Question

If I have a textbox in my view:

<div><%= Html.TextBox("Comments", Model.Comments)%></div>

I want to post the contents of this textbox to the controller with an Ajax call. I only need this one value though, so I don’t want to post the whole form back.

<%= Ajax.ActionLink("update", "UpdateComments", 
                new { comments = /* ????? */ }, 
                new AjaxOptions { HttpMethod="POST" })%>

How do I get the textbox value?

Answer 1

Ajax.ActionLink is a helper function, that generates a JS-enabled link, that sends data via AJAX. Because it is generated serverside, and the value is generated on the client side, you can not pass a single value like that. You either have to manually write HTML and JS, or submit a whole form containing this element (and watch out not to nest it inside another form).