.NET MVC Call method on different controller

Question

Can anybody tell me how to call a method on a different controller from within an action method? I don\'t want to redirect. I want to call a method on a different controller

Answer 1

You can achieve this via the Action method of HtmlHelper.

In a view, you would do it like this:

@Html.Action("OtherAction")

However it's not straightforward to obtain an instance of HtmlHelper in an action method (by design). In fact it's such a horrible hack that I am reluctant to even post it...

var htmlHelper = new HtmlHelper(new ViewContext(
                                      ControllerContext, 
                                      new WebFormView(ControllerContext, "HACK"),
                                      new ViewDataDictionary(),
                                      new TempDataDictionary(),
                                      new StringWriter()),
                                new ViewPage());

var otherViewHtml = htmlHelper.Action("ActionName", "ControllerName");

This works on MVC 3. You might need to remove the StringWriter arg from the ViewContext constructor for MVC 2, IIRC.