ASP.NET MVC - How to page ajax search results?

Question

Hi There,

I am struggling to get to grips with a particular form setup in my asp.net MVC application. Currently I have a page which displays a chunk of data. On this page is a simple form that calls into an action method that returns a partialview when posted (through ajax - jform). This is all very well until I try and add paging support to the search results.

I have a chunk of code that that will paginate an IQueryable, but Im not sure how to implement this in my current setup.

Heres some code:

[Authorize]
        public ActionResult AssetSearch(string RoomID, string type, string keyword, string risks)
        {

            //check values passed in
            Guid? r = null;
            if (RoomID != "Any" && RoomID != null)
                r = new Guid(RoomID);

            string t = type == "Any" ? null : type;
            string risk = risks == "Any" ? null : risks;

            var assets = surveyRepository.GetAssetsSearch(r, t, keyword, risk);

            if (Request.IsAjaxRequest())
            {
                return PartialView("AssetListControl", assets);
            }
            else
            {
                return View("AssetListControl", assets);
            }
        }

This action method returns a partial view which gets rendered out in a div through the following jquery.

$(document).ready(function() {
        $("#searchForm").submit(function() {
            $("#searchForm").ajaxSubmit({ target: '#results', beforeSubmit: PreSub, success: Success });
            return false;
        });
    });

    function Success(responseText, statusText) {
        $("#loadingMessage").html("done");
        $('#resultsTable').tablesorter();
        $("#results").slideDown("slow");
    }

    function PreSub(formData, jqForm, options) {
        $("#loadingMessage").html("loading...").fadeIn();
        $("#results").slideUp("fast");
        return true;
    }

And my form looks as follows:

<form id="searchForm" action="<%=Url.Action("AssetSearch") %>" method="post">
    <fieldset>
        <label for="RoomID">
            Room Name</label>
        <%= Html.DropDownList("RoomID") %>
        <label for="Type">
            Asset Type</label>
        <%= Html.DropDownList("Type") %>
        <label for="Risks">
            Risk Level</label>
        <%= Html.DropDownList("Risks") %>
        <label for="Keyword">
            Keyword</label>
        <%= Html.TextBox("Keyword") %>
    <input type="submit" name="sumbit" id="searchBtn" value="Search" />
        </fieldset>
    </form>

Sorry for the code overload :-)

I have a feeling that I have configured my controller and view in such a way that paging won't be easy to implement. All advice welcome!

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

The answers on this stackoverflow question should be helpful.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1293799/asp-net-mvc-paging-mechanism

Answer 2

Ok, so I managed to get it working with AJAX and POST in a not so attractive way.

Firstly, I dropped a couple of anchor tags in my paged results partial view that, if there are previous or next pages, show up. These links fire off a javascript function and pass a page value. The navigation looks as follows:

<% if (Model.HasPreviousPage)
   { %>
        <a href="#" onclick="PageResults( <%=Model.PageIndex - 1 %>)">Back</a>
<%} %>
<% if (Model.HasNextPage)
   { %>
   <a href="#" onclick="PageResults( <%=Model.PageIndex + 1 %>)">Forward</a>
<%} %>

The function looks as follows:

function PageResults(page) {
        var form = document.forms["searchForm"];
        form.elements["page"].value = page;
        $("#searchForm").ajaxSubmit({ target: '#results', beforeSubmit: PreSub, success: Success });
        return false;
    }

I have also tweaked my controller to accept a page parameter, which is used to retrieve the correct set of results:

var paginated = new PaginatedList<Asset>(assets, Page ?? 0, 10);

This seems to do the trick, although its not great :)