Asp.net-mvc – ASP.NET MVC ViewResult vs PartialViewResult

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What is the difference between the controller result named ViewResult and PartialViewResult? More importantly, when is the PartialViewResult used?

Best Answer

PartialViewResult is used to render a partialview (fx. just a user control). This is pretty nifty for AJAX stuff, i.e.

<script type="text/javascript">
    $.get(
        "/MyController/MyAction",
        null,
        function (data) { $("#target").html(data) }
     );
</script>

and action

public ActionResult MyAction() 
{
    return PartialView("SomeView");
}

where SomeView is a MVC User Control, e.g.:

<div>
   <%= DateTime.Now.ToString() %>
</div>

Related Solutions

Json – ASP.NET MVC controller actions that return JSON or partial html

In your action method, return Json(object) to return JSON to your page.

public ActionResult SomeActionMethod() {
  return Json(new {foo="bar", baz="Blech"});
}

Then just call the action method using Ajax. You could use one of the helper methods from the ViewPage such as

<%= Ajax.ActionLink("SomeActionMethod", new AjaxOptions {OnSuccess="somemethod"}) %>

SomeMethod would be a javascript method that then evaluates the Json object returned.

If you want to return a plain string, you can just use the ContentResult:

public ActionResult SomeActionMethod() {
    return Content("hello world!");
}

ContentResult by default returns a text/plain as its contentType.
This is overloadable so you can also do:

return Content("<xml>This is poorly formatted xml.</xml>", "text/xml");

Asp.net-mvc – Compile Views in ASP.NET MVC

From the readme word doc for RC1 (not indexed by google)

ASP.NET Compiler Post-Build Step

Currently, errors within a view file are not detected until run time. To let you detect these errors at compile time, ASP.NET MVC projects now include an MvcBuildViews property, which is disabled by default. To enable this property, open the project file and set the MvcBuildViews property to true, as shown in the following example:

<Project ToolsVersion="3.5" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews>
  </PropertyGroup>

Note Enabling this feature adds some overhead to the build time.

You can update projects that were created with previous releases of MVC to include build-time validation of views by performing the following steps:

Open the project file in a text editor.
Add the following element under the top-most <PropertyGroup> element: <MvcBuildViews>true</MvcBuildViews>
At the end of the project file, uncomment the <Target Name="AfterBuild"> element and modify it to match the following:

<Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(MvcBuildViews)'=='true'">
    <AspNetCompiler VirtualPath="temp" PhysicalPath="$(ProjectDir)\..\$(ProjectName)" />
</Target>

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Json – ASP.NET MVC controller actions that return JSON or partial html

Asp.net-mvc – Compile Views in ASP.NET MVC

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