Question

I have an index view that takes the page parameter like so:

/News?page=2

But in the layout for that view I have this childaction:

@{Html.RenderAction("Index", "Comments", new {page=1, pagesize = 10});}

But the querystring “page” remains 2.. how come? And how to override page for the childaction?

Answer 1

That’s because the child action first looks at the original request query string when binding for values and after that the one passed as argument to the RenderAction helper. You could use a different name for this parameter to avoid this ambiguity.

---

UPDATE:

Unable to reproduce the behavior you are describing.

Controller:

public class HomeController : Controller
{
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        return View();
    }

    [ChildActionOnly]
    public ActionResult Test(string page)
    {
        return Content(page, "text/html");
    }
}

View (~/Views/Home/Index.cshtml):

@{Html.RenderAction("Test", "Home", new { page = 1 });}

When querying /Home/Index?page=5 the correct value 1 is shown and the page parameter in the child action is 1.

Obviously if inside your child action you are fetching this value manually from the request it won’t work but that’s not something you should be doing anyways:

[ChildActionOnly]
public ActionResult Test()
{
    string page = Request["page"] as string;
    return Content(page, "text/html");
}