Changing MasterPage programatically at runtime

Using multiple master pages is becoming more handy lately. When I first started using master pages I typically had 1 or 2 of them in a project and a page would only make sense to be viewable in one of those master pages. A good example is having a "public" master page and an "admin" master page.

But on one of my projects there is a wide variety of master pages available to provide several different "experiences" based on what the user is trying to do or what the user is viewing.

There is one particular scenario where I wanted to let the user see the content in a different master page (e.g. normal view vs. print view) and I wanted to control it based on a querystring parameter, so I needed to change the master page at runtime.

Changing the master page programatically in your code-behind file is easy to do, it's just important to know that you have to do it early enough in the page's life-cycle for it to actually work.

You can change the master page in the PreInit event.

Private Sub Page_PreInit(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.PreInit
     MasterPageFile = "~/Template2.master"
End Sub

The PreInit event is new to ASP.Net 2.0. If you try to wait to change the master page in the page's Load or Init event it will be too late!

When changing the master page dynamically, you must make sure that all master pages have the same ID for the ContentPlaceHolder controls, so that the content page's Content controls will always match them, regardless of which master page is being used.

ASP.NET 2.0 Website Programming: Problem - Design - Solution by Marco Bellinaso