Can anyone please tell what's the exact differences between partial views and user controls in an MVC app?
Which one is feasible to use? I am using user controls for filling my views which have one or more tabs(which i have added using Ajax control toolkit).
I want to know about advantages/disadvantages while using partial views and user controls.
Thanks,
Kaps
I mostly agree with Ryan. However one point to consider though is that user controls have an implementation of events whereas partial views do not.
Kindness,
Dan
Partial Views and User Controls are basically the same thing. User Controls are just a way of distinguishing between regular Views and Partials. When you see the "Partial.ascx", it's immediately obvious that it's a Partial because the icon is different in Visual Studio.
There's nothing stopping you from using a regular *.aspx file as a Partial. In fact, some people do exactly this, and prefix their aspx Partial names with an underscore (ex: _UserStatus.aspx).
My personal preference is to use the ascx files instead because it's easier to tell that something is a partial at a glance.
Related
With the asp.net MVC, we see a lot different view engines, like Razor, spark, webform etc.
I thought the idea of MVC is separating of data and view, I assume view part should be something that allows a designer to do some work, even after it is created by a developer. But I see now most if not all view engines introduce new syntax, not stick with html. The old web form, you can use "view designer" to see how a page looks like even with some code blocks, designer could at least move blocks and html elements around, but now with engine like Razor, you cannot even view a page in designer mode. So I don't quite get what is the point?
This came to me when I tried to search for a server side templating that allows end user do some changes on the page. I perfer something stick to pure HTML, maybe Spark is the one, but I am not sure. Please someone can give me some idea.
Thanks
Views are meant for that. It will not static design. Markup will be generated on fly.
If you take razor as an example, you will have the combination of c# and html as code in view page. So, as you may be able to understand now, you cannot see the actual design until the c# and html execution goes hand-in-hand.
Hope it clarifies a little!
I'm quiet newbie to ASP.NET MVC world. In Web Form we can write a user control and encapsulate all the details within. We can then reuse the control on N number of pages which is a good code-reuse.
I would like to do the same in MVC 3/4 and haven't had any lucks. Could someone please help me with how above can be achieved?
Thank you.
Probably the closest thing to an ASCX in MVC is a RenderAction.
Similarly to a user control, you can have your partial view binded to a specific action that is independent from the container view and it's action.
There is no exact equivilent. There are, however, ways to reuse code. You can create HtmlHelper extensions (like the Html.Whatever() methods), Or you can use Partial Views, or you can use templates. All of these do different things, but they offer various ways to reuse code.
I am new to MVC and learning some stuff of views, partial views etc.
I would like to make a simple page where lets consider "Login" and "Register" both comes together.
Like facebook.
I have found all the examples which is all having one view on page. I guess, to make a big view (complete page) we need to have partical views to use in one big view.
unfortunately, i am not able to find perfect example, may be lake of searching power or exact term to use for MVC.
I want to make a page where many partial views use in one big view and create a big page.
Can any one please help me to get video link or help link which can be useful and how exactly it works?
Check out the partial views in
http://www.pluralsight-training.net/microsoft/players/PSODPlayer?author=scott-allen&name=mvc3-building-views&mode=live&clip=0&course=aspdotnet-mvc3-intro
Using #Html.Partial is fairly easy, I generally prefer #Html.Action to render another controllers action method in line, and it makes more sense for me in a situation like you mentioned above.
Something else to consider are the ajax type dialogs for login, now in the mvc4 developer preview templates at: http://www.asp.net/mvc/mvc4
How do I create a view in ASP.Net MVC 3 that defers creation/rendering of a portion of the view to another view/controller, without knowing at design time what view/controller will be deferred to?
I have a Dashboard view/controller that uses a Layout page. the dashboard view does most of the work of rendering the overall screen. However a certain placeholder section of the overall screen will differ based on business rules, configuration, user interaction etc. There are three separate plugin views/controllers that may need to be rendered in the placeholder section. How do I instruct the Dashboard view to render a specific plugin view once the Dashboard controller has determined which plugin should be visible. I have accomplished this already by putting flags in the Dashboard model and then having conditional logic in the Dashboard view call Html.RenderAction with the appropriate parameters based on the flags. This seems unsatisfactory and I would assume there is already a simple built in functionality for this kind of scenario, please advise.
Thank you
You are really asking "how do I dynamically render partial views who's identity is known at design time."
One can get there two ways, either through Html.RenderPartial or Html.RenderAction. And both have their place. If the main page "knows" enough to have the view data, then RenderPartial is your the better bet as it is a bit more efficient than RenderAction. If you only know, say, a unique identifier for your portal widget than RenderAction works because you've now got a fully capable controller method that can do things like go back to a database and render a view.
You could write your own htmlhelper and use that in your view instead of using the flags.
Is there a new model or best-practise for creating complex controls in asp.net MVC?
Do you use code-behind or inline to mirror your view pages?
My model is this:
I tend to use Partial Views when there is a view element that I'll need to use more than once. Or if I need to display multiple complex object in a view.
I use RenderAction from the futures assembly when I need a "reusable widget" of sorts. It has it's own controller and is better at handling more complex logic than a Partial View.
Finally, I tend to write Html Helper methods for things I may use in other projects (like paging links, etc).
I would use a partial view for complex things. Check out this article
Controls in MVC don't generally have (any) code behind. You use PartialViews as ascx controls, you pass them a model and you display the contents of the model.
You can create custom controls in mvc and these compile to a dll which is moveable between projects etc and these are a little more complex but essentially they spit out html like the partial view does.
You can also create jQuery plugins that are pretty cool and again, they can spit out html based on a model.
So a typical mvc view may be comprised of several partial views each of which are dedicated to a model or hierarchy of models.
Partial views can also display partial views so you can send a complex model to a partial view which in turn renders other partial views each of which deal with a more atomic part of your model.
I've been writing a lot of my own HtmlHelper extension functions. The November meeting of http://www.c4mvc.net/ that was recorded today gives some great examples of control type code placed in HtmlHelper extension functions. The recording should be online soon.
You may also want to check out the Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC. They're open source, so even if you don't use their controls, you can get some insight into controls in ASP.NET MVC by taking a look at how a commercial control vendor approached the problem.
Coming from a PHP turned webforms turned ASP.NET MVC background, I find myself relying a lot more on basic html/css/javascript.
I've never been a fan of controls, even with webforms because they always ended up being messy compared to js/html/css counterparts.