Usual practice for re-usable elements in MVC 5.0 - Visual Studio

Question

I have recently been writing controllers for specific pages... so let's say we have 2 controllers:

HomeController
JamesController

On the Home page, I have a dropdown list that contains all James items... On the James list page, I have a dropdown list that contains all James items...

Evidently, I'm gonna be using the same code to get a full list of James back and present it to a view:

    public ViewResult List()
    {
        IEnumerable<James> jamesList = repository.James();
        return View(jamesList);
    }

What's the usual practice for re-usable bits of code like that? Do you have 2 methods doing the same job where they are required... or do you have ANOTHER called JamesDropDownController and just call upon that from within the 2 views that the 2 controllers are pushing data to?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 20 '14 at 11:49

1

I would create JamesDropDownController with GetList action and call it from RenderAction

public class JamesDropDownController 
{
 public ActionResult GetList()
 {
  List<SelectItem> allItems= new List<SelectItem>(); // from DB
  return View("JamesDropDown", allItems);
 }
}

Views/Shared/JamesDropDown.cshtml

@model List<SelectItem>

@Html.DropDownListFor("JamesDropDown",model);

In all the views that required James Drop down

 @Html.RenderAction("GetList","JamesDropDown")

answered Jan 20 '14 at 11:49

Murali Murugesan

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Should it be a partial view or just a normal view inside the shared folder? – Jimmyt1988 Jan 20 '14 at 12:00
1

@JamesT, partial view(i.e without a _Layout specified) – Murali Murugesan Jan 20 '14 at 12:04
Beautiful, thanks buddy. good to know i'm not the only one now hehe :) – Jimmyt1988 Jan 20 '14 at 12:07
Actually, Html.RenderAction was saying "cannot implicitly convert type void to object" I tried Html.Action instead and that now fires the controller and view correctly but also adds a layout regardless of me not adding one to the Partial View itself – Jimmyt1988 Jan 20 '14 at 12:18
Oh I have to set the fact that it has "" Layout explicitly.. cool. so RenderAction does not work but Action does! – Jimmyt1988 Jan 20 '14 at 12:20
1

@James T, syntax @{ Html.RenderAction("ActionName","ControllerName"); } – Murali Murugesan Jan 20 '14 at 12:21
That solved it... The difference is: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2955261/difference-between-html-renderaction-and-html-action – Jimmyt1988 Jan 20 '14 at 12:23

Usual practice for re-usable elements in MVC 5.0 - Visual Studio

1 Answers1