Not sure exactly how your setup is, but is it possible to add arguments as RenderSettings?

Forgot to mention that this is MVC. Isn't RenderSettings a WebForms specific thing?

I've tried to pass on arguments with

@Html.PropertyFor(x => x.Area, new { CustomSomething = "test" })

the retrive it with

@ViewData["CustomSomething"]

without any luck. I guess this is only available in the ContentArea display template.

I have done exactly that to pass down data from Containing ContentArea rendering to blocks

@Html.PropertyFor(model => model.MyContentArea, new { CustomSomething = "something" })

var something = blockController.ControllerContext.ParentActionViewContext.ViewData["CustomSomething"] != null ? blockController.ControllerContext.ParentActionViewContext.ViewData["CustomSomething"] : null;

Not to confuse the matter but I actually use it as a short cut to providing different rendering for the block types.

Rather than implementing new controllers which render when a specific tag is set, I pass a RenderTag down to the blocks using this method.

@Html.PropertyFor(model => model.MyContentArea, new { RenderTag= "specificRenderTag" })

Then in my block controllers I implement as follows:

public override ActionResult Index(MyBlock currentBlock)
        {
            string viewName = this.TryGetRenderTagView();

            return this.PartialView(viewName, currentBlock);
        }

TryGetRenderTagView() will return the default "Index" OR if the RenderTag is found in the ParentActionViewContext AND it can find a view with same name as the RenderTag, then it will return the RenderTag.

public static string TryGetRenderTagView<T>(this EPiServer.Web.Mvc.BlockController<T> blockController) where T : BlockData
        {
            string retval = "Index";
            var parentRenderTag = blockController.TryGetParentRenderTag();
            if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(parentRenderTag))
            {
                var viewResult = new PartialViewResult().ViewEngineCollection.FindPartialView(blockController.ControllerContext, parentRenderTag);
                if (viewResult != null && viewResult.View != null)
                {
                    retval = parentRenderTag;
                }
            }

            return retval;
        }

public static string TryGetParentRenderTag<T>(this EPiServer.Web.Mvc.BlockController<T> blockController) where T : BlockData
        {
            return blockController.ControllerContext.ParentActionViewContext.ViewData[MagicStrings.ViewDataKeys.RenderTag] != null ? blockController.ControllerContext.ParentActionViewContext.ViewData[MagicStrings.ViewDataKeys.RenderTag].ToString() : null;
        }

Looks like this will do the trick. Thanks!