Retain data from views while navigating through multiple views in ASP.NET MVC App

asp.netasp.net-mvcretainviews

I have 5 views in my ASP.NET MVC application. Some data were captured from these views and I am navigating through these views using 2 buttons: the Previous and Next buttons.

So I fill the data in View 1 and I go to view 2 and enter the data there and so on.. till View 5.

Now the question is: If I come back again to previous views, how to retain the data entered there in that particular view.

In addition, I want to submit the data from all the 5 views at a time, once I finish entering data to all 5 views.

What is the best way to do it?

Best Answer

I can think of a number of approaches to your issue. You could create a single view with a number of 'panels' which are hidden or revealed depending on which step you are on in the process, like a wizard control. You could try and use a cookie but that's not very clean. Ideally, you embrace the statelessness of the MVC pattern and the fact the View is a view of the Model and update your Model as each page posts back to your Controller and you persist the Model (however you choose) between pages.

Simplicity might lead me to suggest the 'wizard' approach if you don't want to persist anything until the process is complete. I'm certain jQuery could help you out with this solution.

Related Solutions

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>

C# – How to create a dropdownlist from an enum in ASP.NET MVC

For MVC v5.1 use Html.EnumDropDownListFor

@Html.EnumDropDownListFor(
    x => x.YourEnumField,
    "Select My Type", 
    new { @class = "form-control" })

For MVC v5 use EnumHelper

@Html.DropDownList("MyType", 
   EnumHelper.GetSelectList(typeof(MyType)) , 
   "Select My Type", 
   new { @class = "form-control" })

For MVC 5 and lower

I rolled Rune's answer into an extension method:

namespace MyApp.Common
{
    public static class MyExtensions{
        public static SelectList ToSelectList<TEnum>(this TEnum enumObj)
            where TEnum : struct, IComparable, IFormattable, IConvertible
        {
            var values = from TEnum e in Enum.GetValues(typeof(TEnum))
                select new { Id = e, Name = e.ToString() };
            return new SelectList(values, "Id", "Name", enumObj);
        }
    }
}

This allows you to write:

ViewData["taskStatus"] = task.Status.ToSelectList();

by using MyApp.Common