Question

I have a simple MVC 3 application. I want the site to automatically redirect the user somewhere else after they have logged out and been on the logout page for a few seconds. I would like this implemented into the View, but I cannot figure out how to work MVC conventions into something to do this. I know I can use this:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="5;URL=/Index">

But that means I have to specify a URL, [or if its just /Index it will append it to the current URL, meaning it will call the Action of the Controller (info in brackets is incorrect)]. The only problem is this is my Account controller and I don’t want to redirect them (the users) to one of its Actions. I want them redirected to an Action in my Home controller, preferably the Index Action. I imagine this can be done with a new Action in my Account controller, I link there and all that Action does is redirect to a new View. But that seems like a waste of code. Can I specify directly the controller and action I want in order to do this?

EDIT: Solved it myself. What I said about it appeneding /Index to the current URL was wrong, I can specify the Controller Action there, used:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="5;URL=/Home/Index">

Worked so far and I didn’t have to add the localhost info. This gives me the link localhost:xxxxx/Home/Index What confused me is if you use this:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="5;URL=~/Home/Index">

The link becomes localhost:xxxxx/Account/~/Home/Index which is really odd since it adds the ~ to the URL link, which normally just means copy the contents beforehand and append to. However it looks like the presence of ~ still means copy the contents beforehand and append everything after, we just also append the ~ this time too…. The Account part of the link is there since the View was called from the Account controller and is in the Account Controller’s View folder.

Answer 1

You could use the Url.Action helper which will take care of generating the proper url based on your routes setup.

Example with Razor:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="5;URL=@(Url.Action("Index", "Home"))">

and with WebForms:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="5;URL=<%= Url.Action("Index", "Home") %>">

Alternatively you could use javascript to perform the redirect instead of a meta tag:

<script type="text/javascript">
    window.setTimeout(function() {
        window.location.href = '@Url.Action("Index", "Home")';
    }, 5000);
</script>