Question

I have a scenario where I would like to redirect the user while he is accessing a page (GET, not POST), and I would like to know how to do this in ASP.Net MVC.

Here is the scenario. I have a controller with a multi-step process wizard. It is possible, even if unlikely, that a user tries to access step 1 although he has already completed that step. In that case, I would like to redirect him to step 2.

Something like:

public ViewResult Step1(int? id)
{
    //Do some stuff and some checking here...
    if (step1done)
    {
        return RedirectToAction("RegisterStep2");
    }
}

However, this gives the following error, because RedirectToAction is meant to be used in the ActionResult method:

Cannot implicitly convert type ‘System.Web.Mvc.RedirectToRouteResult’ to ‘System.Web.Mvc.ViewResult’

Can someone tell me how to fix this and have my ViewResult method (GET action) perform a redirection? Should I simply use Response.Redirect() just as in plain old ASP.Net, or is there a “more ASP.Net MVC” way to do this?

Answer 1

Change your return type to ActionResult, the base class for both ViewResult and RedirectToRouteResult.

public ActionResult Step1(int? id)
{
    //Do some stuff and some checking here...
    if (step1done)
    {
        return RedirectToAction("RegisterStep2");
    }

    // ...

    return View();
}