Passing parameter from controller to view

Question

I'm working on a C# MVC project and need to pass some data from controller to all views.

My task was to save a webpage to a pdf file.

there are total of 5 pages so 5 different views, I also have 5 controllers, one for each view.

I created a extension class of controller so functions inside it can be used by all controllers.

As I need to render the view differently, I need to pass a parameter to each view to toggle the display (i.e. if it is for generating pdf I only need the main content on the view without the menus and links, otherwise display the whole view.)

Here is my implementation:

ControllerExtension.cs

public GenerateAllPagesAsPdf
{
    bool DisplayMainContentOnly = True;

   SaveWebPagetoPDF(MVC.Controller1.Index(DisplayMainContentOnly ), pdf1)
   SaveWebPagetoPDF(MVC.Controller2.Index(DisplayMainContentOnly ), pdf2)
   SaveWebPagetoPDF(MVC.Controller3.Index(DisplayMainContentOnly ), pdf3)
   SaveWebPagetoPDF(MVC.Controller4.Index(DisplayMainContentOnly ), pdf4)
   SaveWebPagetoPDF(MVC.Controller5.Index(DisplayMainContentOnly ), pdf5)

   DisplayMainContentOnly = False;
}

Controller1.cs

[HttpGet]
[Page("View1")]
public virtual ActionResult Index(bool DisplayMainContentOnly)
{
    TempData["mainOnly"] = DisplayMainContentOnly;
    model1 = new Model();           
    return this.View(model1);
}

View1.cshtml

@{
    bool mainOnly= (bool)TempData["mainOnly"];
}

@if (mainOnly) {
    <div>
        <h2>@Html.Heading()</h2>
        @RenderBody()
    </div>
} else {
    <div>
        <h2>@Html.Heading()</h2>
        @RenderBody()
    </div>
    <div id="mc-column-wrapper">
        @Html.Action(MVC.Home.Menu())      
    </div>
}

And all other controllers and views have same implementation of Controller1 and View1, using TempData directory to pass the parameter. I don't want to add this bool variable to each model of the views

I tried to set TempData directory in my ControllerExtension class but it doesn't pass the parameter to the views

Just wondering, is there any other way to pass the parameter to all views instead of pass it to all controllers' actions?

thanks

Answer 1

I did some research and finally find the following solution which suits my needs, not quite sure whether it is the best way to do it.

the function SaveWebPagetoPDF(string url, string outputFileName) is converting a webpage of passed in url and save the converted file as a pdf file.

I add one extra step in the SaveWebPagetoPDF function to append the parameter to the url as querystring.

url = url + "?DisplayMainContentOnly=true";

And in my view, instead of checking TempData, I'm checking the QueryString:

bool mainOnly= Request.QueryString["DisplayMainContentOnly"] == null? false : Request.QueryString["DisplayMainContentOnly"] == "true";

By doing this, I'm no longer need to add parameter to all of my controller action methods

[HttpGet]
[Page("View1")]
public virtual ActionResult Index()
{
    model1 = new Model();           
    return this.View(model1);
}