Branching logic in an MVC view

Question

I find myself writing a lot of code in my views that looks like the code below. In this case, I want to add some explanatory HTML for a novice, and different HTML for an expert user.

<% if (ViewData["novice"] != null ) { %>
some extra  HTML for a novice
<% } else { %>
some HTML for an expert
<% } %>

This is presentation logic, so it makes sense that it is in a view vs the controller. However, it gets ugly really fast, especially when ReSharper wants to move all the braces around to make it even uglier (is there a way to turn that off for views?).

My question is whether this is proper, or should I branch in the controller to two separate views? If I do two views, I will have a lot of duplicated HTML to maintain.

Or should I do two separate views with a shared partial view of the stuff that is in common?

Answer 1

You're trying to create 2 completely separate html pages with identical models. You want a separate view. Don't try to out clever the design pattern with conditional-branching logic.

HTML helpers aren't going to help you much here, since it appears you will not be repeating much logic other than if else.

Answer 2

Ideally, this kind of logic would be handled in the view model and the view should just be rendering the model.

So you might have something like in your view:

<%= ViewData["helptext"]  %>

and your logic in the controller would be something like:

ViewData["helpText"] = isNovice ? noviceText : expertText;

that way you can push that logic back to the controller and keep your views nice and clean