Question

I am trying to submit to a controller action method by using Html.ActionLink in my view. I am doing this as non-ajax submit because the return type of my action is FileContentResult (thanks to @Darin for this info). However, my action link is not posting my view to Action Method. Below is my code

View’s Code (Partial view)

@Html.ActionLink("Save", "SaveFile", "ui", new { htmlResult="asdf"}) 

Here, UI is controller name, SaveFile is method name.

Controller method

public FileContentResult SaveFile(string htmlString)
        {
...
...

pdfBytes = pdfConverter.GetPdfBytesFromHtmlString(html);


    var cd = new ContentDisposition

    {
        FileName = "MyFile.pdf",
        Inline = false
    };

    Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", cd.ToString());
    return File(pdfBytes, "application/pdf");

}

When I hit the same URL from browser address bar, then it is hit and also returns the pdf file with no issues. Same this is not happening through action link. I also tried putting the action link inside @using Html.BeginForm()…. but no use.

Can you please tell me where I might be doing wrong here?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Html.ActionLink has a lots of overloads and it’s very easy to use the wrong one. You are currently using the (String, String, Object, Object) overload which treats your third argument "ui" this route values which leads to a wrongly generated link.

Use this overload instead:

@Html.ActionLink("Save", //Link text
                 "SaveFile", // Action Name
                 "ui", // Controller name
                 new { htmlResult="asdf"}, //Route values
                 null /* html attributes */)