title: ASP.NET MVC 3 Partial View in layout page
body: <p>I'm working on setting up a shared content (navigation) for an asp.net MVC layout page.</p>
  
  <p>Here is my partial view "_LayoutPartial.cshtml" with code to pull navigation data from a model.</p>
  
  <pre><code>@model MyApp.Models.ViewModel.LayoutViewModel
  &lt;p&gt;
  
      @foreach (var item in Model.navHeader)
      {
          //Test dump of navigation data
          @Html.Encode(item.Name); 
          @Html.Encode(item.URL); 
  
      }
  &lt;/p&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Here is how the code for my controller "LayoutController.cs" looks like.</p>
  
  <pre><code>using System;
  using System.Collections.Generic;
  using System.Linq;
  using System.Web;
  using System.Web.Mvc;
  using MyApp.Models.ViewModel;
  
  namespace MyApp.Controllers
  {
      public class LayoutController : Controller
      {
  
          //
          // GET: /Layout/
  
          LayoutViewModel layout = new LayoutViewModel();
  
          public ActionResult Index()
          {
              return View(layout);
          }
  
      }
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Here is the code for the "_Layout.cshtml" page. I'm attempting to call the partial view here using Html.RenderAction(Action,Controller) method.</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;!DOCTYPE html&gt;
  &lt;html&gt;
  &lt;head&gt;
      &lt;meta charset="utf-8" /&gt;
  &lt;/head&gt;
  &lt;body&gt;
      &lt;p&gt;
          @{Html.RenderAction("Index","Layout");}
      &lt;/p&gt;
  
      @RenderBody()
  &lt;/body&gt;
  &lt;/html&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>When the layout page executes the @{Html.RenderAction("Index","Layout");} line, it throws out an error message "Error executing child request for handler 'System.Web.Mvc.HttpHandlerUtil+ServerExecuteHttpHandlerAsyncWrapper'." </p>
  
  <p>What am I missing friends? How can I call a partial view in a layout page?</p>
  
  <p>Thank you all in advance!</p>