Question

I have a view called drawGraph , this is accessed through the controller via;

@Html.ActionLink("DrawGraph", "drawGraph", new {id =item.data}) 

When i use this link the page loads on a new page (as it would) i would like to display it as a part of the page that the link is on, is there any easy way to achive this?

my controller looks like this;

   public ActionResult drawGraph(string data)
    {
         *Bunch of code
         return View(chart);
     }

Answer 1

Yes you can, however you need to use Ajax, luckily ASP.NET MVC provides some nice convenience methods like Ajax.ActionLink

@Ajax.ActionLink("DrawGraph", "drawGraph", new {id =item.data},  
                 new AjaxOptions
                            {
                                UpdateTargetId = "yourDiv",
                                InsertionMode = InsertionMode.Replace,
                            })

<div id="yourDiv"> </div>

Then you need to return a partial view from your action with PartialView:

public ActionResult drawGraph(string data)
{

    //Bunch of code    
    return PartialView(chart);
}

You should not forget to include the jquery.unobtrusive-ajax.min.js in your layout/view in order to the Ajax helpers work.