In my View, I have a table pulling various data in. Initially it only shows the rows actionable by that user. However, there is also an option to show all rows. To achieve that so far, I have two hyperlinks above the table, with hrefs of "?isRequiredAction=true" and "?isRequiredAction=false". In the Controller, I have the following:
public ActionResult Index(bool? isRequiredAction){
string userId = User.Identity.Name;
bool ira = true;
if (isRequiredAction != null)
{
ira = Convert.ToBoolean(isRequiredAction);
}
...
return View(model);
So, right now the Controller is getting its parameter from the querystring created by clicking those links. I'm not satisfied with this approach since I don't want to dirty up the URL with this query. Is there a simpler way of achieving what I'm asking? We would like to avoid turning the links into form objects if possible. Thanks.
This MSDN article should help.
From view to controller, you can do a HttpPost or you can pass the data as parameters.
You can create two distinct custom routes, for example:
www.yourapp.com/home
www.yourapp.com/home/showall
After that, you can make both routes target the same action or create a distinct action for each of these routes. Your choice!
Technically, I don't believe there is very appropiriate solution that fits your need because you don't want to make the link form object, nor "dirtying up" the URL. I suggest you to stick with your first approach because there is nothing wrong with dirtying the URL. By "dirtying" your URL, you can make link bookmarkable. If you are really concerned with it, then you can have two choices:
(1) Use Ajax. This way your URL will be unaffected; however, you lose bookmarkability.
(2) Use URL rewriting to make your URL "pretty". This approach, under the hood, equals to "dirtying up" the URL, but in a "pretty" way.
Related
I have the following code:
Approve
This calls an Action method in my controller updates the approval status of the record and then:
return RedirectToAction("Index");
As expected, the page always refreshes to the top. Is there a way to maintain the scroll position to where I clicked the hyperlink. I have checked similar posts, but the ones I have seen referred to forms. Ultimately I will use JQuery/Ajax. However at present I want to see if there was a simple method that could be used like an HTML attribute.
Many thanks.
You can name the anchor tag and refer to the name in the href using the hash notation:
Approve
And then in your action method:
string redirectUrl =
string.Format(
"{0}#{1}",
Url.Action("Index"),
id);
return new RedirectResult(redirectUrl);
Just make sure your id is a value HTML id (nearly anything can be a valid id in HTML5, however rules apply for the naming of ids for earlier HTML versions). If in doubt, prefix it with something like 'aid-' (approval id), etc. before using in the HTML.
Otherwise, like you've already identified, your best bet is to use an AJAX call to make the approval. This way you stay exactly where you are on the page.
I'm in serious need of passing url params with View class. Here's code:
if (!ModelState.IsValid)
{
return View(model);
}
This should not only return model based view, but also add specific param to URL (param won't change view details, but is needed as it's one of few automatically generated SessionKeys (one for each tab/window used to view app) and I know no other way to get to it, different than passing as param (it can't be generated everytime, 'cos params will change; it can't be global variable because it'll reset its value each refresh; it can't be static, because static is evul).
Oh this action is called with use of form and submit button, not actionLink or something like this.
EDIT1: I need params to stay in URL after refresh, or I need some other form of keeping data that persists through refresh/validation fail.
If I understand you correctly you have data that you need to use in generating Urls on your page? This just forms part of your ViewModel - or at least it should, since it's data that the View needs in order to render.
You can use ViewData to add any extra data that isn't part of your view model. Or, better still, add the data as members to it. Equally, if different views with different View Models require this data, add a ViewModel base class and derive from that so you can share that data.
use
RedirectToAction("actionName","controller",
new RouteValueDictionary(new {param1="value",param2="value2"});
or you can use hidden field to store the values in your page and then pass this down as and when you need them..
I have a client who wishes to use a URL naming convention along the lines of:
/{subjectarea}/{subject}/{action}
Which is fine - this works brilliantly, with one controller per subject area, and having the action after the id (subject) is no issue at all.
However, it then gets complicated, as the client then wants to further continue the hierarchy:
/{subjectarea}/{subject}/{action}/{tightlyrelatedsubject}/{tightlyrelatedsubjectvariables}/{tightlyrelatedsubjectaction}
I have a controller for the tightly related subject (its just another subject area) which handles all of the admin side, but the client insists on having the public view hung off of the parent subject rather than its own root.
How can I do this while avoiding breaking the entire principals of MVC, and also avoiding re-implementing a ton of ASP.Net MVC provided functionality in my subject area controller just to be able to handle the related subjects from that same controller?
Is it possible to somehow call the related subjects controller from within the parent subject controller, and return the resulting view (as this would keep the separation of functionality for the subjects to their own controllers)? If that is possible, it would solve a heck of a lot of issues with this.
Here is the solution which solves my given issue - hope it solves someone elses.
