Updating a Master Page from a View

Question

I have an ASP.NET MVC 2 project that renders conventional strongly typed pages, but on some of these pages I also want to use the page's object to render a specific area (div) in the navigation section of the Master Page.

For example, if I have a Client object and associated strongly typed View, I want the View to be able to insert client-specific navigation items within a div in the Master Page's navigation.

I've actually achieved this in a not very elegant fashion by creating a ViewData item to hold the Client object - this is in addition to returning the client object with the View. The Master Page then takes the ViewData object and, if it's not null, renders the client-specific navigation section. This way of doing things will get very ugly as the number of different objects that have to be handled increases.

What I am looking for is a method to update a placeholder (ie an empty div) in the Master Page navigation during the page rendering process. Any C#, VB.NET or jQuery solution welcome.

Answer 1

Why not use the master page/placeholder as you traditionally might with web forms? I'm not seeing how using MVC would dictate this being done another way.

View Masterpage:

<div id="menu">
    <div>Item1</div>
    <div>Item2</div>
    <asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="MenuContent" runat="server" />
</div>

View:

<asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="MenuContent" runat="server">
    <%=Html.RenderAdditionalMenuItemsSomehow(Model) %>
</asp:Content>