I am loading a Razor View via AJAX and putting the content into a div on a page.
If I want to send some arbitrary data from the view to our AJAX framework, is there a recommended HTML tag to do this with? A hidden field sounds like the wrong this to use for this. I could use an empty div with custom data- attributes, but again, a div sounds wrong.
My data isn't relevant to any element within this view, more related to the view itself.
Yes - this is simply a question of systematics and aesthetics.
I use data-* attributes, and try to find and attach them to already existing related elements. This convention is also used by asp.net mvc framework itself - when link target needs to be loaded, data-ajax-* is attached to anchors. When you need to set update target of form submit, you attach data-ajax-* to form, so in most cases it is possible to find good candidate for it. If it is not possible in any particular case, I do not see problems using body instead.
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Can anyone give me an idea about how to do this? My goal is to build a multi step claim submission form where user need to provide information for different sections. I am using VS2015 and Umbraco 7. Thanks.
In my opinion if you want to do it all from one template, it would be best to use a javascript/jquery solution that hides and shows different sections/divs as needed. These divs can be rendered from the partial views. I'm not sure if this works but maybe if you have one Form and all of these divs underneath it, you only need one form button and just submit at the end (I'm pretty positive this would work as the partial view elements would just be rendered as elements inside the form). But if not the values can be stored either in Jquery Data, or just using hidden variables, etc.
I am buiding a UI screen for editing the details of an Ecommerce Order. The model for my view (OrderModel) has everything I need (in properties that are also ViewModels), but the UI isn't designed to be able to edit all of it at once.
For example, one part of the UI is for customer data..another for order details, and another for tracking information, each having their own "Save" buttons.
I realize that I could use one giant form and use hidden form fields to populate the non-editable fields, making each "Save" button post all the data, but that smells bad.
I'd like to segment the editable chunks into smaller ViewModels that are posted and validated individually while retaining the strong typing but I'm unsure of how to achieve this in MVC3. Will I need partial views that are called from the primary view?
FYI, I'm using ASP.NET MVC 3 with Razor syntax and client side FluentValidation.
Partial Views are a good solution. You can pass different ViewModels to each partial view. But if only sections of the overall view are updated at a time I would not do a post back on the whole page. Instead I would use Ajax calls using JQuery/Javascript to update the individual information back to the controller. I would also look into something like Knockout.js to handle the data binding on the page.
I am completely new to ASP.NET MVC, so the question might sound silly.
I have a view that should display a part of the data from it's model at a time. And there are buttons that should trigger which part of the data gets shown.
So far, I have encapsulated each part of the data into a div and added buttons. I have also added a function that returns CSS style for a given id (basically, it returns display:visible or display:none).
I assume that I'll be able to wire up event handlers for buttons. But I am completely stuck at redrawing/updating of div elements. I mean I don't understand how should I cause divs to update their style.
Could you please help me to show/hide div elements and buttons dynamically?
That should be standard javascript (or in your case jquery). It is unrelated to MVC3. Once you have the view built that includes all your divs with content, you call $('#div_id').show() or $('#div_id').hide() to show or hide. You can also use many other methods that have related animations, but that should get you started.
http://docs.jquery.com/Tutorials:Basic_Show_and_Hide
Like this:
$('buttonClass/IDhere').click(function (){
$('theDivYouWantToShowClass/IDhere').toggle();
});
I'm coming from a WebForms environment. When I wanted values from a radiobutton, the form simply got ajax reposted or I got it thru javascript.
I've searched the web, but can't seem to find an equivalent for MVC 3 Razor.
I'm not posting the form, so I can't use the FormCollection object in the ActionResult.
I simply want to get the value of which option in the RadioButton is checked when a user checks one of them.
I assume I would do this thru an Action method in a Controller once a user checks one of the values.
Note also, that this radiobutton list is in a partial view and is available to the entire website (because it is in my _Layout.cshtml view).
Can someone please help me out with what I think should be a simple task?
You need to use javascript. See this post. MVC does not have the concept of an Auto-Postback like in Webforms. This is an optimization in the page loading time (no self-managed viewstate). This means you need to manage the statefulness of controls yourself.
In short, if you're not posting (or "getting") the form then the value won't be available in the controller...more specifically, neither the controller nor it's actions will be called at all.
If you're trying to do something strictly UI related, then you may want to consider jQuery.
If you're trying to do some sort of model validation inside of the view, you may want to reconsider your approach and usage of the MVC pattern.
I have a few complex GUI elements (like a custom calendar with many days that can be highlighted) that appear along with standard django form input fields. I want to process the data I/O from these complex forms along with the Django forms.
Previously I would use AJAX requests to process these custom GUI elements on my HTML form after the Django form was saved or rendered, but this leads to a host of problem and customized AJAX coding. What is a good way to handle complex interactions widgets in a Django form?
Not sure if I understand completely, but you could have the value of your UI saved into a hidden element on the form via javascript. This can either be done as they select the values in the UI or when they submit the form. Pseudo-code assuming JQuery using submit() to save before the submit data is sent:
$('#myForm').submit(function(){
// get the value of your UI
var calendarValue = calendarWidget.getValue()
// #calendarData is the hidden field
$('#calendarData').val(calendarValue)
})
This obviously requires JS, but so does using your UI element.
Your question is very vague so I suggest you read the Django documentation on writing a custom field and hopefully that will help you get started. You might also want to investigate writing a custom widget. Unfortunately the documentation is bit lacking on that, but a Google search brings up several useful blog posts, including this one.
You have three options depending on how you output your Django Form subclass to the HTML page.
The first doesn't involve Form at all. Any html form inputs will end up in request.POST, so you can access them there. True, they won't be bound to your Form subclass, so you would have to manually inject the value either using a custom form constructor, or by setting some property on your Form object after instantiating it with request.POST. This is probably the least desirable option, but I mention it in case your use-case really doesn't support anything else.
The second is an option if you manually output the form fields in your HTML (ie: using {{ myform.field }} rather than just {{ myform }}. In this case, make a hidden variable to contain the value of your calendar GUI tool (chances are, your GUI tools already offer/require one). Add this hidden field, with the right name and ID, to the Form subclass itself, making sure it has a hidden django form widget. If necessary, use javascript as Rob suggests to populate the hidden field. When the form is posted, it will get bound to your form subclass as normal because, this time, you have a field on your Form subclass with that name. The machinery for clean() will work as normal.
The third, and best option, is to write a custom django field; Andrew's post has the link. Django fields have the ability to specify js and css requirements, so you can automatically encapsulate these dependencies for any page that uses your calendar widget.