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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-26T05:04:47+00:00

I have a Product edit screen. The user can select a Vendor for the

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I have a Product edit screen. The user can select a Vendor for the Product. To do this, I display a jQueryUI dialog box which allows them to browse for and select a Vendor. When the user selects the Vendor, I update a hidden VendorID input on the page, which is part of my page’s model. I also update several divs with details about the Vendor they have selected. These are for display purposes only–only the id is needed to persist the selected Vendor.

This all works fine and dandy except when there is an error on postback, in which case I redisplay the same view. ModelState takes care of preserving all my form fields (including the hidden VendorID). However, my divs with the Vendor text are (of course) empty since they’re not posted to the server.

I first went down the path of creating hidden fields for each of my Vendor display fields and putting them on the model. Then the hidden fields survive the postback, but that doesn’t solve the problem of actually redisplaying the text on the screen.

The three options I can think of are:

  1. On postback, if there is an error, go to the database, fetch the Vendor using the supplied VendorID and re-populate the model with the text I want to display.
  2. Use RenderAction and have an action which renders the details of the selected Vendor.
  3. Use readonly textboxes instead of divs to display the Vendor details.

None of these feel very satisfactory to me. I feel like I might be missing an obvious solution. Are there any better solutions?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I would suggest you not have the extra Vendor information come down as part of the main page. Create a javascript function showVendorInfo(). When called, if the VendorID hidden input has a value, it gets the relevant Vendor information via AJAX and displays it, using an AjaxGetVendorInfo action method. Call this function from two places:

    • In document.ready()
    • after a Vendor is selected with jQueryUI display.

    Now, this would be in an action method. You could, if you expect your users to have latency issues, do the following to avoid some ajax calls: In the view check if you know the VendorID; if so, call Html.RenderAction call the same AjaxGetVendorInfo action method from the view.

    A bonus to this is that it avoids what I have found to be a big no-no: Including both display-only values and model-binding values in your ViewModel. This makes for a very confusing ViewModel, especially when there are validation errors. [Getting on soap box] It’s best to have your ViewModel to just have properties intended for modelbinding, for your state. Put list values, extra display information, etc., into ViewData or have them show up via AJAX.

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