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Trouble loading a partial view from a different controller with model data

Quite new to MVC so please bear with me. I'm trying to load a partial view in a modal from a different controller and everytime I try to view it I get just an empty modal. I believe it is because I haven't been able to instantiate my model in the view.
E.g. I have a Controller 'Home' with a method 'Details' that returns a partialview from a different View folder. The native model to the controller is 'model', whereas the model belonging to my other controller is 'model2'.
public ActionResult Details() {
model2.User = user; //this is a global variable
model2.GetDetails();
return PartialView("~/Views/...Details", model2);
}
I'm sure the reason is because i'm missing the model data in the view. I tried adding another #model... to the view but clearly this doesn't work.
Is there a way of doing what I am trying to accomplish? It can even be a relatively dirty solution as this is a stopgap solution for the time being.
Reading back over this post it reads a little convoluted so if any clarification is needed please let me know.
Thanks

I faced this problem once before and i think it's a lot of work to reproduce it to provide an exact solution, but I can offer my 2 cents. The thing with browser Modals is that you need to provide a url when you are opening it. The URL will have to be the Controller/Action url and this is the tricky part which causes the problem. If you can figure that out, you should be able to solve the problem. If you can't, you can do one of the following:
1. Set the HTML content of Modal dialog from your main window's JS code after the Modal is opened.
2. Use one of the 3rd party HTML/CSS modal implementation, and set the HTML content from the JS code. In this case there is no browser modal and everything is on the same page.
To verify if the view is returning correctly from XHR, put the actionRoute URL in the browser address bar and you will see the content getting returned. It will help with troubleshooting.

How to prevent ajax form post with regular form post

I have a Razor view that contains a normal form using Html.BeginForm. It also uses Html.RenderAction to insert a partial view that contains another form. I'm using RenderAction so the partial view can be strongly typed with it's own model. That partial view contains an ajax form using Ajax.BeginForm.
The problem I'm having occurs when the regular form in the parent view posts and has validation errors returned from the controller method. The ajax form validates as well and displays its own error messages. At first I thought it was just client-side validation picking up both forms, but when I set a breakpoint, I found that the controller method the ajax form posts to was getting called as well.
I would prefer to keep this view simple and not use ajax for both forms. For the same reason, I would rather not combine the forms into one and use javascript or other methods to differentiate between the two. What are my other options to keep the ajax form from posting or validating when the regular form posts?

My comment to #StephenMuecke finally triggered the right idea for the right keywords to google. And of course, the answer was already on StackOverflow. See Html.RenderAction uses Post instead of Get or How can I get Html.RenderAction to call the Get method on a Post?. #AndrewBarber's answer on the second link was a good answer. After I gave the GET and POST action methods for the ajax form different names and removed the [HttpGet] from the GET action method to allow it be called using either GET or POST, both forms work as expected.

Controller that calls a partial view that should display inside the Layout view

In a standard MVC application we have _Layout.cshtml and an Index.cshtml view. Now imagine if the user receives an email activation after a registration and now he/she clicks on that link.
The link points to /Account/ActivateAccount and after I process the activation, I wanted to redirect the user to the Login.cshtml partial view displaying a message.
I'm aware I can pass the message via the TempData["Message"] but what I don't know is how to redirect to a partial view and have that display inside the _Layout.cshtml instead that by itself.
At least this is what is happening when I call RedirectToAction("Login", "Home")
Note: all "home" based partial views are displaying within a < div id="divmain"> and my ideal solution would be to be able to decide what view should display inside that div, from the controller.
What's the right way to call a Partial View to be displayed from within another Controller ??

I'm not entirely sure I understand the question but I think what you're asking is if you can call a partial view from the _layout? This can be done with #Html.Action() helper. It will call out to a controller and method you specify and insert the result. The method you call would just be a PartialResult that returns the partial view with whatever data you need.
This is in contrast to #Html.Partial() which will render the partial view in place with whatever data you provide without routing back through a controller.
EDIT:
To summarize the comments to this answer, it seems I misunderstood the requirement. A user receives an email and clicks the link to activate their registration. The controller action that handles that request activates the user and then it needs to redirect to something. In this case, there was already a partial view which would serve the purpose but it couldn't be redirected to directly for some reasons. My suggestion was to just create a new View which contained a #Html.Partial() call to basically wrap the partial in a full view page.
The action method which handled the click could then just return that view directly or, if you consider the click of the link to be a "post" since it changes the application model by validating the user, you would create a new controller action and return RedirectToAction() directly. This would be like following the Post, Redirect, Get method and would prevent some issue if the user tried to refresh the "activated" page. It would also give more control over the URL naming.

