How to generate urls on the client side using ASP.NET MVC?

Question

One of the great things about ASP.NET MVC is the routing engine. I love to generate my urls and not having anything break when I change the routes.

However, I'm not sure how I can apply this mechanism on the client side.

Let's imagine a common scenario where I have two dropdown lists and the content of the second list depends on the selected item in the first list. I want to load the items of the second list asynchronously, when the selection in the first list changes.

The URL, using the default route, could look like this : /Cars/GetModelsForBrand/Honda

Easy enough...

var url = '/Cars/GetModelsForBrand/' + $("#brands").val();

What if I change the routing and the url becomes : /Honda/GetModels

I just broke my code in an non-obvious way.

Is there any way to generate urls from the client side ?

Russell Steen · Accepted Answer · 2009-08-20 01:30:45Z

2

We had a similar scenario and solved it by generating a link to the action and then appending our parameters to it later. We also had a case where we were unsure of action and wanted to set it at client time. In this case we we generated a link to Index and did a replace on client side.

By generate link, I mean using the Html.ActionLink helper method

answered Aug 20, 2009 at 1:30

Russell Steen

6,6126 gold badges40 silver badges57 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

3 Comments

David Thibault Over a year ago

Do you mean like this? var url = '<%= Html.BuildUrlFromExpression<CarsController>(x => x.GetModelsForBrand("[BRANDNAME]")) %>'; var brandUrl = url.replace('\[BRANDNAME\]', $("#brands").val()); Not too clean, but I guess it could do the job.

Russell Steen Over a year ago

Yes, that's what I mean. I'm not sure what string replacement speed is in java and if you have a lot of these you might want to find a better way.

altso Over a year ago

Constraints on parameters will also add some headache

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

How to generate urls on the client side using ASP.NET MVC?

1 Answer 1

3 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

3 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related