Question

Problem is:

I am using a textbox to get a string q and want to pass it to 3 different actions in search controller. i.e. action1(string q), action2(string q) and so on

Now syntax of my action:

 public ActionResult action1(string q)
  {
   var mydata = from p in fab //LINQ logic
                select new action1class
                { data1=p //assignment };
   return View("_partialAction1", mydata);
  }

Similarly there are two other actions.

I am using 3 different actions because my LINQ logic gets data from 3 different sources so there different mydata needs to be created.

My problem is: I am trying that when I click on ‘search’ Button of textbox then all the 3 actions should run and generate partial view one below other in some <div id="action1"> tags.

I tried to use ajax.BeginForm but it can only call one action at a time

@using (Ajax.BeginForm("action1", "Search", new AjaxOptions
{
    HttpMethod = "GET",
    InsertionMode = InsertionMode.Replace,
    UpdateTargetId = "action1",
    LoadingElementId="progress"
}))

Also I tried to use ViewModel but the problem is that I was unable to pass a bigger model to the view along with these mydata kind of data obtained in LINQ’s in the action. I have no clear idea of how to use viewmodel in this case.

Is the approach that I am using correct? Or can there be any other way? I want to show result of all actions with button click.

Answer 1

There are two types of actions are in MVC framework. The first ones are the main actions and they are invoked from the browser one at a time. The second type are called as Child Actions and these actions can’t be invoked from the browser but from the views returned by the main actions. Multiple child actions can be called under a main action. So you have to look into child actions whether they help or not.

Ex.

// main action that returns a view
public ViewResult Index()
{
   var model = ...
   return View(model);
}

// couple of child actions each returns a partial view
// which will be called from the index view
[ChildActionOnly]
public PartialViewResult ChildAction1()
{
  var model = ...
  return PartialView(model);
}

[ChildActionOnly]
public PartialViewResult ChildAction2()
{
  var model = ...
  return PartialView(model);
}

// index view
Index.cshtml
@model ...

@Html.Action("ChildAction1");
@Html.Action("ChildAction2");

...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee839451.aspx