Best way to display a JQuery Dialog with ASP.NET MVC data bound View Model

Imagine a simple page with a list of users. Selecting a user displays a JQuery modal dialog with various details that can be edited. Something like:
#model IEnumerable<UserRole>
#if (Model.Any())
{
foreach (var user in Model.Users)
{
Details
}
}
I'll have more specific examples through the post but what I'm looking for is a general 'experienced' opinion on what's the best way to load and display a Model bound Partial View as a JQuery dialog box.
I know how to do it code-wise but I think there must be a better way. I believe the common known ways to do it are not very efficient.
My rule and what I would like is for all code associated to a partial view popup to be kept in that partial view. I would like my popup to be structured something like the following UserDetails partial view:
#model User
<script src="#Url.Content("~/Scripts/UserScripts.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>
<div id="placeholder">
...The modal dialog content...
</div>
This way when another developer gets to look at it one will easily be able to piece it all together.
So as far as I know there are two ways to display a partial view as a Dialog and I have a problem with both of them:
1) Use the Partial view structure I displayed above, pre-load the div dialog from the master page by using #Html.Partial("UserDetails", new User) and then, when I need the dialog to be displayed populated with user data execute an Ajax call to an ActionMethod that will re-populate the partial view's model with needed data and re-render it with JQuery .html() method.
Once the partial view/dialog is loaded with data I simply display it with JQuery .dialog('open')
Great, this works but there are a few problems with this logic:
a) I'm loading the same partial view twice ( first blank , second loaded with data )
b) Content of the Placeholder DIV flashes on the screen when the master page is being loaded. Setting DIV to display:none won't work here before when .html() method triggers it will load the partial view with that display:none tag in it and the popup will be presented as a blank window.
c) When the page is requested, if large, it takes some time for the page to show
2) Instead of having in the partial View I can place a blank <div id="placeholder"></div> on the master page and then load the partial view content into that div with ajax or as I'm doing it now with JQuery :
var url = "/MyController/MyAction/" + Id;
$("#palceholder").load(url).dialog('open');
Again, it works but there are a few big problems I see with this way:
a) It breaks my "keeping it all together rule". When looking at , without some searching around another developer will have no idea what partial view will be loaded in this Div.
b) All Javascripts for the partial view popup will now need to be referenced in the master page, instead of a the partial view itself.
c) When the page is requested, if large, it takes some time for the page to show
The bottom line question is what do you think is the best way to display the model-bound populated partial view as a Modal Dialog while keeping the code organized ?
My perfect scenario would be to pre-load all partial view fields and then, when the request is made for the dialog to show populated with Data somehow a model bind pre-loaded partial view to the new JSon set of data, without loading/re-loading all partial view fields.
Is there a way ?
P.S. One of the things I tried is to pre-load my partial view fields with #Html.Partial("UserDetails", new User) and then use JQuery .replaceWith() method to replace Div contents but I couldn't get it to work unfortunately.
Any thoughts are appreciated. No ideas as are bad ideas.
Thanks.

Nothing wrong with having part of your code load in partial, and then just updating the partial container with a return from action.
<div id="ParitalContainer">
#Html.Partial("_PartialView", Model.PartialModel)
</div>
Or, you can consider a scenario to work with JSON data. Namely, have all your data loaded async by calling a $.ajax or $.getJSON. Your action result would return JsonResult and then you can just update the elements you want.
Furthermore, you could look into using Knockout.js if you want more robust solution. This is what I would do if I wanted "keeping it all together" approach.

How to make a View render Fully or Partially?

I have a HomeController with an action About. I want to achieve this behavior:
Case #1 User open the page /home/about and the view render fully (return View();)
Case #2 User is on the homepage and clicks a link about, I want to change the url using history.pushState and render it partially (return PartialView();)
How can I achieve this behavior?

You can use Request.IsAjaxRequest to detect whether the controller action was invoked using an Ajax request.
As an alternative I'd recommend splitting your views so into smaller pieces, such that your About.aspx view uses the partial view, e.g. by doing Html.RenderPartial( "AboutBox" ). This gives you the power of reuse without having to clutter your actions with if-sentences.

yet another.
Restrict ASP.NET MVC Action's Using The ActionMethodSelectorAttribute
select action method control at ActionMethodSelectorAttribute.