Rendering sitecore MVC rendering on an ASPX layout

Question

Does any one has experience implementing hybrid version of Sitecore MVC and webforms?

Sitecore does support the hybrid state but at a page level, meaning either the page has to be on Sitecore MVC layout or ASPX layout, but my requirement is to have a MVC rendering on ASPX layout.

Tried to implement this approach which is available on web, it does help render the MVC rendering on the page but as soon as a controller action is invoked the partial view rendering shows up without the parent layout as shown in the below snapshot. Due to the above issue, we have decided to have a full page based on MVC layout but it would be good to know if anyone has any experience of such thing.

Regards, Pratik Thakker

Answer 1

Have a read of this blog post that explains how to use MVC layouts on Webforms pages: https://blog.horizontalintegration.com/2015/09/15/mixing-sublayout-with-rendering-webforms-with-mvc-request/. It references a couple of examples such as the one you mentioned.

The solution consists of a Extension Method for the Sublayout:

public static class SubLayoutExtension
    {
        public static string RenderSublayoutHTML(this Sublayout subLayout)
        {
            string retHTML = string.Empty;

            var page = new DummyPage();

            if (HttpContext.Current.Items.Contains("ismvc"))
            {
                var userControl = page.LoadControl(subLayout.Path);
                subLayout.Controls.Add(userControl);

            }
            page.Controls.Add(subLayout);
            retHTML = ExecutePage(page);


            return retHTML;
        }
        private static string ExecutePage(DummyPage page)
        {
            page.ProcessRequest(HttpContext.Current);
            return page.Result;
        }
    }  

You can then call it like so:

var item = e.Item.DataItem as Item;
                if (item == null) return;

                var slideImage = e.Item.FindControl("slideImage") as Literal;
                if (slideImage == null) return;

                Sublayout slideSublayout = new Sublayout();
                slideSublayout.DataSource = item.Paths.FullPath;

                if (item.TemplateID.Equals(new ID(ImageSlideItem.TemplateId)))
                {
                    slideSublayout.Path = "~/Common/Sublayouts/PageElements/Image/Image.ascx";
                }
                else if (item.TemplateID.Equals(new ID(VideoSlideItem.TemplateId)))
                {
                    slideSublayout.Path = "~/Common/Sublayouts/PageElements/Video/HostedVideo.ascx";
                }
                else if (item.TemplateID.Equals(new ID(YouTubeVideoSlideItem.TemplateId)))
                {
                    slideSublayout.Path = "~/Common/Sublayouts/PageElements/Video/YouTubeVideo.ascx";
                }
                slideImage.Text = slideSublayout.RenderSublayoutHTML();

As referenced in the article this is another way of doing it, using MVC pages and views and rendering user controls within them instead: http://bisstalk.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/sitecore-sublayouts-rendering-on.html

Hopefully this is useful.