ASP.NET MVC: How to render a different action (not view) with the model?

Question

It's really easy to return a different View from the Controller:

return View("../Home/Info");

However, I need a model in the Info view. I have a lot of stuff going on in the Info() action result method. I can just copy it and have something like this:

var infoModel = new InfoModel {
    // ... a lot of copied code here
}
return View("../Home/Info", infoModel);

But that is not reasonable.

Of course I can just redirect:

return RedirecToAction("Info");

But this way the URL will change. I don't want to change the URL. That's very important.

BlackTigerX · Accepted Answer · 2015-11-04 17:24:55Z

9

You can call right to another action from within an action, like this:

public ActionResult MyAction(){
   if(somethingOrAnother){
      return MyOtherAction();
   }
   return View();
}

//"WhichEverViewYouNeed" is required here since you are returning this view from another action
//if you don't specify it, it would return the original action's view
public ActionResult MyOtherAction(){
    return View("WhichEverViewYouNeed", new InfoModel{...});
}

edited Nov 4, 2015 at 17:24

BlackTigerX

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answered Nov 19, 2011 at 23:20

Andrew Barber

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6 Comments

tvanfosson Over a year ago

The view will correspond to the action that's invoked initially unless you specify which view you want explicitly.

Andrew Barber Over a year ago

@tvanfosson His question suggests he's already going to be specifying the view.

tvanfosson Over a year ago

Yes, but in your example it will still look for the MyAction view even if MyOtherAction is called. You'd need to do a return View( "MyOtherAction", new InfoModel { ... } ); if you always wanted to render the view that goes along with it.

Andrew Barber Over a year ago

@tvanfosson Ahh, yes; I didn't realize I wasn't doing the same in my example. I'll fix that now.

Andrew Barber Over a year ago

No, you can't (shouldn't) just do that. See tvanfosson's answer for the easiest way to do that.

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tvanfosson · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-19 23:33:18Z

8

It looks like you want to invoke an action from a different controller. I'd suggest that you might want to simply render a view that renders that action using Html.Action() instead of trying to tie the two together in the controller. If that's unreasonable then you might want to create a base controller that both controllers can derive from and put the shared code to generate the model in base controller. Reuse the view as needed.

  public ActionResult Foo()
  {
      return View();
  }

Foo View

  @Html.Action( "info", "home" )

answered Nov 19, 2011 at 23:33

tvanfosson

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2 Comments

Alex Over a year ago

Thanks! Just a small not: @{ Html.RenderAction(...); } is better performance wise.

jeremy Over a year ago

does exactly what I wanted, hadn't thought of this.

Daniel A. White · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-19 23:20:52Z

1

Why not just invoke the method of the action?

answered Nov 19, 2011 at 23:20

Daniel A. White

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2 Comments

Ryan Over a year ago

He says he doesn't want the URL to change. (My biggest disappointment with MVC is that it's caused people to become obsessed with urls, often pointlessly.) Probably a partial view would work here.

Andrew Barber Over a year ago

@Ryan Invoking a different action method, as in my answer, would not change the URL. And I don't think it was MVC at all that got people obsessed with not changing URLs; do a search for Server.Transfer and see lots of WebForms obsession, too.

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