How to get current controller and action from inside Child action? - asp.net-mvc

Question

I have a portion of my view that is rendered via RenderAction calling a child action. How can I get the Parent controller and Action from inside this Child Action.
When I use..
#ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"]
I get back the name of the Child Action but what I need is the Parent/Calling action.
Thanks
BTW I am using MVC 3 with Razor.

Answer 1

And if you want to access this from within the child action itself (rather than the view) you can use
ControllerContext.ParentActionViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"]

Answer 2

Found it...
how-do-i-get-the-routedata-associated-with-the-parent-action-in-a-partial-view
ViewContext.ParentActionViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"]

Answer 3

If the partial is inside another partial, this won't work unless we find the top most parent view content. You can find it with this:
var parentActionViewContext = ViewContext.ParentActionViewContext;
while (parentActionViewContext.ParentActionViewContext != null)
{
parentActionViewContext = parentActionViewContext.ParentActionViewContext;
}

Answer 4

I had the same problem and came up with same solution as Carlos Martinez, except I turned it into an extension:
public static class ViewContextExtension
{
public static ViewContext TopmostParent(this ViewContext context)
{
ViewContext result = context;
while (result.ParentActionViewContext != null)
{
result = result.ParentActionViewContext;
}
return result;
}
}
I hope this will help others who have the same problem.

Answer 5

Use model binding to get the action name, controller name, or any other url values:
routes.MapRoute("City", "{citySlug}", new { controller = "home", action = "city" });
[ChildActionOnly]
public PartialViewResult Navigation(string citySlug)
{
var model = new NavigationModel()
{
IsAuthenticated = _userService.IsAuthenticated(),
Cities = _cityService.GetCities(),
GigsWeBrought = _gigService.GetGigsWeBrought(citySlug),
GigsWeWant = _gigService.GetGigsWeWant(citySlug)
};
return PartialView(model);
}