ASP.NET MVC 3 : How to force an ActionLink to do a HttpPost instead of an HttpGet?

Question

Is it possible to force an @Html.ActionLink() to do a POST instead of a GET? If so, how?

Answer 1

ActionLink helper method will render an anchor tag, clicking on which is always a GET request. If you want to make it a POST request. You should override the default behviour using a little javacsript

@ActionLink("Delete","Delete","Item",new {@id=4},new { @class="postLink"})

Now some jQuery code

<script type="text/javascript">
  $(function(){
    $("a.postLink").click(function(e){
      e.preventDefault();
      $.post($(this).attr("href"),function(data){
          // got the result in data variable. do whatever you want now
          //may be reload the page
      });
    });    
  });    
</script>

Make sure you have an Action method of HttpPost type to handle this request

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Delete(int id)
{
  // do something awesome here and return something      
}

Answer 2

I suppose that if you need something like that is for an Action that will be doing something "permanent" on server side. For instance, deleting an object in database.

Here is a complete example of doing a delete using a link and posting: http://www.squarewidget.com/Delete-Like-a-Rock-Star-with-MVC3-Ajax-and-jQuery

From the previous link (recomended reading anyway):

A delete link in your view:

@Ajax.ActionLink("Delete", "Delete", "Widget",
                new {id = item.Id},
                new AjaxOptions {
                    HttpMethod = "POST",
                    Confirm = "Are you sure you want to delete this widget?",
                    OnSuccess = "deleteConfirmation"
                }) 

A bit of JS:

function deleteConfirmation(response, status, data) {

        // remove the row from the table
        var rowId = "#widget-id-" + response.id;
        $('.widgets').find(rowId).remove();

        // display a status message with highlight
        $('#actionMessage').text(response.message);
        $('#actionMessage').effect("highlight", {}, 3000);
    }