Asp.net Mvc: Invoke logic on each controller/action

Question

I got some logic I want to execute each time a action returns a view. The logic needs to know the name of the action and the controller. At the moment I am working with a filter on each controller/action but sometimes I want all the actions that return a view to use this logic. So adding filters everywhere seems like extra work I can avoid.

Answer 1

To know action and controller name from within the filter:

String ActionName = filterContext.ActionMethod.Name;
String ControllerName = filterContext.Controller.ToString();

To apply filter to all actions, define OnActionExecuting on a base Controller class and then subclass it.

I've asked a specific question on how to only filter actions that return a view...

Answer 2

You can override the OnActionExecuting or OnActionExecuted method to provide common behavior for all actions in a controller. If you want it to apply to multiple controllers you can create a base controller class with this override and have those controllers that need this behavior derive from the base controller.

public override void OnActionExecuting( ActionExecutingContext filterContext )
{
     ... common code here ...
}

public override void OnActionExecuted( ActionExecutedContext filterContext )
{
    if (filterContext.Result is ViewResult)
    {
        ... common code here ...
    }
}