Base Controller Class and TempData

Need:

To pass information to every view based on an environmental variable. The specific case I ran across this need is when you want to use the minified version of your JavaScript libraries in production and the human readable in dev/QA.

Solution:

• Create your own base controller class.
• Override either onactionexecuting or onactionexecuted.
• Populate TempData with the environment specific information.
• Change your controllers to inherit from your custom base controller
• Use that information in the view.

using System.Configuration;using System.Web.Mvc;

namespace BaseController.Controllers{    public class BaseController : Controller    {        protected override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)        {

            filterContext.Controller.TempData["OnActionExecuting"] = "OnActionExecuting";            filterContext.Controller.TempData["js_dev"] = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["js_dev"];

            base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);        }

        protected override void OnActionExecuted(ActionExecutedContext filterContext)        {

            filterContext.Controller.TempData["OnActionExecuted"] = "OnActionExecuted";            filterContext.Controller.TempData["js_prod"] = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["js_prod"];            base.OnActionExecuted(filterContext);        }    }}

Pros:

• I’ve found that I often have to create my own base controller class. Doing so for something this simple is a god starting point.

Cons:

Alternate Solutions:

• Use T4 templates to generate a const file based on environment.
• Put the information of each server in the machine.config

Final:

The solution is sound and a sample is attached but I am going to have to come back and flesh out this post a little more with details about the *.config/caching and other options.