Get Current Area Name in View or Controller

Question

How do you get the current area name in the view or controller?

Is there anything like ViewContext.RouteData.Values[\"controller\"] for areas?

Answer 1

I created an extension method for RouteData that returns the current area name.

public static string GetAreaName(this RouteData routeData)
{
    object area;
    if (routeData.DataTokens.TryGetValue("area", out area))
    {
        return area as string;
    }

    return null;
}

Since RouteData is available on both ControllerContext and ViewContext it can be accessed in your controller and views.

It is also very easy to test:

[TestFixture]
public class RouteDataExtensionsTests
{
    [Test]
    public void GetAreaName_should_return_area_name()
    {
        var routeData = new RouteData();
        routeData.DataTokens.Add("area", "Admin");
        routeData.GetAreaName().ShouldEqual("Admin");
    }

    [Test]
    public void GetAreaName_should_return_null_when_not_set()
    {
        var routeData = new RouteData();
        routeData.GetAreaName().ShouldBeNull();
    }
}

There is no need to check if RouteData.DataTokens is null since this always initialized internally.