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up vote 2 down vote favorite

I am trying to pass a random string from my Controller to the View.

Here is my Controller code:

 [HttpPost]
    public ActionResult DisplayForm(UserView user)
    {
       //some  data processing over here
        ViewData["choice"] = "Apple";

        return RedirectToAction("Next", "Account");
    }

Now I want to pass that data value "Apple" to my view Next.cshtml which is created as follows:

//View: Next.cshtml

  @{
    ViewBag.Title = "Thanks for registering";
    Layout = "~/Content/orangeflower/_layout.cshtml";
   }
    <p>Your favorite fruit is:</p>@ViewData["choice"]

But I am not able to see my data in the browser when the project runs.

Here is the snapshot:

1) On debug, the controller showing the value:

enter image description here

2) The browser view doesn't show the value "Apple"

enter image description here

3) On further debug to my Next.cshtml View: enter image description here

Why is the value not getting passed to the View correctly. Both my controllers for Next and DisplayForm are within the same Controller AccountController.cs , still value not getting displayed.

Can someone help me solve this ?

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2 Answers

up vote 6 down vote accepted

You are not rendering a view, you are redirecting. If you wanted to pass some information tyo the view you need to return this view after adding it to ViewData:

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult DisplayForm(UserView user)
{
    //some  data processing over here
    ViewData["choice"] = "Apple";

    return View();
}

If you want to pass a message that will survive after a redirect you could use TempData instead of ViewData.

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult DisplayForm(UserView user)
{
    //some  data processing over here
    TempData["choice"] = "Apple";

    return RedirectToAction("Next", "Account");
}

then inside the Next action you could fetch the data from TempData and store it inside ViewData so that the view can read it.

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ohh so I need to write return View("Next","Account") as per my code right if I am not redirecting ? – Parth Doshi Jan 10 '12 at 12:59
@ParthDoshi, yes, if you want to use ViewData directly. But if you want to keep the Redirect-After-Post pattern you could use TempData as shown in my answer. – Darin Dimitrov Jan 10 '12 at 13:01
thanks it worked !! :) – Parth Doshi Jan 10 '12 at 13:02
@ParthDoshi, great, glad I could help. – Darin Dimitrov Jan 10 '12 at 13:06
up vote 1 down vote

You are performing a post - redirect - get. The ViewData is being set for this request, which returns a redirect, clearing the ViewData, then another request happens which does not have the data. Use TempData instead and it will be added to the ViewData automatically on the next request.

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1  
thanks! it was very helpful indeed. – Parth Doshi Jan 10 '12 at 13:04
Very good question layout and explanation. – NickLarsen♦ Jan 10 '12 at 13:07
Thanks! Sometimes I feel StackOverflow should allow us to accept two answers, one primary and the other as a secondary answer. Although, I got an answer from another user, I felt your answer was also good enough for me to understand the mistake in my code, so thanks for the quick reply – Parth Doshi Jan 10 '12 at 13:14

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