Question

First of all, where is the documentation for Ajax.* methods in asp.net mvc?

Can Ajax.ActionLink be used to call an action, get a partial view, open a modal window and put the content in it?

Answer 1

Sure, a very similar question was asked before. Set the controller for ajax requests:

public ActionResult Show()
{
    if (Request.IsAjaxRequest()) 
    {
        return PartialView("Your_partial_view", new Model());
    }
    else 
    {
        return View();
    }
}

Set the action link as wanted:

@Ajax.ActionLink("Show", 
                 "Show", 
                 null, 
                 new AjaxOptions { HttpMethod = "GET", 
                 InsertionMode = InsertionMode.Replace, 
                 UpdateTargetId = "dialog_window_id", 
                 OnComplete = "your_js_function();" })

Note that I’m using Razor view engine, and that your AjaxOptions may vary depending on what you want. Finally display it on a modal window. The jQuery UI dialog is suggested.