ASP.NET MVC3 - How to serve View() from another controller

Question

So in order accomplish what I asked in this post I did the following:

    [iPhone]
    [ActionName("Index")]
    public ActionResult IndexIPhone()
    {
        return new Test.Areas.Mobile.Controllers.HomeController().Index();
    }

    [ActionName("Index")]
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        return View(); 
    }

Which still serves the same view as the Index action method in this controller. Even though I can see it executing the Test.Areas.Mobile.Controllers.HomeController().Index() action method just fine. What's going on here? And how do I serve the Index view from Mobile area without changing the request URL (as asked in the original post referenced above)?

Do you really need to stay in MVC3? MVC4 will have all this built-in. — Sergei Rogovtcev, Aug 03 '12 at 18:23

Esteban Araya · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-03T18:16:42.540

4

You have a few options:

Redirect to the Action you'd like to return: return RedirectToAction("Action-I-Want").
Return the View by name: return View("The-View-I-Want").

Note that with the 2nd approach you'd have to put your view in the "Shared" folder for all controllers to be able to find it and return it. This can get messy if you end up putting all your views there.

As a side note: The reason your work doesn't find the view is because default view engine looks for the view in the folder that "belongs" to the current executing controller context, regardless of what code you're calling.

Edit:

It is possible to group all "mobile" views in the same folder. On your Global.asax (or where ever you're setting up your ViewEngine, just add the path to your mobile View in the AreaViewLocationFormats. Mind you, you'll still have to name your views differently.

You can also write your own view engine. I'd do something like detecting the browser and then serving the right file. You could setup a convention like View.aspx, and View.m.aspx.

Anyhow, just take a look at WebFormViewEngine and you'll figure out what works best for you.

edited Aug 03 '12 at 18:16

answered Apr 10 '11 at 04:27

Esteban Araya

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Considering what I am trying to do (my comment in the other answer). I think I will have go with #2. Which means I can't keep all my mobile related stuff in its own area. Unfortunate. (Although, I still have this gut feeling that somehow what I am trying to do is possible. Just don't know how, yet). – codelove Apr 10 '11 at 06:35
3

Regarding point 2, you can put in the full path of the view if you don't want to put it in the shared folder. eg. return View("~/views/mobile/the-view-i-want.thecorrectextension") – Iain May 31 '11 at 00:34
@codelove: I'm not sure why I didn't think of this before. What you're trying to do is totally possible. Just add your path to your ViewEngine's `AreaViewLocationFormats`. Worst case scenarion, you'll have to write your own ViewEngine, but you can just inherit from `WebFormViewEngine` – Esteban Araya Aug 03 '12 at 18:13

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 10 '11 at 04:46

1

The easiest way to send a request to a view handled by another controller is RedirectToAction("View-Name", "Controller-Name").

There are overloads of View() that take route information that might work as well, but they'd require more effort to set up.

answered Apr 10 '11 at 04:46

neontapir

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I am aware of the redirection, but it doesn't allow me to achieve my original goal to keep the URL unchanged as mentioned in my question at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5546501/asp-net-mvc3-routing-same-url-for-different-areas. – codelove Apr 10 '11 at 06:31
Sorry, wasn't clear to me from the question that the previous posts' constraints still applied. – neontapir Apr 11 '11 at 23:27

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 04 '12 at 05:31

Well actually the easiest way is to make one version of your site programmed on standards instead of browser detection :D -- however in direct response to accomplish what it in a more of a ASP.NET mvc fashion, using:

RedirectToAction("ViewName", "ControllerName");

is a good method however I have found it is more practical if you feel you must program for different browser standards to create a primary view and an alternate "mobile" view under your controllers views. Then instead of writing special code on every controller, instead extend the controller like so.

public class ControllerExtended : Controller 
{
    private bool IsMobile = false;
    private void DetectMobileDevices(){ .... }
}

Then modify your controller classes to instead say ControllerExtended classes and just add the one line to the top of each Action that you have alternate views of like so:

public class ApplicationsController : ControllerExtended
{
    // GET: /Applications/Index
    public ActionResult Index() {
        this.DetectMobileDevices();
        if(this.IsMobile){
            return RedirectToAction("MobileIndex");
        } else {
            // actual action code goes here
            return View();
        }            
    }
}

Alternately you can use return View("ViewName"); but from my experience you want to actually perform different actions as opposed to just showing the result in a different view as in the case of presenting an HTML table as opposed to a Flex table to help iPhone users since there is no flash support in the iPhone, etc. (as of this writing)

ASP.NET MVC3 - How to serve View() from another controller

3 Answers3