If you want to include ViewData in the MasterPage UI, you can.
ASP.Net MVC MasterPages are System.Web.Mvc.ViewMasterPage – this is a generic type just like System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage. So you can type it with a ViewData object, like this:
public partial class MyTemplate : ViewMasterPage<SomeViewData>
As soon as you do this you’re saying that the SomeViewData class is the only ViewData object that can be used on any page using this template. Not a problem though, just create a base ViewData class.
public class SiteWideViewData
{
}
public class PageViewData : SiteWideViewData
{
}
This of course means no more default ViewData objects and no more return View(); I found the easiest way to deal with that is to create a static property on the base ViewData:
public class SiteWideViewData
{
public static SiteWideViewData Default { get { return new SiteWideViewData(); } }
}
Now I can do this:
public ActionResult MySimpleControllerMethod()
{
return View(SiteWideViewData.Default);
}
And that seems to work okay.
