How can I set a variable in my pages javascript based on my controller action in ASP.NET MVC?

Question

So, I have a page that looks like the following:

This is my basic messaging inbox. I have 2 pages right now, Inbox and Sent (there will eventually be others). These both share the same View, and just have 2 different actions to populate the appropriate data.

The elements on the right-hand side (the message list) is a partial view which has its data populated based on my two controller actions Inbox(int? page) and Sent(int? Page).

So, I have one view "MessageView" and one partial view "MessageList" shared between Inbox/Sent.

However, I now have to get those arrow buttons ("<" ">") working using Ajax. I know how to use jQueries ajax calls well enough, and I know how to render the result of the action call (which returns a partial view).

The problem comes from the fact that the javascript that makes these pagination ajax calls needs to know two things:

• What the current page is (whether it be /messages/inbox or /messages/sent)
• What the current page is (specified in the query string, ie /messages/inbox?page=2).

Without knowing which page I'm on (Inbox or Sent), it wont know which url to make the ajax call on. Should it make the postback to /messages/inbox or to /messages/sent?

If I wasn't making these messages load with Ajax it would be as simple as loading the appropriate url into the link tags for the "<" and the ">" buttons. But I can't, because part of my requirements states that it must load the messages below without visibly refreshing to a new page.

Answer 1

When the user clicks the Inbox or Sent buttons, you need to rewrite the URLs in your arrows so that they point to the right place.

Answer 2

In JavaScript you can check window.location.pathname to see the pathname section of the current’s page’s URL.

window.location.search gives you the query string.