ASP.NET MVC Ajax/Partial views and DRY

Question

Is there a good convention-based way to avoid repetitive code like the following in my controller action methods?:

if (Request.IsAjaxRequest())
{
    return PartialView("EmployeeList", _service.GetEmployees());
}
return RedirectToAction("Index");

Answer 1

If all of your Controllers inherit from a base class that you control, you can add that bit of logic in a function there.

Something like:

internal class MyBaseController : Controller
{
    protected ActionResult PartialOrRedirect<T>(string partialName, Func<T> getModel, string actionName)
    {
        if (Request.IsAjaxRequest())
        {
            return PartialView(partialName, getModel());
        }

        return RedirectToAction(actionName);
    }
}


public class MyDerrivedController : MyBaseController
{
    public ActionResult Employees()
    {
        return PartialOrRedirect(
            "EmployeeList",
            () => _service.GetEmployees(),
            "Index");
    }
}

Otherwise, you can consider using an extension method to do the same thing on the Controller type.