Get Data To a Shared Partial View

Question

I'm still sadly a bit n00bish when it comes to .NET MVC. I have a navigation partial view being called from a MasterPage where I would like to get a list of data. This partial view is in the "Shared" folder, and thus does not have a controller. How do I get data to it so that it may render a list?

Thanks

More specifically, I want to do something like this (pseudocode):

<ul>
<% foreach (item in ListOfItems) {
    Response.Write(formattedListItem);
} %>
</ul>

Answer 1

[Edit] New helpful link now that I know the full story

http://www.superexpert.com/blog/archive/2008/08/12/asp-net-mvc-tip-31-passing-data-to-master-pages-and-user-controls.aspx

Answer 2

You pass in a view model just like you do for a regular page. Only, instead of passing it in when calling View(...) in the controller, you use a helper method. Something like:

<% Html.RenderPartial("~/Views/Shared/Navigation.ascx", Model.MenuItems); %>

The data you are passing in (Model.MenuItems in this case) will probably come from the Model of the View in which you are using the partial view (as is the case in the example above).

Answer 3

Just use RenderAction. RenderAction will call the method on a controller you choose and get the results you wish to display. You can even return a PartialView from this method.

<% Html.RenderAction("actionName", "controllerName"); %>

Hope that helps.