Question

I have a user control that creates a new record in a database. After it creates the new record, I would like to redirect it back to the view its from. The purpose of this is to refresh the view so that it can show the newly created record. The problem is that user control can exists in more than one view, so how can i know which view is the user control from? so that I can achieve the above scenario? Thanks,

RWendi

Answer 1

I have a user control that creates a new record in a database.

No, it doesn’t. It just renders HTML, and nothing else.

It’s the controller action which creates a new record in the database, and thus this is where the redirect should happen.

The [HttpPost] action which accepts the model/form should perform the redirect after the save has been completed.

E.g:

public ActionResult Save(SomeModel model)
{
   db.Save(model);
   return RedirectToAction("Index");
}

I’m assuming that the “view” you want to refresh is the same page, regardless of which page the user controller was rendered on, therefore the above code is fine.

On a side note, you shouldn’t be using user controls (e.g partials) for rendering forms.

You should be using editor templates. The presentation code which renders the form (and specifies which action to post to) should be in the view, not in the user control.

EDIT – example of how to render form on Views:

Instead of doing this on a View:

@Html.Partial("_SomeModel")

Do this:

@using (Html.BeginForm()) {
   @Html.EditorFor(model => model.SomeModel)
}

And place the form markup in the editor template. The key thing here is IMO the Views should be responsible for setting up the form, not the user control.