Question

I have an ascx control for fruits that contains following code:

<div id = "fruits">

....
Ajax stuff1 UpdateTargetId = "fruits"
Ajax stuff2 UpdateTargetId = "fruits"

<%Html.RenderPartial("PagerAjax", (Pager)ViewData["pager"]); %> 
</div>

now this fruit control can appear on a number of webpages and the pager would need to know what page the user is on so that it can pull next set of fruits accordingly. For example, if I am on red-fruit page, then PagerAjax should know I am only pulling out red fruits. So, basically I would need to know ControllerName (assume it’s home) and actionName (assume it’s redFruits()). (Example may seem inefficient but it makes sense for the real purpose.) Now, I could do something like this:

<%Html.RenderAction("PagerAjax", (Pager)ViewData["pager"], ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"], controllerFilter = ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"] }); %> 

However, as you noticed, the above RenderAction is inside the div that is being updated by Ajax callback, which means it will contain action and controller of the Ajax stuff rather than the original URL’s.

What should be an efficient workaround?

Answer 1

You could pass the original ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"] as parameter when calling your AJAX action. This way the action knows what was the original action and store it in the model (or ViewData as in your case I see that your views are not strongly typed). Now your markup could become:

<% Html.RenderPartial(
    "PagerAjax", 
    (Pager)ViewData["pager"], 
    new ViewDataDictionary() { { "originalAction", ViewData["originalAction"] } }
); %>