MVC Controller Actions - Handle POST and GET with out duplicate code

Question

I have been working on this MVC 3 Razor app and typically utilize view models for my views.

A fair number of my view models contain more information than just the particular entity that I am interacting with in my form. So my GET action handler will init the view model and provide each property with the intended value etc..

In my POST action handler I check to see if the model state is valid, if not I redisplay the form/view with errors.

In my POST action handler I find myself having to copy the code from my GET action handler in order to re-render the view again. How can I implement my controller actions so that I am not having to copy the code that is responsible for gathering the data for the view model?

I have tried allowing my action handler to handle both POST and GET but then I have the input params to deal with. My POST action handler will have the view model as an input parameter but for the GET action handler will not.

Answer 1

Your POST handler can return the ActionResult from the GET handler, as follows:

public ActionResult SomePageGet() {
    var model = new SomePageViewModel();

    // Populate ViewModel:
    ...

    return View("SomePageGet", model);
}

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult SomePagePost(SomePageViewModel input) {

    // Validate the model:
    ...

    if (!ModelState.IsValid) {
        // Return the GET page, with error messages:
        return SomePageGet();
    }

    return View("Success");
}

Since the ModelState holds all error messages (and invalid input), the GET page will show them normally.

Answer 2

In situations like these we create builders for our view models.

Take a look at option 3 under this post.