Question

I have two views which will both use the same Controller method:

//webServiceController.cs

//The actual method is about 40 lines of code. Truncated for readability.
public ActionResult Index()
{
    object i = new List<WebServiceMethod>();
    i = svcService.populateList("Programs");

    return View(i);

}

The first view is an HTML page that displays the data in a pretty table output:

<% // Index.aspx %>

<table>
<tbody>
<% foreach (var item in Model) { %>

<tr>
    <td>
        <% if (Convert.ToInt32(item.numberRequests) > 0)
        {%>
            <%= Html.ActionLink("Details", "Details", new { programNumber = item.programNumber })%>
        <%} %>
    </td>
    <td>
        <%= Html.Encode(item.programNumber) %>
    </td>
</tr>

<% } %>
</tbody>
</table>

The second view is a quick’n’dirty conversion to JSON so that I can do magical AJAX tricks with the data:

<% 
    // AjaxGetServiceData.aspx

    // Convert web service response object into JSON for AJAX.
    var jss = new System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer();
    Response.Write(jss.Serialize(Model));

%>

I’d created a duplicate of the Index() method and called it AjaxGetServiceData(), but that defeats the purpose of MVC.

---

Resolution:

I didn’t ask my question very well, as evidenced by a 5-10 minute discussion I just had with a coworker about this very topic. He kept asking me the same question that many users on this page asked me: “How does the controller know which view to return?” I responded, “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” I was trying to get the method to return a different view (or Json output) when AJAX was the requester. A string argument in the method was my solution.

This is what I ended up using to get my desired effect:

public ActionResult Index(string isJSON = "no")
{

    /// ...All the code from before...

    if (isJSON == "yes")
    {
        return Json(i, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
    }
    else
    {
        return View(i);
    }

}

Then, when I want the JSON version, in my AJAX request I specify the URL as /MyController/Index/?isJSON=yes

When I want my pretty table view, I just use /MyController/

Answer 1

public ActionResult Index()
{
    object i = new List<WebServiceMethod>();
    i = svcService.populateList("Programs");

    if (someCondition)
        return View(i);
    else
        return View("AjaxGetServiceData", i); // or whatever you called your view.aspx
}