Question

I’m working on the admin part of an MVC webapp. I had the idea to use “widgets” for a single Admin panel. I’ll explain my intentions first.

I have a languages table, and for that I’d like to create a partial view with a dropdownlist for those languages and a single button “Edit”, that would take the user to a non-partial view to edit the language. After clicking save, the users would be redirected to the Index view, which would just show the dropdownlist again.

So I have a “Index.cshmtl”, and an “EditLanguage.cshtml” as non-partial views, and a “LanguageWidget.cshtml” as a partial view.

First the user sees the Index view.

    public ViewResult Index()
    {
        return View();
    }

This view has the following code in it:

@using CodeBox.Domain.Concrete.ORM
@{
    ViewBag.Title = "Index";
    Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml";
}
<h2>Administration</h2>
@Html.Action("LanguageWidget")

The Partial view “LanguageWidget” just contains the following code, and when the user submits it posts to the HttpPost annotated method in my controller:

@using (Html.BeginForm("LanguageWidget", "Admin"))
{
    @Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.SelectedItem, Model.Languages)
    <input type="submit" value="Edit"/>
}

This is the HttpPost method for the widget:
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult LanguageWidget(LanguageWidgetModel model)
{
var lang = langRepo.Languages.FirstOrDefault(l => l.LanguageId == model.SelectedItem);
return View(“EditLanguage”, lang);
}

This takes the user to the language edit page, which works fine.

But then! The user edits the language and submits the page, which invokes the “EditLanguage” HttpPost method, so the language is saved properly.

    [HttpPost]
    public ViewResult EditLanguage(Language model)
    {
        if (ModelState.IsValid)
        {
            langRepo.SaveLanguage(model);
            TempData["message"] = string.Format("{0} has been saved!", model.Name);
            return View("Index");
        }
        else
        {
            return View(model);
        }
    }

So, when I return the “Index” view – which seems logical I guess – the controller still assumes this is a HttpPost request, and when it renders the Index view, it invokes the “LanguageWidget” method, assuming it has to render the HttpPost method.

This leads to the LanguageWidget HttpPost method, which returns a full view with layout, returning just that, so I have my layout, with view, containing a layout, with the editview.

I don’t really see how I could fix this?

I’m pretty sure it’s a design flaw from my part, but I can’t figure it out.

Thanks in advance!!

Answer 1

Consider using:

return RedirectToAction("Index")

instead of:

return View("Index");

It might seem more logical if the user is actually redirected to Index instead of
remaining at the EditLanguage. And if the user hits the refresh button no data will be resent using this approach.