ASP.NET MVC Catching 'Save' POST with RenderPartial

Question

Hi

I have a asp.net mvc page which renders a record from a database, it uses RenderPartial to call another view which renders an editable list of items related to that record.

My problem is I want a since save / submit button which not only saves changes made for that record but also changes made in the RenderPartial part... I have created a method accepting POST in the RenderPartials controller but it doesn't get called? Any ideas? Or am I using RenderPartial wrongly? I did it this way so that I have a controller that handles the subset of data

Update: I don't think I've been clear enough:

Imagine a situation where you have a page that is filled with information from lots of different tables in a database... for example imagine you have a record of a person, and then you have all the links they have to Organisations that you want to list on the page, so the page contains:

Individual Name, Email, etc... AND Organisation Link 1 Organisation Link 2, etc... from a link table

Because of the amount of data I want to render of the page, I figured using different controllers to render each part would make sense.. but then when saving the data do I have to use just one controller method or can I call one controller to another... I only have one form and one 'save' button for the whole page

I hope this is clearer?

Answer 1

You don't need to have a specific controller for each controller, although I suspect you meant to say "I have created a method accepting POST in the RenderPartial's action ..."?

When you accept the default html helper commands, it can sometimes get confusing which action will be called. For a particular web page, the tag will determine where to POST values. So the action called will be dependent on the controller/action you specify in your Html.BeginForm call.

For example, here's a form we use from an ascx page:

 <% using (Html.BeginForm("InvoiceDetail" //Action
           , "CompanyInvoice" //Controller
           , FormMethod.Post 
           , new { @id = "InvoiceForm", @autocomplete = "off"   }))
   {%>

A form can post to any action, in any controller. Not that you'd want to, but it's quite flexible. You can also have multiple forms in a single web page now, which is great for complex forms.