How to covert the complex type in viewdata to Query string

Question

i am trying to implement the advanced searching with pagination functionality in a ASP.NET MVC application. i am trying to pass the search filter parameters in the QueryString. But as the search filter type is bit complex it is not converted correctly

Help me implement this/

Here is my action

public ActionResult AdSearch(SearchFilter SearchTerm, int index = 0, int perPage = 1)
{
    var customers = _repository.Search(SearchTerm, new SelectSpec(perPage, index * perPage));
    ViewData["SearchTerm"] = SearchTerm;
    return View("ExpertSearchResult", customers);
}

Here is the search filter

public class SearchFilter
{
    public IList<string> Countries { get; set; }
    public IList<string> Languages { get; set; }
    public IList<string> Industries { get; set; }
    public IList<string> Expertises { get; set; }        
}

And here is the code for generating page links

var searchCriteria = new RouteValueDictionary(ViewData["SearchTerm"]);searchCriteria.Add("perPage", 1);searchCriteria.Add("index", 1);return Html.ActionLink("First", "Results", searchCriteria)

Answer 1

the best solution for you is Json.NET . using json you can easily serialize and deserialize your complex types between javascript and your c# code.

just create your object in javascript (SearchFilter) and c#. then place json attributes on class and its Properties. then serialize you object in javascript using json and pass it to your controller action. in action you should have a string parameter to get serialized value and then you should ask json to deserialize parameter to your required object.

this is one of common usages of Json.NET