ASP.NET ViewBag

ASP.NET ViewBag tutorial shows how to pass data between controllers and views.

asp-net

Aug 29, 2025

ASP.NET ViewBag

last modified October 18, 2023

In this article we show how to pass data betweeen controllers and views in ASP.NET with ViewBag.

ASP.NET is a cross-platform, high-performance, open-source framework for building modern, cloud-enabled, web applications. It is developed by Microsoft.

A controller is a class which handles an HTTP request sent from a client. It retrieves model data and returns a response back to the client. A view displays data and handles user interaction.

A ViewBag is a controller property which is used to pass data from controllers to views. It is used for passing weakly-typed data. ViewBag is suitable for passing small amounts of data in and out of controllers and views.

If we want to pass strongly-typed data, we can use viewmodel.

ASP.NET ViewBag example

In the following example, we show how to use ViewBag.

Program.cs

var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

builder.Services.AddControllersWithViews();

var app = builder.Build();

app.UseRouting(); app.UseEndpoints(endppoints => { endppoints.MapDefaultControllerRoute(); });

app.Run(“http://localhost:3000”);

We set up controllers and views.

Controller/HomeController.cs

using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;

namespace ViewBagEx.Controllers;

public class HomeController : Controller { public IActionResult Index() { ViewBag.Now = DateTime.Now;

    return View();
}

[HttpGet("words")]
public IActionResult Words()
{
    var words = new List&lt;string&gt; { "red", "class", "rock", "war" };
    ViewBag.Words = words;
    
    return View();
}

}

In the controller we have two actions. The first returns the current datetime and the second a list of words.

ViewBag.Now = DateTime.Now;

We set the current datetime to the ViewBag.

var words = new List<string> { “red”, “class”, “rock”, “war” }; ViewBag.Words = words;

Here we set a list of strings.

Views/Home/Index.cshtml

<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang=“en”> <head> <meta charset=“UTF-8”> <meta name=“viewport” content=“width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0”> <title>Home page</title> </head> <body>

&lt;p&gt;
    @ViewBag.Now
&lt;/p&gt;

</body> </html>

In this view we display the current datetime. We access the bag via @ViewBag.

Views/Home/Words.cshtml

<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang=“en”> <head> <meta charset=“UTF-8”> <meta name=“viewport” content=“width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0”> <title>Words</title> </head> <body>

&lt;ul&gt;
    @{
        foreach (var word in ViewBag.Words)
        {
            &lt;li&gt;@word&lt;/li&gt;
        }
    }
&lt;/ul&gt;

</body> </html>

In this view, we display the words in an HTML list. We go through the list of words in a foreach loop.

$ dotnet watch

We start the application and navigate to localhost:3000 and localhost:3000/words.

In this article we have shown how to pass data betweeen controllers and views with ViewBag.

Author

My name is Jan Bodnar, and I am a passionate programmer with extensive programming experience. I have been writing programming articles since 2007. To date, I have authored over 1,400 articles and 8 e-books. I possess more than ten years of experience in teaching programming.

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