How do I redirect to the next page after pressing the submit button?

Question

I am creating a site with ASP.NET MVC 4 and C#. The main page is a search bar with a submit button with the label "search". I want the user to be able to enter a musical artist and press the "search" button. The site should then go to a "results" page with the results.

I am having trouble getting to the results page after pressing the search button.

My view Index.cshtml form looks like this:

<form method="post" class="form-inline">
    <div class="row">
        <div class="col-md-1" style="min-width:300px">
            <input type="text" name="Artist" class="form-control box-shadow--4dp" placeholder="Artist Name" />
        </div>
        <div class="col-md-2">
            <input type="submit" class="btn btn-default box-shadow--4dp" value="Search" />
        </div>
    </div>
</form>

And my HomeController.cs looks like this:

namespace Task2.Controllers
{
    public class HomeController : Controller
    {
        public ActionResult Index()
        {
            return View();
        }

        // edit
        [HttpPost]
        public ActionResult Index(string Artist)
        {
            return RedirectToAction("Result", "Home");
        }

        public ActionResult Contact()
        {
            ViewBag.Message = "For more information you can contact me using the form below.";

            return View();
        }

        public ActionResult Result(string Artist)
        {
            ViewBag.Message = Artist;
            return View();
        }
    }
}

So to summarize, how can I cause the submit button to redirect the user to the Results page with the results?

Answer 1

The way your HTML is currently set up, your form would POST to the Index method of your controller.

To do a redirect you could do:

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Index(string searchTerm)
{
    //handle your search stuff here...
    return RedirectToAction("Results", "Home");
}

However, you can wrap your current form in an HTML.BeginForm and post to a specific Action Method other than the Index method -- perhaps to a search action method which would then redirect to Results, passing in the results collection for instance.

Answer 2

If you want your input as a query string then simply change your form method to GET . It will redirect you to Result Page with input as querystring.

  @using (Html.BeginForm("Result","Home",FormMethod.Get,new {@class= "form-inline" }))
{
    <div class="row">
        <div class="col-md-1" style="min-width:300px">
            <input type="text" name="Artist" class="form-control box-shadow--4dp" placeholder="Artist Name" />
        </div>
        <div class="col-md-2">
            <input type="submit" class="btn btn-default box-shadow--4dp" value="Search" />
        </div>
    </div>
}