Render partial view onclick in asp.net mvc 3 project

Question

In my mvc project i have a simple list of items with crud operations like this:

<tbody>
 @{
    foreach (var item in Model)
    {            
         <tr>

            <td>@item.Title</td>
            <td>@item.Body</td>
            <td>@item.Price</td>
            <td><span class="EditLink ButtonLink" noteid="@item.Id">Edit</span>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<span>@Html.ActionLink("Delete", "Delete", new { id = @item.Id})</span>
                            &nbsp;|&nbsp; @Html.ActionLink("Detalji", "Details", new { id = @item.Id})
             </td>
        </tr>
     }
  }

</tbody>

I am wondering is it possible to render details view as partial under the table when i click on details. I mean when i clik details to show me details view, i want it under my table in some div or paragraph.

Please help.

Answer 1

You could use AJAX. But first let's improve your code by getting rid of those loops and replacing them with display templates:

@model IEnumerable<SomeViewModel>
<table>
    <thead>
        <tr>
            <th>Title</th>
            <th>Body</th>
            <th>Price</th>
            <th>actions ...</th>
        </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
        @Html.DisplayForModel()
    </tbody>
</table>

<div id="details"></div>

and then define a display template (~/Views/Shared/DisplayTemplates/SomeViewModel.cshtml):

@model SomeViewModel
<tr>
    <td>@Html.DisplayFor(x => x.Title)</td>
    <td>@Html.DisplayFor(x => x.Body)</td>
    <td>@Html.DisplayFor(x => x.Price)</td>
    <td>
        <!-- no idea what the purpose of this *noteid* attribute on the span is
             but this is invalid HTML. I would recommend you using the
             HTML5 data-* attributes if you wanted to associate some
             metadata with your DOM elements
        -->
        <span class="EditLink ButtonLink" noteid="@Model.Id">
            Edit
        </span>
        &nbsp;|&nbsp;
        <span>
            @Html.ActionLink("Delete", "Delete", new { id = Model.Id })
        </span>
        &nbsp;|&nbsp; 
        @Html.ActionLink(
            "Detalji",                      // linkText
            "Details",                      // actionName
            null,                           // controllerName
            new { id = Model.Id },          // routeValues
            new { @class = "detailsLink" }  // htmlAttributes
        )
    </td>
</tr>

Now all that's left is to AJAXify this details link in a separate javascript file:

$(function() {
    $('.detailsLink').click(function() {
        $('#details').load(this.href);
        return false;
    });
});

Which assumes of course that you have the following action:

public ActionResult Details(int id)
{
    SomeDetailViewModel model = ... fetch the details using the id
    return PartialView(model);
}

Answer 2

may not be the answer you are looking for...

you can do an ajax call onClick of details link and append the response to some div,

for example

$(".details").click(function(){
var id = $(this).attr("id");

 $.ajax(
     {
         type: 'POST',         
         data: "{'id':" + "'" + id + "'}",
         dataType: 'html',
         url: 'url/to/controller/',
         success: function (result) {
         alert('Success');
         $("#ajaxResponse").html(result);
         },

         error: function (error) {
            alert('Fail');
         }
      });
});

controller side

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Details(string id)
{
    // do some processing
   return PartialView("YourPartialView");
}

in your markup define a div that will hold the response of ajax call

<div id="ajaxResponse"></div>