml files in any Views subdirectory for additional custom logic (it will search up the hierarchy and in Shared folders, just like when finding any other view or partial).

Putting a lot of business logic into this feels like a violation of the "separation of concerns" principle, but at the same time it can be very handy.

Note that _ViewStart.cshtml inherits from StartPage, not WebPage, so its properties may be slightly different from what you're used to (e.g. you have to go through ViewContext to get the ViewBag).

@{
    if (ViewContext.ViewBag.IsAdmin) // or other custom logic
    {
        Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_AdminLayout.cshtml";
    }
    else
    {
        Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml";
    }
}

In the Controller action

The View() method has an overload which takes an explicit layout page (Intellisense refers to it as a "master page"):

    public ActionResult FooAction()
    {
        var model = new MyModel();

        return View("Index", "_CustomLayout", model);
    }

Answer 4

We can change the default rendering of layouts with in _ViewStart file by using the below code:

@{
 var controller = HttpContext.Current.Request.RequestContext.RouteData.Values["Controller"].ToString();

 string layout = "";
 if (controller == "Admin")
 {
 layout = "~/Views/Shared/_AdminLayout.cshtml";
 }
 else
 {
 layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml";
 }

 Layout = layout;
}