Question

I’m looking at the partialview components of the MVC Framework.

i want my partial view to be handled in its own action and for the rest of the view to handle itself, but i’m getting an exception because the main page is not getting its view fired.

Am i going around this the wrong way?

My Main View (Jobs/Index.aspx):

<%@ Page Title="" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<MvcApplication3.Models.JobViewModel>" %>
<asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server">
<% Html.RenderPartial("JobListing", Model.Jobs); %> 
</asp:Content>

The partialview (Jobs/JobListing.ascx):

<%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl<List<MvcApplication3.Models.Job>>" %>

<table>
<tr>
    <td> Job Title  </td>
    <td>   Job Location</td>
</tr>
<%
    foreach (var job in Model)
    {
%>
<tr>
    <td>
        <%= job.Title %>
    </td>
    <td>
        <%= job.Location %>
    </td>
</tr>
<%  
    } 
%>

<% Html.BeginForm("DoSomeStuff", "Job", null, FormMethod.Post); %>

   <%= Html.TextBox("SomeInfo") %>

    <button type="submit" id="submit" />
<% Html.EndForm(); %>

The main controller for both the main view (Index) and the partialview (DoSomeStuff())

    public class JobController : Controller
{
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        JobProvider provider = new JobProvider(Session);

        JobViewModel vm = new JobViewModel();

        vm.Jobs = provider.GetJobs();

        return View(vm);           
    }

    public PartialViewResult DoSomeStuff()
    {
        return PartialView("JobListing");
    }
}

As you can see in the partial view, it has its own form that posts to the Action called DoSomeStuff(). i want this action to handle any data submitted from that form.
but when the form is submitted the main action (Index) does not fire and then i get an exception as the Model (.Models.JobViewModel) is not passed to the view that the partialview (JobListings) lives in.

basically what im saying is, if i have a myview.aspx with lots of html.RenderPartialView(‘apartialview’) that have forms in them, can i get it so these forms
post to their own actions and the main view (with what ever model it inherits) is handled as well. Rather then having all the form submitting code in the main action for the view.

am i do this wrong?

Answer 1

I would follow POST-REDIRECT-GET pattern and would define DoSomeStuff like:

public class JobController : Controller
{
    [HttpPost]
    public RedirectToRouteResult DoSomeStuff(DoSomeStuffModel model)
    {
        //Do some stuff with model
        return RedirectToAction("Index");
    }
} 

If you don’t want to reload whole form, you can use jQuery Form Plugin. If you use it, you can stay with PartialViewResult. After posting partial view form, if you specify target option, content of div containing partial view code will be replaced with returned html.