Question

how can i render multiple different actions in one call to a speccific controller?
Html.RenderAction() / Html.Action() only handles one controller&action.
But what if i want in one call to render different views on the screen?

thanks in advance,
Sagiv

EDIT:
Hi again.
I’m not sure you understood my question.
this is the cshtml:

   <div id="menu">@using (Ajax.ActionLink("click me", "SomeAction","SomeController", new AjaxOptions() { HttpMethod = "POST", OnSuccess = "showMsg", OnFailure = "showError" }))</div>
    <div id="div1">bla bla content</div>
....
    <div id="div2">bla bla content</div>

and this is the controller:

 public class SomeController : Controller
    {
        public ActionResult SomeAction()
        {         
            return View("somethingfordiv1", ModelForDiv1);
            return View("somethingfordiv2", ModelForDiv2); //i want also return another view here
        }
     }

in this ajax call on the controller, i want to return 2 different views for 2 different divs.
thanks again 🙂

Answer 1

Here’s one way you could proceed. You could aggregate the two view models into a unique view model and then have the controller action return a view containing javascript which will inject the two view results into the different divs.

As always start with the view models:

public class Model1 { }
public class Model2 { }

public class AggregatedModel
{
    public Model1 Model1 { get; set; }
    public Model2 Model2 { get; set; }
}

Then a controller:

public class HomeController : Controller
{
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        return View();
    }

    public ActionResult SomeAction()
    {
        var model = new AggregatedModel
        {
            Model1 = new Model1(),
            Model2 = new Model2()
        };
        Response.ContentType = "text/javascript";
        return PartialView(model);
    }
}

Then the corresponding ~/Views/Home/Index.cshtml view:

<div id="menu">
    @Html.ActionLink("click me", "SomeAction", "Home", new { id = "clickme" })
</div>

<div id="div1">bla bla content</div>
<div id="div2">bla bla content</div>

<script type="text/javascript">
    $('#clickme').click(function () {
        $.getScript(this.href);
        return false;
    });
</script>

Next the ~/Views/Home/SomeAction.cshtml view:

@model AggregatedModel
$('#div1').html(@Html.Raw(Json.Encode(Html.Partial("Model1", Model.Model1).ToHtmlString())));
$('#div2').html(@Html.Raw(Json.Encode(Html.Partial("Model2", Model.Model2).ToHtmlString())));

and finally the two ~/Views/Home/Model1.cshtml and ~/Views/Home/Model2.cshtml views:

@model Model1
<span>This is the contents for model1</span>

and:

@model Model2
<span>This is the contents for model2</span>