KendoUI Grid Ajax Binding Parameters For Select

Question

I have a basic KendoUI Grid for my ASP.NET MVC app which uses ajax binding for the read. I'd like to enhance this so that a Form above the grid is used to help select data that should be displayed in the grid. This is a standard search form with basic fields like First Name, Last Name, Date of Birth, Customer Source, etc. with a search button. When the search button is pressed, I want to force the grid to go get the data that meets the criteria from the controller by passing in the Search Model with the fields I referenced above.

The search form is contained within the _CustomerSearch partial view.

I've implemented this sort of thing before with the Telerik MVC extensions by tapping into the OnDataBinding client event and updating the parameter values there and then manually making the Ajax call to get the data. It doesn't appear KendoUI will operate this same way.

View

@Html.Partial("_CustomerSearch", Model)
<hr>
@(Html.Kendo().Grid<ViewModels.CustomerModel>()    
    .Name("Grid")
    .Columns(columns =>
    {
        columns.Bound(p => p.Id).Hidden(true);
        columns.Bound(p => p.FirstName);
        columns.Bound(p => p.LastName);
        columns.Bound(p => p.DateOfBirth).Format("{0:MM/dd/yyyy}");
        columns.Bound(p => p.IsActive);
    })
    .Scrollable()
    .Filterable()
    .Sortable()
    .DataSource(dataSource => dataSource
        .Ajax()
        .Read(read => read.Action("_Search", "Customer"))
    )
)

Controller

public ActionResult _Search([DataSourceRequest]DataSourceRequest request)
{
    return Json(DataService.GetCustomers2().ToDataSourceResult(request));
}

I envision the controller looking something like this, but can't find any examples of anything being implemented this way, which is what I need help with.

public ActionResult _Search([DataSourceRequest]DataSourceRequest request, CustomerSearchModel customerSearchModel)
{
    return Json(DataService.GetCustomers2(customerSearchModel)
               .ToDataSourceResult(request));
}

Answer 1

Nicholas answer could work if your requirements can be solved with the built in filtering. But if your requirements can be solved with the built filtering why do you want to create a custom search form?

So I suppose you have a reason to do the search manually so here is how we've done it in our project (so maybe there is more easier way but still this worked for us):

The controller action is fine:

public ActionResult _Search([DataSourceRequest]DataSourceRequest request, 
                            CustomerSearchModel customerSearchModel)
{
    return Json(DataService.GetCustomers2(customerSearchModel)
               .ToDataSourceResult(request));
}

Next step: you need a JavaScript function which collects the data from the search form (the property names of the JS object should match the property names of your CustomerSearchModel) :

function getAdditionalData() {
    // Reserved property names
    // used by DataSourceRequest: sort, page, pageSize, group, filter
    return {
        FirstName: $("#FirstName").val(),
        LastName: $("#LastName").val(),
        //...
    };
}

Then you can configure this function to be called on each read:

.DataSource(dataSource => dataSource
        .Ajax()
        .Read(read => read.Action("_Search", "Customer")
                          .Data("getAdditionalData"))
    )

Finally in your button click you just need to refresh the grid with:

$('#Grid').data('kendoGrid').dataSource.fetch();