From what I have understood there is a big difference between the Html.RenderPartial included in the ASP.NET MVC release and the HTML.RenderAction in the Microsoft.Web.Mvc.ViewExtensions included in MVC Futures.
On my application I have many pages composed from many "widgets" (sort of) each having its own specific function.
It seemed to me more reasonable to use the RenderAction method as each widget would have a dedicated controller responsible for getting different data and rendering a dedicated view (as opposed to having only one controller and a unique view model to pass to RenderPartial helper to render views).
From the tests I have done having a form that points to a Create action method in a controller like:
<% using (Html.BeginForm("Create", "Message", FormMethod.Post,
new { id = "messageCreateForm" })) {%>
and calling it with
<% Html.RenderPartial("MessageForm",new MessageDTO()); %>
will render correcly a:
<form id="messageCreateForm" method="post" action="/Message/Create">
but with the same equivalent with RenderAction (so using a MessageForm action method on the controller to render the view) would not render correcly so:
<% Html.RenderAction<MessageController>(m => m.MessageForm()); %>
will render in:
<form id="messageCreateForm" method="post" action="">
Note that the action is empty.
Is this the correct way to use the RenderAction helper and is it correct to use it in cases like that?
UPDATE:
Actually renaming the partial view to _MessageForm renders the form correcly.
Very old one, but it jumped into my list of unanswered questions :)
There is a big difference between RenderAction and RenderPartial. RenderPartial will render a View on the same controller (or a shared one), while RenderAction will actually perform an entire cycle of MVC, that is: it will instantiate the controller (any controller you mention, not just the current one), it will execute the action, and it will then return and render the result.
The RenderPartial is more similar to an inclusion, it will even share the same model if you don't specify a different one.
The RenderAction is much more complex (and there may be undesired side effects, that's why they did not make this function available since version 1 -- initially it was available as an experimental feature).
So in your case, if you have widgets, it's OK to use both. It depends on the complexity of the widget. If you have one that has to get data from a DB, do something complex, etc... then you should probably use RenderAction.
I have a News controller responsible for news objects. I created a Block action, which will render a block with the latest news to be put in the home page. This is a perfect example, in my opinion, for RenderAction.
Working with MVC requires much attention to not to shoot yourself in the foot. I mean it by the efficiency of the MVC products. In complex projects I would prefer to use RenderPartial rather than RenderAction. I use RenderPartial in which I use jQuery.ajax request (with Html.Action). It definitely works more efficiently than RenderAction. By this way you can put your Views into cache and then call jQuery.ajax. Try it yourselves.
Ayende explains it clearly in Hibernating Rhinos.
Related
I am very new in asp.net MVC kindly let me know where is should use partial view and where i should Render Partial view . Thanks in advance
This link might help.
Html.RenderPartial
This method result will be directly written to the HTTP response stream means it used the same TextWriter object as used in the current webpage/template.
This method returns void.
Simple to use and no need to create any action.
RenderPartial method is useful when the displaying data in the partial view is already in the corresponding view model.
For example : In a blog to show comments of an article, we would like to use RenderPartial method since an article information with comments are already populated in the view model.
#{Html.RenderPartial("_Comments");}
This method is faster than Partial method since its result is directly written to the response stream which makes it fast.
Html.Partial
Renders the partial view as an HTML-encoded string.
This method result can be stored in a variable, since it returns string type value.
Simple to use and no need to create any action.
Like RenderPartial method, Partial method is also useful when the displaying data in the partial view is already in the corresponding view model.
For example: In a blog to show comments of an article, you can use Partial method since an article information with comments are already populated in the view model.
#Html.Partial("_Comments")
Both of these helper method are used for rendering partial views
Both have different syntax in razor view #Html.Partial("_student", items) and {Html.RenderPartial("_student", items);}, since render partial return void and the output is written directly to output stream, it has different syntax than Partial.
Syntax in web from view
<%:Html.Partial("_student") %> and <% Html.RenderPartial("_student"); %>
Partial Returns MVCHtmlString, which can be assigned to variables.
Performance wise Render partial is better as it writes directly to output stream.
And of-course you can find a lot of references online and within stack overflow to read
I would like to use the generic razor helper function Html.Partial to render views that have common html in them.
For instance, I have two views set up in Sitecore Payment Information.cshtml and Agent Payment Information.cshtml. These are rendered using the Sitecore rendering engine. Both of these views have very similar html in them that I would like to put in razor views not set in Sitecore and call them with #Html.Partial as appose to #Html.Sitecore().Rendering() as the latter forces me to set up a view and model in Sitecore which I am not sure is necessary.
My question is, is there anything that Sitecore does behind the scenes that makes it necessary to usethe #Html.Sitecore().Rendering() helper method instead of the #Html.Partial() helper method? Everything seems to work fine and I believe the entire view should get cached since the #Html.Partial call is nested inside either the Payment Information view or the Agent Payment information view set up in Sitecore.
Thanks in advance.
I have Html.Partial working in an MVC solution using Glass for ORM. There are two ways I've used this, one where the assumed model being passed to the partial is the same as the parent rendering and another where we create the model on the fly.
