Flash equivalent in ASP.NET MVC 3

Question

There is a feature called \'flash\' in ruby on rails where you can put a message in \'flash\', redirect, and the message is available in the next action.

Example of

Answer 1

Endy,

I 'borrowed' this from the tekpub series:

namespace System.Web.Mvc {
    public static class FlashHelpers {

        public static void FlashInfo(this Controller controller,string message) {
            controller.TempData["info"] = message;
        }
        public static void FlashWarning(this Controller controller, string message) {
            controller.TempData["warning"] = message;
        }
        public static void FlashError(this Controller controller, string message) {
            controller.TempData["error"] = message;
        }

        public static string Flash(this HtmlHelper helper) {

            var message = "";
            var className = "";
            if (helper.ViewContext.TempData["info"] != null) {
                message =helper.ViewContext.TempData["info"].ToString();
                className = "info";
            } else if (helper.ViewContext.TempData["warning"] != null) {
                message = helper.ViewContext.TempData["warning"].ToString();
                className = "warning";
            } else if (helper.ViewContext.TempData["error"] != null) {
                message = helper.ViewContext.TempData["error"].ToString();
                className = "error";
            }
            var sb = new StringBuilder();
            if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(message)) {
                sb.AppendLine("");
            }
            return sb.ToString();
        }

    }
}

typical usage (inside controller):

public ActionResult Delete(int id, FormCollection collection)
{
    var item = _session.Single(x=>x.ID == id);
    try
    {
        _session.Delete(item);
        _session.CommitChanges();
        this.FlashInfo("UserAction deleted ...");
        return RedirectToAction("Index");
    }
    catch
    {
        this.FlashError("There was an error deleting this record");
        return View("Edit",item);
    }
}

the css is pretty straightfwd too:

.info
{
    background-color: #CCFFCC;
    border-top: 1px solid #FFCC66;
    border-bottom: 4px solid #FFCC66;
    padding: 6px;
    font-family: helvetica;
    font-size: 1.1em;
    text-align: center;
    border-top-color: #006600;
    border-bottom-color: #006600;
    font-weight: bold;
    color: #339933;
    cursor:pointer;
}
.warning
{
    background-color: #FFFF99;
    border-top: 1px solid #FFCC66;
    border-bottom: 4px solid #FFCC66;
    padding: 6px;
    font-family: helvetica;
    font-size: 0.9em;
    text-align: center;
    border-top-color: #CC9900;
    border-bottom-color: #CC9900;
    font-weight: bold;
    color: #663300;
    cursor:pointer;
}
.error
{
    background-color: #FFCC99;
    border-top: 1px solid #FFCC66;
    border-bottom: 4px solid #FFCC66;
    padding: 4px;
    font-family: helvetica;
    font-size: 1.1em;
    text-align: center;
    border-top-color: #800000;
    border-bottom-color: #800000;
    font-weight: bold;
    color: #990000;
    cursor:pointer;
}

and in your site.master

<%=Html.Flash() %>

    

    
.... etc

enjoy...