Forgot how to do non-ajax dropdown in MVC - asp.net-mvc

I know this sounds silly but i forgot how to code non-ajax.
Specifically:
I am in MVC
I have a dropdown list with languages.
When a language is chosen i want to reload the whole page with the new language.
This all works but I have to manually refresh the page.
I mean I could call window.location.refresh after i return from the action but i feel like i should be able to do a full refresh. Am i suppose to call submit on a form?
I really feel like i am missing osme extremely easy right in front of my face thing.
I have been doing so many partial ajax updates in my life,i lost my plain old post and reload.

Yea you have to do a form submit, but whats wrong with window.location.refresh?

Normally selecting language for a site is independent of other form submissions, and you can get away with a GET instead of POST. So, in the onchange attribute of your select, you can put:
var lang = ...//get selected language value here
document.location = 'http://mysite.com/' + lang //or whatever your URL scheme is

Related

Creating ajax-enabled subform with "Edit" button

I am looking for the best way to create ajax enabled subforms from items in a list with MVC 3. A static list of values should be generated, but with an "edit" link/button next to every item, to toggle inline edits.
I did follow the tutorial at this link
http://blog.janjonas.net/2011-07-24/asp_net-mvc_3-ajax-form-jquery-validate-supporting-unobtrusive-client-side-validation-and-server-side-validation [1]
However it is based on the form edit fields always being visible
I'd like to show a static list with field values, but let the user activate an edit field by clicking "edit" (e.g. button)
I did modify the example at [1] by creating a default partial view with a form with submit button only. When posting the data by ajax the edit form will show. It looks like it is working, (I only need to hide validation errors on the first POST - which does not send real data).
Update:
An even better solution would probably be to leave out all forms in the static view, just have a single css class button/link next to each item, and let jquery fetch the relevant view for the clicked item. I am not sure how to do that with MVC 3+jQuery though.
Another update:
I discovered Ajax.Actionlink, which did exactly what I wanted!
I found out how to do it, and it turned out to be real simple!
I created two partial views.
One for rendering each static item. I used used Ajax.ActionLink with InsertionMode "replace", and set the parent of the item as the target
The second for rendering the form. Here I used Ajax.Beginform with similar options.
On successfully saved data, I returned the static view, on failure, I returned the partial view with the ajax form again.
I'm happy I found a MVC-centric way to do it (although it is fun creating custom stuff with jQuery)
It sounds like you need an inline editing plugin for jQuery. I would try jEditable. I have not used it myself but appears to have extensive docs.
this entry might help: code + video + explanation ;)
http://ricardocovo.wordpress.com/2011/04/03/asp-mvc3-editing-records-with-jqueryui-dialogs-and-ajaxforms/
-covo

What is a good way to implement a data report grid on my MVC3 page

Before I start work I would like to get some ideas. What I have is an MVC3 page that I currently use to display rows of data. There are many rows so I would like to filter them. Ideally at the top of my page I would like to have a select drop down box and a refresh button with rows of data appearing below when the refresh button is clicked.
I can imagine doing this with Ajax and then having the data from my controller populate new HTML text between a DIV.
Does this sound like the best approach? I am not looking for a person to write code for me. Just want to be sure my solution sounds like a good way to go.
thank you
i recommend this approach:
http://geekswithblogs.net/michelotti/archive/2008/06/28/mvc-json---jsonresult-and-jquery.aspx
You can 'enchance' it with AJAX of course, but do not forget about users with disabled javascript. Make it work without client scripting, then enchance it, when its working.
I also think that you can simply create controller action, that is accepting parameters like pageNumber and amountOfItems. Then in your controls at page, you can just change values (number of page etc..) and use them in call for your controller action at form submit.

ASP NET MVC: Dynamically adding or removing inputs on the form - unobtrusive validation

