Linking to location on page (#id) through ASP.NET MVC mechanisms?

Question

My example:

I have a View that presents a set of div tags that has content populated from the datamodel.

[Multiple of these, with different location_id, naturally]

<div>
    <a name="location_id"></a>
    Content
</div>

Now, I have a form [in its own view] that submits content that adds another record to the datamodel. Once the record is create and submitted, I redirect back to the Action that returns the View with the <div> listing.

My challenge:

I'd like the page to focus the <div> block that was just created. Ideally I'd like to do this without the use of javascript, - I'd like to use an #location_id ending to the URL. Like so: http://site/Controller/Action/Id#12 (or something along those lines).

Anyone got any tips on how to go about doing this?

Edit: I cannot use the controller's Redirect method (or anything involving a raw url. It needs to be routed either through Controller/Action or Route mechanisms).

Answer 1

You've pretty much answered your own question. Redirect to a URL similar to the one you have given (http://site/Controller/Action/Id#12), and generate an anchor tag in your view with a name attribute just before the record you want to jump to.

Answer 2

When returning from an action you probably use RedirectToAction() you can pass in the route values.

You can have route like this

routes.MapRoute(
"DisplayDivsRoute",
"{controller}/{action}/{focusedDivId}", // URL with parameters
new {controller = "Content", action = "Display", focusedDivId = "1"}, null );

When in your Post action (when you are saving the new content object) you can then

return RedirectToAction()

HTH

Answer 3

Sorry for wasting everyone's time...

I just remembered that you can separate route segments with other character literals than '/',

so naturally I can build a route like this:

routes.MapRoute(
"MyRoute",
"{controller}/{action}/{id}#{locid}",
 new { ... });

Problem solved.