Question

I have simple controller:

public class TestController : Controller
    {
        public ActionResult Test(string r)
        {
            return View();
        }

    }

I have simple View Test.cshtml:

<h2>@ViewContext.RouteData.Values["r"]</h2>
        @using (Html.BeginForm("Test", "Test"))
        {
            <input type="text" name="r" />
            <button>Submit</button>
        }

I have route rule in Global.asax:

routes.MapRoute(
            null,
            "Test/{r}",
            new { action = "Test", controller = "Test",
                r = UrlParameter.Optional }
        );

I want to make such thing: user types route value in input, press submit and controller redirects him to page Test/value. But controller show just page with name Test everytime. ViewContext.RouteData.Values[“r”] is empty too. I check in debug, Test action recieves user value of r correctly.
How can I realize my idea?
Thanks.

Answer 1

You cannot do this without javascript. There are two types of methods that exist when submitting a <form>: GET and POST. When you use POST (which is the default), the form is POSTed to the url but all data entered in input fields is part of the POST body, so it is not part of the url. When you use GET, the input fields data is part of the query string but of the form /Test?r=somevalue.

I wouldn’t recommend you trying to send user input as part of the path but if you decide to go that route you could subscribe to the submit event of the form and rewrite the url:

$('form').submit(function() {
    var data = $('input[name="r"]', this).val();
    window.location.href = this.action + '/' + encodeURIComponent(data);
    return false;
});