In my current project, I had to render elements in the view based on a setting provided by the model(basically it is a configurable thing). Few clients need view element to be rendered in a particular order and few others in a different way. What we did was, saved this elements order in a settings file which could be changed based on the clients. Then created an extension to render this based on the order.
This is what was I was trying to explain. for Client 1 the “Login section” to be displayed first followed by “Password reminder section”
For Client 2 , these sections needs be ordered differently
In order to achieve this, I came up with an HtmlHelper extension
/// <summary>
/// Renders the render items in the provided sequence order.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="htmlHelper">The HTML helper which is extended.</param>
/// <param name="sequenceOrder">The order in which items to be rendered. Sequence starts at an index of 0.</param>
/// <param name="renderItems">The items to be rendered in order.</param>
/// <remarks>
/// Values in the sequence order should match with the total number of render items.
/// Invalid sequnce numbers are ignored.
/// </remarks>
public static void OrderBy(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, int[] sequenceOrder, params Action<HtmlHelper>[] renderItems)
{
if (sequenceOrder != null && renderItems != null)
{
foreach (var sequnce in sequenceOrder)
{
// CHeck whether the sequence is with inthe bounds
if (sequnce < renderItems.Length && sequnce >= 0)
{
renderItems[sequnce].Invoke(htmlHelper);
}
}
}
else if (renderItems != null)
{
// If the sequence order is not provided, render it in normal order in which items are declared.
foreach (var renderItem in renderItems)
{
renderItem.Invoke(htmlHelper);
}
}
else
{
// Do Nothing
}
}
In the view, you could do
<% Html.OrderBy(this.Model.LoginDisplayOrder, (html) => { %>
<div class="container"></div>
<% Html.RenderPartial("LoginSection", this.Model); %>
<% }, (html) => { %>
<div class="container"></div>
<% Html.RenderPartial("ReminderPassword", this.Model); %>
<% }); %>
Here Model.LoginDisplayOrder is just an array of integers in which the items to be rendered. Hope this will help.