As mentioned in my comment to Robert Harvey, all I actually need is another route which doesn't use the first two or three components as the controller, action and id, but instead takes those values from later on - if you hang this off of a static value in the route as well, its much easier to do.
So, here is the url I decided on to simplify the route:
/{subjectarea}/{subject}/related/{tightlyrelatedsubject}/{tightlyrelatedsubjectvariables}/{tightlyrelatedsubjectaction}
The route which satisfies this URL is as follows:
routes.MapRoute(
"RelatedSubjects",
"{parentcontroller}/{parentsubject}/related/{controller}/{id}/{action}",
new { controller = "shoes", action = "view", id = "all" }
);
On the subsequent controller action, I can ask for parameter values for parentcontroller and parentsubject so I can filter out the related item to just be specific to the given parent subject - problem solved!
This route needs to be above the ones which just deal with the first two values, otherwise you run the risk of another route map hijacking the request.
I could do this entirely without the /related/ static portion as the route could easily match on number of values alone, and infact I may indeed do so - however, I consider it better for later administration if there is a static item in there to confirm the use of the route.
I hope this helps someone!
One way you can do it is specify a wildcard route (notice the asterisk):
routes.MapRoute("subjects", "{action}/{*path}",
new { controller = "Subjects", action = "Index" });
This allows the controller to receive the entire path string after the action.
You can then obtain the hierarchy of subjects in the controller method like so:
string[] subjects = path.Split('/');
Once you have that, you can do anything you want, including dispatching different subjects to different handling methods for processing.
I have a view to display a list of items.
The user can edit, delete or create new items, but according to their authorizations they may or may not be allowed to do some of this actions.
I have the requirement to display only the actions which the current user is allowed to do, but I don't want to clutter the views with authorization if-else's
Despise of being a very common requirement, I can't find a real satisfactory way of doing it.
My best approach so far is to provide an overload to the Html.ActionLink extension method that takes the permission to ask for, but there are going to be more complex scenarios, like hiding entire blocks of html or switching a textbox for a label+hidden.
Is there a better way to do this?
One example I can think of would be to invoke Html.RenderAction (link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee703490.aspx), and then pass the link you wish to use as a route value to the action method (it will appear as a parameter on your action). Because it's a RenderAction, you get to go back through the controller process and thus you can have it render whatever view or data you want depending on the user's state.
Example:
<% Html.RenderAction("Permissions" /* Controller */, "PermissionLink", new { Url = "Admin.aspx" }); %>
And your controller would have something like:
public ActionResult PermissionsLink (string url)
{
// Do Whatever kind of Authentication you want here, Session is available, etc
if(authenticated)
return View("Link");
else
return View("Blank");
}
I personally don't see anything wrong with this kind of conditional logic within the view. The logic is still all about presentation. You decide whether to show or hide, enable or disable, highlight etc. This is the view's job, not the controller's. As long as the view does not need to actually compute anything to come to its decision. The controller should be agnostic of the view's implementation as much as the other way around.
My approach would be this:
Make the controller do the actual logic of deciding the level of access that the user has
Pass this information to the view using (ie via the ViewModel) but in a way that is neutral to implementation details (ie "user is admin", "user is an author", etc)
Let the view draw itself appropriately using only the pre-compiled data that is provided by the controller.
This also has the benefit that the view itself can be removed and replaced without any effect on the controller.
We had this same issue. We ended up writing a lot of helper methods and in cases where lots of html output was required, we put them in partial views.
Would it not be simpler to create several views with various controls based on what values the user can change, then return the right view based on the user's access rights?
Views should be for presenting information only, there really shouldn't be any conditional logic contained in them, or at least a bare minimum.
I've always found when i get to the point where i'm finding it hard to grok a situation like yours, the best solution is always to go back to the controller and e-assess what i'm passing to the view in the first place.
By the time the View is called to do its job, all of the important 'decisions' should have already been made.
In complicated situations where are many conditions and rules I'm doing this that way:
ViewModel
public class ModelView
{
private IAuthorisationService { get; set; }
public bool CanShow
{
...
}
}
View:
<% if(Model.CanShow) { %>
<html>
<% } %>
What is the best way to pass random data from a view to a controller.
I have a number of views that are identical except for a few pieces of state information. instead of creating a page for each webpage, I want to have one page and I just pass over these variables dynamically.
Although not the "recommended" approach, you can make your action method accept a FormCollection as the parameter. You can then write your own logic to pull whatever data you need from that object. Basically the FormCollection will contain all fields inside the form that is posted as a key-value pair.
The signature would look like this:
[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Post)]
public ActionResult Index(FormCollection form)
{
// logic here to
}
Not shure about the "random data" - but maybe the question is realy about "views that are identical"
Put the common parts into a partial and the differing parts into the page, if your layout allows it.
You would have a couple of pages then, but no duplicate code.
Or is your problem more on the controller/model side?