Question

Imagine having two list boxes on a form, where the choices in the second depend on what’s been picked in the first. What’s the most common, or cleanest way of going about this with MVC3?

Answer 1

I would say that you would need two things to accomplish this cleanly; Ajax and a Json ActionResult

$('#listbox').change(function() {
  $.ajax({
    url: '/ListBoxChange',
    method: 'POST',
    data: {
      listBoxValue: 'The value'
    },
    success: function(data) {
      alert (data.Result);
    }
  });
});

The Action Result:

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult ListBoxChange(string listBoxValue)
{
   string result = GetResult();
   return Json(new {
     Result = result
   });
}