Question

I have a little app that initially requests a user id. This user id is then sent as a parameter to a stored procedure that returns values from a database. What I would like for this app to do is to refresh those same values every 30 seconds. My issue is that when I refresh, I lose the user id. Is there something simple that I’m missing here?

public ActionResult Report()
{

  string operatorCode = Request.Form.GetValues("txtOperator")[0].ToString();

  ViewBag.operatorName = (from e in db.employees
                          where e.operator_code == operatorCode
                          select e.name).Max().ToString();            

  ViewData["operatorCode"] = operatorCode;            

  var results =  db.lex_sp_Select_Paintline_FinRew_Operator(operatorCode);

  Response.AddHeader("Refresh", "10");

  return View(results.ToList());
}

Answer 1

I think the main reason for the null value is due to the fact that you are trying to refresh an HttpPost, rather than a request (the refresh header is not intended for POSTS). I’d suggest as an alternative, that you change your process to be a request, which would result in only needing to change the invoking code (to a get) and changing the Report action to:

string operatorCode = Request.QueryString["txtOperator"];

this should give you the desired result, tho at the expense of the action now being a get rather than a post. You could also store the operatorCode in Session (tho this may not scale very well). The final option that I can see, would be to run an ajax request on a setInterval() and use that process to send a POST to the controller action.