Question

I have a table in my .aspx view in MVC3 project.
I am using .aspx views in MVC3 instead of Razor engine or .cshtml views.
I have the underwritten function in my jquery that gets me a JSON object from controller with some values in it.

function GetUsers() {
    $.ajax({
        url: ('/Home/GetUsers'),
        type: 'POST',
        contentType: 'application/json',
        data: JSON.stringify(),

        success: function (result) {
            alert(result.length);
            var partnersTable = $('#PartnersTable');
            partnersTable.html();

        },
        error: function () { alert("error"); }
    });
}

Now I have a table in my view

<div id = "topGrid">
    <table id="PartnersTable" style="float: left; width: 49%">
        <th style="width: 75%">Partner</th>
        <th style="width:25%">Users</th>
    </table>

This is how I am getting the JSON object. right now its just dummy data but willb e populaed from DB later

public JsonResult GetUsers()
        {
            var model = new List<UsersModel>();
            var item = new UsersModel();
            for (int i = 1; i <= 10; i++)
            {
                item.Partner = "Partner" + Convert.ToString(i);
                item.Count = i;
                model.Add(item);
            }
            return Json(model, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
        }

I need to show the data from above JSON object in my table.
how can I achieve this?

I am utterly new to MVC3 so please let me know if I have missed anything that is required to answer this question and please be as detailed as you can.

Answer 1

There are 2 approaches you might consider.

1. Have your controller action directly return a partial view containing the table data so that you don’t have to do javascript templating
2. Use JSON and do javascript templating

Let’s see the first approach:

public ActionResult GetUsers()
{
    var model = new List<UsersModel>();
    for (int i = 1; i <= 10; i++)
    {
        var item = new UsersModel();
        item.Partner = "Partner" + Convert.ToString(i);
        item.Count = i;
        model.Add(item);
    }
    return PartialView(model);
}

Next you will have a corresponding partial view that will contain the respective section of the table:

<%@ Control 
    Language="C#" 
    Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl<IEnumerable<MvcApplication1.Models.UsersModel>>" %>
<% foreach (var user in Model) { %>
    <tr>
        <td><%: user.Partner %></td>
        <td><%: user.Count %></td>
    </tr>
<% } %>

and then inside your main view you will have the table:

<table id="PartnersTable" style="float: left; width: 49%" data-url="<%= Url.Action("GetUsers", "Home") %>">
    <thead>
        <tr>
            <th style="width: 75%">Partner</th>
            <th style="width:25%">Users</th>
        </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
    </tbody>
</table>

and finally use AJAX to populate the body of the table:

var table = $('#PartnersTable');
$.ajax({
    url: table.data('url'),
    type: 'GET',
    cache: false,
    context: table,
    success: function (result) {
        this.html(result);
    },
    error: function () { alert("error"); }
});

Now let’s take a look at the second approach which consists into having the controller action return JSON and build the HTML template of the table manually:

public ActionResult GetUsers()
{
    var model = new List<UsersModel>();
    for (int i = 1; i <= 10; i++)
    {
        var item = new UsersModel();
        item.Partner = "Partner" + Convert.ToString(i);
        item.Count = i;
        model.Add(item);
    }
    return Json(users, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}

and then:

var table = $('#PartnersTable');
$.ajax({
    url: datble.data('url'),
    type: 'GET',
    cache: false,
    context: table,
    success: function (users) {
        var tableBody = this.find('tbody');
        tableBody.empty();
        $.each(users, function(index, user) {
            $('<tr/>', {
                html: $('<td/>', {
                    html: user.Partner
                }).after($('<td/>', {
                    html: user.Count
                }))
            }).appendTo(tableBody);
        });
    },
    error: function () { alert("error"); }
});