Question

I am used to ASP.NET web forms, and am slowly learning ASP.NET MVC.
My website has a little login form on the homepage. My natural thought is that this login form may be useful in other places, and it is not the primary action of the homepage, so I want to separate it off into a partial view. And because it is related to accounts, I want the login in my AccountController not my HomepageController.

Login form is a pretty basic strongly typed partial view:

@model Models.Account.AccountLogin

   <h2>Login Form</h2>

    @using (Html.BeginForm("_Login", "Account")) { 

        @Html.ValidationSummary()

        <div>
            <span>Email address:</span>
            @Html.TextBoxFor(x => x.EmailAddress)
        </div>

        <div>
            <span>Password:</span>
            @Html.PasswordFor(x => x.Password)
        </div>

        <div>
            <span>Remember me?</span>
            @Html.CheckBoxFor(x => x.RememberMe)
        </div>

        <input type="submit" value="Log In" />
    }

</div>

On the homepage, I have this:

@Html.Action("_Login", "Account")

Finally, in the account controller, this:

[HttpGet]
    public PartialViewResult _Login()
    {
        return PartialView();
    }

[HttpPost]
public PartialViewResult _Login(AccountLogin loginDetails)
{
    // Do something with this

    return PartialView();
}

Now when I load my homepage, it looks OK and contains the form. When I click the Log In button, it takes me to myurl/Account/_Login, which contains the form, but not within the _Layout master page, just basic plain HTML and it doesn’t do anything at all when I click Log In.

I am pretty sure that I have just missed some fundamental aspect of what I am supposed to be doing here, can someone please point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

It’s because you’re returning a partial view, which strips away the master page and just returns the main content. Often actions starting with an underscore are used for partials (e.g. ajaxing in a bit of a page, but not the full page). It sounds like you want a full action, and not a partial, so

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Login(AccountLogin loginDetails)
{
    // Do something with this

    return View();
}