Question

I have partial view rendered by jquery and I want to refresh the view using jquery. Here is what my code looks like.

<div id="left">
<input type="button" id="refresh" value="refresh" />
    @Html.Partial("_LeftColumn", new ColumnViewModel { Attempt= DateTime.Now })
</div>

<script type="text/javascript">
    $('#refresh').click(function () {
        $.ajax({
            type: "post",
            dataType: "html",
            url: 'Home/LeftColumnData',
            data: {},
            success: function (response) {
                $('#left').html(response);
            }
        });
    });
</script>

and in controller action i wrote like this

[ChildActionOnly]
public PartialViewResult LeftColumnData()
{
    var Column= new ColumnViewModel { Attempt= DateTime.Now };
    return PartialView("_LeftColumn", Column);
}

I don’t want user to request ColumnData directly from the browser except via ajax but with this approach I’m getting the error below.

What should I do to remove ChildActionOnly attribute and allow to request view directly?
What are the alternatives to this problem?

Answer 1

you can use AjaxOnly

[AjaxOnly]
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult LeftColumnData()
{
    var Column= new ColumnViewModel { Attempt= DateTime.Now };
    return PartialView("_LeftColumn", Column);
}

here is how you can make one

public class AjaxOnlyAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute
{
    public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
    {
        if(!filterContext.HttpContext.Request.IsAjaxRequest())
            filterContext.HttpContext.Response.Redirect("/error/404");
    }

    public override void OnActionExecuted(ActionExecutedContext filterContext)
    {

    }
}

and use it like

[AjaxOnly]
public ActionResult AjaxActionMethod()
{
    ....
}