Render PartialView from Controller

Question

HomeController > Index action does a select query. For each row in that select query, I need to render a Partial View in my Index view. Since this depends on the database, I'm doing this part of the code from the controller. I searched quite a bit, but I can't figure out how to render a PartialView from the controller.

1. Do partial views require a controller action? I wasn't sure about this, but this is what I created:

    public PartialViewResult ucDropdown(Question question) { ViewBag.Question = question; return PartialView(); } 

2. In my main view, how do I call this partial view? I have (unsuccessfully) tried:

    public ActionResult Index(string id = "") { var q = ...... var ctrls = new ControlsController(); ViewBag.Questions = ctrls.ucDropdown(q); return View(); } 

3. How can I access the ViewBag of this partial view?

Answer 1

You do not necessarily need an action method to render a partial view. You can directly call the partial view in your main view and pass a Question object directly.

So in your main view, you can loop through the questions and call the partial view using Html.Partial helper method.

@foreach(var item in (List<Question>)ViewBag.Questions)
{
  @Html.Partial("ucDropdown",item)
}

Assuming you have a partial view called ucDropdown.cshtml in either ~/Views/Shared directory or ~/Views/YourControllerFolderName and ViewBag.Question is of type List<Question> or IEnumerable<Question>

Make sure your partial view ucDropdown.cshtml is strongly typed to Question type

@model Question
<p>@Model.QuestionId</p>

Since you are passing the question object directly to view (a strongly typed approach), you do not need ViewBag. You can simply access Model.AnyPropertyName in your partial view.