Do I need to have a View Page for every Action in ASP.NET MVC?

Question

I have a customer index page that displays customer lists. I have a search functionality within this page and I want the url to be http://mysite/search?id=434 when i perform the search. The index page will also display the search result.

Thanks

Answer 1

No, you shouldn't have. Just use View("ViewName"); in the controller to show the appropriate view in other actions.

Answer 2

Thanks Mehrdad, but what i need is controller action method be called from the View Page.

Answer 3

In the URL that you suggest, you should have a Controller method called 'search' and using the 'index' view for that controller.

If thats the case, you can post it back to the same action and in the Controller have different sets of code for the 'GET' and 'POST' to give the functionality that you are looking for.

Answer 4

public class CustomerController : Controller

...

public ActionResult Search(int id)
{
 ViewData["SearchResult"] = MySearchBLL.GetSearchResults(id);

 return View("Index");
}

...

Hope this helps

Answer 5

Have the HTML form post to the same action that rendered it. That action can decide if it's a non-search (first visit) or a search results rendering. That action can populate ViewData with the appropriate data. That is, if you want to do that.

You can also have two views, really easily. And the action can transparently decide which one to render.