Using MonoRail ViewComponents with the Spark view engine

Posted on February 2nd, 2009%

Although I was able to find some documentation and samples (mostly through the unit tests) of how to use a ViewComponent with the Spark view engine, details were sketchy, so I’ll share some quick tips to those who are scratching their heads as I was.

Using a block ViewComponent

Support for block view components is pretty evident in Spark, as shown in the following example, which illustrates the use of the AuthenticatedContent view component.

<authenticatedcontent>
<logged>
This content is shown when the user is logged in.
</logged>
<notlogged>
This content is shown when the user is NOT logged in.
</notlogged>
</authenticatedcontent>

Using the CaptureFor ViewComponent

The CaptureFor component is one useful way to allow a sub-view to “inject” data into a layout. I use this all the time to allow a rescue page to change the page title when an error occurs.

On your layout page, you inject the page title as you normally would (so a controller can inject it via the property bag).

<title>ComputerSims Baseball: $!{ViewData["PageTitle"]}</title>

In the view, the . . .

→ Read More: Using MonoRail ViewComponents with the Spark view engine

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Google AdSense ViewComponent for MonoRail

Posted on June 5th, 2008%

Like many, I use Google AdSense to host ads on my web sites. Including the ad code typically requires you to paste a block a block of JavaScript onto the page. I don’t mind injecting the JavaScript, but I wanted to come up with a better way.

The solution I came up with was a quick MonoRail ViewComponent, AdUnit. It has a simple purpose: to render a block of code for an ad unit of a given size.

The first task was to create an enum which represented all the possible ad unit sizes, based on what’s offered by Google. . . . → Read More: Google AdSense ViewComponent for MonoRail

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