Best way to page asp.net-mvc page with POST

Question

I have an action method that that returns a PagedList<> after a form's POST request.
I would like to add paging to this page, but all paging scenarios only seem to work with GET requests.

Currently the only way of adding paging controls is adding a bunch of forms with one button for navigating the page. This will look but ugly (all form buttons) and impose a lot of overhead because each of the forms will need a bunch of hidden fields (about 10) to transfer the needed parameters.

Is there a clean way to add about 12 optional parameters to a GET request? Or maybe there is an even better way?

Answer 1

The way to add many optional parameters to a GET request is to use query string parameters. Make the arguments to your controller action nullable, and the MVC framework will fill them with query string parameters if the user supplies them, and leave them null otherwise.

I do not believe that using POST for paging is, generally, appropriate. POST is intended to update a server resource. Paging doesn't do that.

Answer 2

Each paging button has one unique value you need to submit along with the rest of your form values. So you really only need something such as:

function GoToPage(pageNumber)
{
    // submit form along with pageNumber

    return false;
}

<a href="javascript:GoToPage(1);">1</a>
<a href="javascript:GoToPage(2);">2</a>
<a href="javascript:GoToPage(3);">3</a>