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How to use one razor view for two action methods but with slightly different contents in some portions only? [duplicate]

I have set up a menu-controller to drive the top menu links based on which other controller is being used. Each other controller has a separate nested master page for each of its views.
so, i have a menu-controller with several methods that return viewresults, one per each controller, or "section" of the site. So currently each of these methods has its own view to render the menu. but each view to render the menu is the same code, the only thing that changes is the logic in the controller methods based on which links to render.
is there any way to have all of these controller actions target the same view? since the view is the same for all?
thanks

Yes, that is a common practice.
return View("Menu");

Create a strongly typed view that takes a container specifying your menu content. Pass this as a parameter on your return statement.
var thisMenu = CreateMenuForThisRequest();
return View ("Menu", thisMenu);

it depends on what version of ASP MVC you're using; with MVC 2, you can create an ascx control and use RenderAction
in your view you'll put something like
Html.RenderAction("Menu", "Navigation");
and have a navigation controller with a Menu actionresult
public class NavigationController : Controller
{
[ChildActionOnly]
public ActionResult Menu()
{
Menu model;//your menu
return PartialView("YourMenuAscxControlName", model);
}
}
I think if you're using MVC 1, the MVC Future project has the RenderAction but i'm not sure.

For my menu I use the RenderAction method
I'm also using the ActionOutputCacheAttribute from Steve Sanderson
http://blog.stevensanderson.com/2008/10/15/partial-output-caching-in-aspnet-mvc/
you will greatly increase your site loading time with this caching

Can I Display User Specific Data throughout the site without adding to each view model

I have a site (MVC5) with a partial that is a header. This header displays the users name, and a logo of the organisation that they represent.
Each page also has a ViewModel of page specific data.
Is there any way I can have this Partial rendered on each page from a common model / object behind the scenes, or do I need to add my 'userheader' viewmodel to the viewmodel on each page?

You can get your requirement done through ChildActionOnly, lets say -
[ChildActionOnly]
public ActionResult LoggedIn()
{
// create your User View Model and pass it to Login Partial View
return PartialView("_LoginPartial", user);
}
Now create a Partial View with a stringly typed model what you are returning from the controller action above.
And in your Layout you can get the partial view like shown below -
#Html.Action("LoggedIn", "ControllerName")
In this way there is no need for you to include the same models across different views.

Passing a model with a Partial View

I want to show a view on some of my forms, which shows a list of alerts, read from a database table. I think I need to use a partial view - but haven't used one.
So far, I created a partial view in my shared views folder called "_Alerts.cshtml".
In that file, at the moment, I simply have:
#{
Layout = null;
}
This is a shared view.
This is just me trying to display something.
And then, on my existing page, on which I want to display the alerts, I have this section of code:
#if (User.Identity.IsAuthenticated)
{
<div class="row">
#Html.Partial("~/Views/Shared/_Alerts.cshtml", null)
</div>
}
This works. However, my understanding is not right. At the moment, I pass no model to it. Is there no controller for the partial view? At the moment, I need to create a controller method - somewhere - that gets me a list of alerts from my data service, and then I want to format that and present it in the partial view. But I am unsure where the controller methods go. If this view is called from 8 different screens, would the 8 controllers for these screens have a call to get my alerts, and format them?
Seems like a lot of duplication.

They need not be duplication.
You can define the action you want inside a controller and call #Html.Action instead of #Html.Partial
Inside you action you can return a partial view.
public class AlertsController : Controller
{
public ActionResult Show()
{
var model = GetModel();//decide where this will come from.
return PartialView("~/Views/Shared/_Alerts.cshtml",model);
}
}
In your layout view or wherever you need to use it. you can simply call it as below.
#Html.Action("Show","Alerts")

If you have all the data you need to pass into the partial, then you can use the #Html.Partial and pass in the model.
If on the other hand, you want the view you are embedding to get the data itself, then you would use Html.RenderAction

Controller that calls a partial view that should display inside the Layout view

In a standard MVC application we have _Layout.cshtml and an Index.cshtml view. Now imagine if the user receives an email activation after a registration and now he/she clicks on that link.
The link points to /Account/ActivateAccount and after I process the activation, I wanted to redirect the user to the Login.cshtml partial view displaying a message.
I'm aware I can pass the message via the TempData["Message"] but what I don't know is how to redirect to a partial view and have that display inside the _Layout.cshtml instead that by itself.
At least this is what is happening when I call RedirectToAction("Login", "Home")
Note: all "home" based partial views are displaying within a < div id="divmain"> and my ideal solution would be to be able to decide what view should display inside that div, from the controller.
What's the right way to call a Partial View to be displayed from within another Controller ??

I'm not entirely sure I understand the question but I think what you're asking is if you can call a partial view from the _layout? This can be done with #Html.Action() helper. It will call out to a controller and method you specify and insert the result. The method you call would just be a PartialResult that returns the partial view with whatever data you need.
This is in contrast to #Html.Partial() which will render the partial view in place with whatever data you provide without routing back through a controller.
EDIT:
To summarize the comments to this answer, it seems I misunderstood the requirement. A user receives an email and clicks the link to activate their registration. The controller action that handles that request activates the user and then it needs to redirect to something. In this case, there was already a partial view which would serve the purpose but it couldn't be redirected to directly for some reasons. My suggestion was to just create a new View which contained a #Html.Partial() call to basically wrap the partial in a full view page.
The action method which handled the click could then just return that view directly or, if you consider the click of the link to be a "post" since it changes the application model by validating the user, you would create a new controller action and return RedirectToAction() directly. This would be like following the Post, Redirect, Get method and would prevent some issue if the user tried to refresh the "activated" page. It would also give more control over the URL naming.

asp.net mvc resource cannot be found controller

i got stack on my project the problem is after adding new controller class and views for the actions unable to link the views with existing views
*
The resource cannot be found
.*
i have home and account controller classes which work well and i add new controller class users and i have to action methods index and adduser both have view but anytime when i try to retrieve view from the new controller class it dosnt found the pages.
eg <%= Html.ActionLink("users", "Index", "users")%> please help !!!

have you created views?
Guideline:
create controller controller_nameController
create action public actionresult action_name(){return View();}
create views Hit ctrl+m, ctrl+v or right click on the action whose view you would like to create.
4. check if you really have created a view named action_name in controller_name folder
Then you can create links: ("to display text", "action name", "controller name")
Hope this helps.