ASP.NET MVC - Updating Multiple Partials/View

Question

How do you guys update (let's say) two partials in a controller action going to the View? For example, you have a left nav partial for links and on the right is your main content. Your main content has a ViewModel that it binds to. Do you guys have a seperate ViewModel for your nav page? If so, do you then create a bigger ViewModel each time that has the main content view model and the left nav ViewModel?

Answer 1

I would have one ViewModel for the nav page (e.g. CategoryListViewModel) and one for the content page (e.g. ProductListViewModel). Then load the CategoryListViewModel in a base controller:

public abstract class BaseController : Controller
{
    var _categoryRepository = new CategoryRepository();

    protected BaseController()
    {
        ViewData["Categories"] = _categoryRepository.GetCategories();
    }
}

public class ProductsController : BaseController
{
    var _productRepository = new ProductRepository();

    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        return View(_productRepository.GetProducts());
    }
}

and then in the MasterPage read the categories from the ViewData, and in the content page read the products from the Model on the ViewPage.

Answer 2

You can break the page into different independent sections, have a look at this page here. Here you have to use Html.RenderAction() for which you have to download the ASP.NET MVC Futures assembly from codeplex.

Answer 3

Actually I was eventually eluding to this solution. Thanks guys for your input!