Question

I feel stupid asking this but I cant seem to get a partial view rendering in a page.

I have created a partial view that im trying to load into my index page. I have called my pv _BusinessDetails basically its a view that returns some customer data.

My pv looks like

@model MyMVC.Models.BusinessModel
<div class="grid">

<div class="grid-header">
<div class="gh-l"></div>
    <div class="gh-m">Business Details</div>
<div class="gh-r"></div>
</div>

<div class="grid-row">
     <label class="labelBold">Busines Name</label>
     <label>@Model.BusinesName</label>
</div>

</div>

From my index page I am trying to call the pv using

    @Html.Partial("_BusinessDetails")

which fails so if I add

@Html.Partial("_BusinessDetails",new MyMVC.Models.BusinessModel())

The partial view is loaded however with no data as the controller isn’t been hit. In my controller I have tried

public ActionResult _BusinessDetails()
  {
      return PartialView("_BusinessDetails");
  }

 public PartialViewResult _BusinessDetails()
    {
        return PartialView("_BusinessDetails");
    }

However neither of them are hit. What have I done wrong?

Answer 1

When rendering a partial view and passing a view model, that view model should already be populated. No controllers/action methods are invoked when using @Html.Partial().

Since you are using this strongly-typed partial view on your home page, consider building its view model in your HomeController‘s Index() method. Is your index page strongly-typed as well? If so, you can add your partial view’s view model as a property of your index page’s view model, and pass that when calling @Html.Partial().

On your index page, it would look something like:

@model MyMVC.Models.IndexViewModel
<!-- some HTML here -->
@Html.RenderPartial("_BusinessDetails", Model.BusinessModel)

If your index page is not strongly-typed, you can use the ViewBag object or you can strongly-type it to MyMVC.Models.BusinessModel and use @Html.RenderPartial("_BusinessDetails", Model) (which, while simple, could cause confusion).

Rachel Appel has a nice blog post, as does Mike Brind, if you would like more information.