Adding MvcContrib SubControllers to your ASP.NET MVC Project
After a little bit of work with MVC, you get infected with the spirit of clean code and begin to desire even more ways of eliminating repetition. You’ve got partials and html helpers. Still you are hungry. SubControllers are the dish that will fill you up.
Why SubControllers?
There’s a design decision here. The question is why are we designing with subcontrollers? To understand the rationale, let’s look at the qualities of the various sub-view options.
- Partial Views – partial views are probably the most useful method for re-using view output. They are very easy to set up, and are very versatile. However, they don’t contain logic. They are intended entirely as a slave to the Action Controller. They get their model from the controller and simply render it. This means that the controller needs to know and provide everything the partial view needs. Not good for something like a login status control, which is an separate concern from most controllers.
- HTML Helpers – HTML helpers get used a lot, and they are very helpful for creating your own ‘controls’ to use in your pages. They do not, however, support using a view template. This means you’ve got to create them and test them with tests for emitted markup. This adds a lot of complexity if you are trying to do something more than create a html rendering function. Not a good place to insert complex view logic, like a shopping cart status widget, or anything with a table or list. The HTML helper also still gets it’s data from the master view/controller, so it fails at separating concerns.
- Html.RenderAction() – RenderAction is the once and future solution to a number of problems. Or so I hear. I have trouble getting excited about using it right now. Currently, it is not baked into MVC, but rather is in the separate ‘MVC Futures’ assembly, where it is unsupported. Rumor is it is buggy and unsecure. In the future it may be changed or dropped or renamed or anything. ScottGu has promised in a blog comment that it is due for inclusion in MVC 2. However, I don’t program to unreleased Microsoft products. Maybe later, but for now…
- MvcContrib SubController – Jeff Palermo implemented subcontrollers for MvcContrib to give us a working solution—now—for reusable view/controller code. Subcontrollers have their own model, ViewData, are nestable, and can use view templates for their output. If you have a job that goes beyond a partial view, or a html helper, SubControllers are a peach.
Setting Up Your Project
1) Add a reference to MvcContrib.
2) Create a class called StructureMapSubControllerBinder. This is only required if you’re using StructureMap to do your IOC for you. You can use the base SubControllerBinder from MvcContrib, or create your own version for your IOC tool.
public class StructureMapSubControllerBinder
: SubControllerBinder
{
public override object CreateSubController(Type
destinationType)
{
object instance = ObjectFactory.GetInstance(destinationType);
if (instance == null)
{
throw new InvalidOperationException(destinationType
+ " not registered with StructureMap");
}
return instance;
}
}
3) Make the SubControllerBinder your default binder.
ModelBinders.Binders.DefaultBinder = new StructureMapSubControllerBinder();
<add namespace="MvcContrib"/>
Creating a SubController
1) Create a ~/Controllers/SubControllers folder. This is completely optional. If you have a bigger project you might want to make multiple subcontrollers folders for different areas.
2) Create a SubController class. The action needs to have the ‘same’ name as the class. It also subclasses from SubController.
using System.Web.Mvc;
using MvcContrib;
namespace NWIS.Business.Web.Controllers.SubControllers
{
public class DemoSubController
: SubController
{
public ViewResult Demo()
{
return View();
}
}
}3) Create a View subfolder. Using the ‘Add View’ context menu from the controller won’t work because the ‘sub’ in the class name. Just create the folder yourself. ~/Views/Demo.
4) Create a View. Right click on the ~/Views/Demo folder. Select Add->View. Name the view ‘Demo’. Make it a partial view (.ascx). Go ahead an add some markup to the view. Whatever you like.
Using the SubController in your View
1) Add an attribute to your Controller class.
[SubControllerActionToViewDataAttribute]
2) Add the subcontroller as a parameter to the action you want to use it in.
public ViewResult Index(DemoSubController mySubCont)
3) Place the subcontroller output into your view.
<% ViewData.Get<Action>("mySubCont").Invoke();
%>
