How to keep references between Actions calls

Question

What is the best way to keep "references" between entities in CRUD operations through Action calls?

Let's say, I need to create a new product for the current client. How should I "transfer" the PK of my current client into the form of the new product in a different view.

At the Moment I'm using the Session container to store the PK of the client when the page is visited, but this way might be hard to maintain after several Actions.

Any idea about this? Does ASP.NET MVC provide anything for this kind of tracking?

Code sample:

For example to set a key when clicking somewhere in the gridview:

<script type="text/javascript">
    function OnFocusedCampaignRowChanged(s, e) {
        debugger;
        var tmp = s.GetRowValues(s.GetFocusedRowIndex(), "CampaignPK", SelectCampaignCallback);

    }
    function SelectCampaignCallback(values) {
        debugger;
        $.ajax({
            type: 'GET',
            url: '/Session/SetSessionKey',
            data: { key: "campaignPK", value: values[0] },
            sucess: function (response) {
                //alert("OK!");
                //alert(values[0]);
            },
            error: function (xhr) {
                //alert("ERROR:xhr");
                alert('ERROR::SetSessionKey!' + xhr.responseText);
            }
        });
    }
</script>

And then in my views I check things like this:

@if ((Session["ProductList"] as List<BaseProductViewModel>) != null)
{
    @Html.Partial("ProductListPartial", (List<BaseProductViewModel>)Session["ProductList"]);
}
else
{
    @Html.Partial("EditableListPartialView");
}

Or:

settings.CallbackRouteValues = new
{
    Controller = "CheckMonitor",
    Action = "ClientSelected",
    brandPK = Session["clientPK"]
};

Pass the PK value as a route parameter to the second method. YOu should not be using session for this. — , Jun 16 '15 at 09:00
Why do you need the PK in the current code? Quite unclear now. — Patrick Hofman, Jun 16 '15 at 09:03
@PatrickHofman The user is in the view for client X. He has a link to create a new product for that user. I would like to Keep a reference between that user and the new product in the new form. — blfuentes, Jun 16 '15 at 09:04
Why can't you pass it around as url parameters / post content? — Patrick Hofman, Jun 16 '15 at 09:19
I would not like to expose PK to the users in the URLs. Isn't it a bad Habit? — blfuentes, Jun 16 '15 at 09:22
Ok, I get the Point. I am using now the TempData container as suggested by @Ala und store there the PK of the visited client for that request to generate a proper ActionLink with parameters — blfuentes, Jun 16 '15 at 09:37

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:05

If when you refer to a 'Client', you're talking about the current logged in user and you want to get their ID, refer to this: Get current user id in ASP.NET Identity 2.0

If you're wanting to store a client ID on a product, you should be using a foreign key between your models, or a linking model. You don't want to be manually passing IDs around like that when you could just get it from your model.

How to keep references between Actions calls

1 Answers1