If you had to provide a wizard like form entry experience in mvc how would you abstract the page flow?
Thanks
If you had to provide a wizard like form entry experience in mvc how would you abstract the page flow?
Thanks
There are a couple ways, create an action for each step of the wizard process, or create a parameter that is passed in to the action method. Like step that will allow you to know what the state of the wizard is in.
Investigate the post-redirect-get pattern.
http://weblogs.asp.net/mhawley/archive/tags/MVC/default.aspx
http://devlicio.us/blogs/tim_barcz/archive/2008/08/22/prg-pattern-in-the-asp-net-mvc-framework.aspx
Use that along with a robust domain model (for tracking steps or form completion state or whatever you call it) and you're golden.
public class CreateAccountWizardController : Controller
{
public ActionRresult Step1()
{
}
public ActionResult Step2()
{
}
}
In order to keep the steps you could implement a page flow action filters, which provide an experience like this one:
[RequiredStep(FlowStart = true)]
public ActionResult Confirm()
{
return View();
}
[RequiredStep (PreviousStep = "Confirm")]
public ActionResult ExecuteOrder()
{
return RedirectToAction("ThankYou");
}
[RequiredStep(PreviousStep = "ExecuteOrder")]
public ActionResult ThankYou()
{
return View();
}
I left the page flow up to the view, where I believe it belongs, so different views could have different page flows (e.g. for desktop browser clients or mobile phone clients etc.) I wrote it up on my blog: A RESTful Wizard Using ASP.Net MVC… Perhaps?