Switching Controller Context in ASP.NET MVC for AJAX Calls

Question

Perhaps this is impossible, but I figured I would ask anyway. I'm working on an ASP.NET MVC application that uses jquery/AJAX extensively. One of the AJAX tasks that gets performed is a call to controller action that returns a URL to redirect the user to.

What I would like to do is to have the same controller context when making an AJAX call as I do on the current page. The reason for this is because the controller action called by AJAX makes use of the Url.Action() method and I need it to use the same route values as what is currently being used on the current page.

So for example, if a user is currently on: /Site/Search/Advanced/Widgets/Black and Blue/1/Descending, mapping to a route of Site/Search/Advanced/{objectType}/{query}/{pageNum}/{displayMethod}, with {objectType} defaulting to "Cars" (not "Widgets").

I would like a call to Url.Action("Advanced", "Search", new {query="Something else"}) to generate /Site/Search/Advanced/Widgets/Something else/1/Descending.

As it stands, the call will generate /Site/Search/Advanced/Cars/Something else, because the controller does not what context it is in.

My alternative is to specify the additional parameters directly in the Url.Action call, but that would require a lot more complexity with values coming in and out of jquery AJAX through various hidden fields, which would be a huge mess...

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Assuming that you on every ajax call want the route values you haven't specified to be the same as in the original non-ajax request, you could always make use of ViewContext.RouteData to add the extra parameters to the ajax call. When the ajax call is returned, you use the route data to add to any new links in the asynchronously loaded results.

Another way is to use the Session object to keep track of the last request, and change the values if new ones are sent.

On the other hand, I would like to question your goal (if this search scenario is your actual scenario): If I search for something, browse to page 4, and then enter a new search term, I don't expect to go to page 4 of the new search results - I expect the first page (although I do expect that my chosen sorting order is preserved...).