Disable feature in Master Page from Content Page

Question

I have a Master Page for all my ASP.NET pages. It works fine for 95% of pages... Except that it also includes unwanted attributes that are included in the other 5% of pages. This causes application problems. Is it possible for Content Pages to somehow select to enable/disable a feature available in the master page? One option I can think of is for the Master Page to look at the page name and then decide what to do, but that's a bit clunky in the long run...

Answer 1

You can add a MasterType directive in your content page so you will have access to the master page class... and from there you can implement to enable disable features of your master page...

<%@ MasterType virtualpath="~/MyMaster.master"%>

and in your code behind you will have access to the Master property as a typed class...

Answer 2

In your master page provide a content placeholder:

<asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="foo" runat="server">
    <div>Some default content</div>
</asp:ContentPlaceHolder>

In the 5% of the pages that don't need the default behavior override this placeholder with an empty string:

<asp:Content ID="Content1" runat="server" ContentPlaceHolderID="foo" />

The other 95% of the pages will get the common behavior.

Answer 3

You can access the master page directly by getting at the page and casting it to the type of your master page as below. This will couple you to the master page but the only other option I can think of is to create a key in session.

(MyMasterPage)Page.Master

Answer 4

Assuming that these features are represented in the asp markup of the master page, you could wrap it within a ContentPlaceHolderControl:

    <asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="OptionalContent" runat="server">
        *** This is my optional content ***
    </asp:ContentPlaceHolder>

In the 95% of pages where this content works, you can just not include a Content control for "OptionalContent" on your page. For the 5% where it doesn't work, you can include an empty Content control for "OptionalContent":

            <asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderID="OptionalContent" runat="server"></asp:Content>