Before starting, I do have a very particular question and if you want to answer it go straight to the end. But I do welcome comments and advices hence the lengthy post.
OK, we deal with a lot of forms and some of these forms are quite lengthy and have many fields. We also have a requirement - in addition to top level fields - to be able to have variable number of repating rows - as we call them. For example, let's think of a customer which has name, surname and age while it can have zero or many addresses (say 0 to 10) so the user must be able to add or remove contacts from the form while filling it in. So typically user gets and "Add" button to add more addresses and next to each address, a delete button. Potentially there could be more than one repeating section in the same form but I am not going there. The point is, because of legal and historical reasons, all the forms must be saved at once so while the forms can be edited, we cannot accept a half-filled form and have another page for users to add and remove addresses, e.g.
I am using ASP NET MVC 2 (strongly typed views with a single generic controller) with client side validation and heavy jquery scripting for flashy features. We are probably going to migrate to ASP NET MVC 3 very soon and I am already playing with 3 for finding a good solution. These addresses are defined on the Model as List<Address>, e.g.
I currently have a working solution for this issue but I am not satisfied with it: I have an HTML Helper that names the add or delete buttons and a bit of JavaScript to disable validation and allow the form to be posted back (even invalid) and since I can find out the name of the button that was clicked, I have all the necessary logic to handle add or delete and works really well.
But I am posting back and the form is reloaded and I am looking for an aletrnative solution. Here are what I can do:
Do everything in the client side. "Add" button will clone one of such addresses and "Delete" button will remove() the element. I only have to rename the indexes which I have done. We were using jquery calendar and it was breaking on the new elements which I have also fixed. But the validation is not working which can probably work with ASP NET MVC but this solution looks like a very brittle one - a house of card which looks great before you add another card.
Post the whole page usin Ajax and then load it back again: This is probably better than my current solution but only slightly.
Use ajax to post the form and get back JSON and use the data to build the elements or remove them: Again a house of card because of extensive client side scripting
Serialize the form and post using Ajax to a particular action and get back only the repating section (as a partial view). The action on the controller can be reused and called from the view itself to return the partial view
OK last one is the one I am working on but there is an issue. ASP NET MVC 3 with unobtrusive validation works only if the form is engulfed in a BeginForm() while my top level view has a BeginForm() but not my partial view. It works well when I call it from the view but not on the ajax call to get just the repeating section.
(Question)
So is there a way to tell ASP NET MVC 3 to spit out validation data atttributes regardless being in a BeginForm() block?? To be honest if this is not a bug, this is definitely an important feature request. I have in fact used reflector to disassemble the code and the condition seems to be there.
Short Answer:
Add this to the partial view:
if (ViewContext.FormContext == null)
{
ViewContext.FormContext = new FormContext();
}
I don't think it is possible using the default unobtrusive libraries supplied. If you look at jquery.validate.js and jquery.validate.unobtrusive.js it looks like it only validates what is inside the form.
There's a few posts about it if Googled and a few work arounds.
I had a similar issue (although much simpler) where I had a validation summary at the top of the page and multiple forms but the unobtrusive javascript would only populate the view summary if its inside the form (jquery.validate.unobtrusive.js line 39 if interested...).
I'm not sure if the validation library is extendible but most things in jquery are so that might be an option if you want to go down that road.
As far a possible solution to your problem I'll put in my 2 cents for whats its worth.
You could have two actions that are posted to. The first action is you post your model with no js validation and all validation is handled in the code - this will catch all user with javascript turned off.
Your second action is you serialized the model. In mvc 3 using the Ajax.BeginForm has an AjaxOption for Url where you can specify an action for the jquery to call (where it serializes the form form you and you can decorate your action with your strongly typed model). Here you can check the model and return a json result and handle this in the javascript.

MVC DropDownList SelectedItem Value in ActionLink

I'm a bit confused and sorry if this question is repeated elsewhere, I did check and it didnt seem to be here yet.
Is there a way, (without use of JavaScript) to get the currently selected item of a DropDownList and say send it off to an ActionLink?
<%= Html.DropDownList("Elements") %>
<%=Html.ActionLink("Add Authorization Element", "AddElement", new {elementGuid = ??? }) %>
The bit I am looking for is something to replace:
???
Thanks,
Ric
Not without JavaScript, no. Of course, it's trivial with JavaScript.
If you want to do both, add JavaScript to the drop down, then put a submit button inside a noscript tag. Users without JavaScript will have to click the button. Users with JavaScript won't see it.

ASP.NET MVC: add to querystring on form submit

I'm building a grid in ASP.NET MVC and I have the following issue:
Above the grid i have a column selector which lets people customize the columns being shown. This is a form with a submit button so that people can add/remove multiple columns at once without going trough multiple postbacks.
Below the grid I have paging. This is paging trough actionlinks (a href's).
alt text http://thomasstock.net/mvcget.jpg
What happens when a user add/removes columns is that the form gets submitted to http://localhost:56156/?columnsToDisplay=EmployeeId and ofcourse the grid jumps back to page 1. I'd like to keep the grid on the page the user was currently on. So I need a way to include the current querystring parameters into the form's action attribute.
The other way around too: I need a way to do the same with actionlinks. But this is less necessary as I could always replace the a href's with buttons and put them in a form. But I'd rather not do that.
I'm looking for a solution without javascript! I can do it myself in javascript, but I'd like my grid to work perfectly on javascript-disabled browsers.
Any help is appreciated.
Edit:
Oh yeah, to make it a bit harder, I'm also looking for a solution without cookies/session variables. :-)
You need to add the line below into your column selector form
<input type="hidden" name="page" value="<%=Request.QueryString["page"]%>" />

Resources