Assumes parent rendering model is passed:
#Html.Partial("~/Views/Components/MyPartialView.cshtml")
Instantiates a new model that is passed in:
#Html.Partial("~/Views/Components/Navigation/SecondaryNavigationRendering.cshtml", new SecondaryNavigation())
The parent view will need to have a mapped model in Sitecore. The secondary view does not have a mapped model in Sitecore but is typed to receive the model being passed (so in my first example that would be my IBasePage model, in my second it would be my SecondaryNavigation model).
Hope this helps.
What is difference between Html.Partial and Html.action in context of using a partial view in asp.net MVC3 ?
Html.Action will call a controller Action, so it'll go through the whole MVC pipeline (inside the server) again to find a controller that will return a ViewResult (although, you theoretically you can also return a JsonResult or something else) .
Html.Partial will only return a PartialPage (as in a CSHTML file) and won't go through the whole pipeline. It will just search using the view engine.
Some advantages to Action is having Authentication, Caching and other stuff that happens in the MVC pipeline, while Partial is faster (although you might have more responsibility in the partial page if you need to pass a ViewModel etc.)
This is a nice post (a bit old) about pros/cons of RenderAction vs RenderPartial
Html.Partial includes directly the view at the place where you called the helper. It is like a file include.
Html.Action invokes a controller action first which could render a view and it is the result of this action that is included. And because a controller action is invoked a controller needs to be instantiated, so the whole MVC pipeline gets executed as a child request.
You may take a look at the following blog post.
Stackoverflow ninja search got me this:
Html.Partial vs Html.RenderPartial & Html.Action vs Html.RenderAction
Also see this article
Render Action vs RenderPartial
Sorry if this is a basic question - I'm having some trouble making the mental transition to ASP.NET MVC from the page framework.
In the page framework, I often use ASCX files to create small, encapsulated chunks of functionality which get inclded in various places throughout a site. If I'm building a page and I need one of these controls - I just add a reference and everything just works.
As far as I can tell, in MVC, the ASCX file is just a partial view. Does this mean that wherever I want to add one of these units of functionality I also have to add some code to the controller's action method to make sure the relevant ViewData is available to the ASCX?
If this is the case, it seems like a bit of a step backwards to me. It means, for example, that I couldn't just 'drop' a control into a master page without having to add code to every controller whose views use that master page!
I suspect I'm missing something - any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
- Chris
As far as I can tell, in MVC, the ASCX
file is just a partial view. Does this
mean that wherever I want to add one
of these units of functionality I also
have to add some code to the
controller's action method to make
sure the relevant ViewData is
available to the ASCX?
Yes.
However, you can use a RenderAction method in your view instead of RenderPartial, and all of your functionality (including the data being passed to the sub-view) will be encapsulated.
In other words, this will create a little package that incorporates a controller method, view data, and a partial view, which can be called with one line of code from within your main view.
Your question has been answered already, but just for sake of completeness, there's another option you might find attractive sometimes.
Have you seen how "controls" are masked on ASP.NET MVC? They are methods of the "HtmlHelper". If you want a textbox bound to "FirstName", for example, you can do:
<%= Html.Textbox("FirstName") %>
And you have things like that for many standard controls.
What you can do is create your own methods like that. To create your own method, you have to create an extension method on the HtmlHelper class, like this:
public static class HtmlHelperExtensions
{
public static string Bold(this HtmlHelper html, string text)
{
return "<b>" + text + "</b>\n";
}
}
Then in your view, after opening the namespace containing this class definition, you can use it like this:
<%= Html.Bold("This text will be in bold-face!") %>
Well, this is not particularly useful. But you can do very interesting things. One I use quite often is a method that takes an enumeration and created a Drop Down List with the values from this enumeration (ex: enum Gender { Male, Female }, and in the view something like Gender: <%= Html.EnumDropDown(Model.Gender) %>).
Good luck!
You can render a partial view and pass a model object to.
<% Html.RenderPartial("MyPartial", ViewData["SomeObject"]);
In your partial view (.ascx) file, you can then use the "Model" object (assuming you've inherited the proper object in your # Control deceleration) to do whatever you need to with that object.
You can, ofcourse, not pass and Model and just take the partial view's text and place it where you want it.
In your main view (.aspx file), you will need to define the proper object in the ViewData that you're passing to the partial view.
Another method you can do is use:
<% Html.RenderAction("MyAction", "MyController", new { Parameter1="Value1"}) %>
What the previous method does is call a controller Action, take its response, and place it where you called the "RenderAction()" method. Its the equivalent of running a request against a controller action and reading the response, except you place the response in another file.
Google "renderaction and renderpartial" for some more information.
I have a standard menu using ul and li tags. And in my database, I have a table Users with a field 'certificate' and depending the value of this 'certificate', the user will see or not some items of the menu.
I was reading some texts and I think I will have to use ActionFilters. Is this right?
So, how can I render different menus depending which user is accessing?
thanks!!
Check out the Html.RenderAction methods that the futures assembly introduces. They can let you, in a very clean fashion, render an action method. This means that you can have a MenuController (for example) that takes care of all of the logic about what menu items you can render. Then it can just pass a simple data structure to the view, whose responsibility it is to render that data structure. Very clean.
I would consider using RenderPartial or RenderAction instead. ActionFilters are not quite suited to that kind of thing. Take a look at this article.