MVC: pass parameter to view?

Question

MVC newbie question:

I\'m picking up a URL of the form go/{mainnav}/{subnav}, which I\'ve successfully routed to the GoController class, me

Answer 1

You use a ViewModel class to transfer the data:

public class IndexViewModel
{
    public string MainNav { get; set; }
    public string SubNav { get; set; }

    public IndexViewModel(string mainnav, string subnav)
    {
        this.MainNav = mainnav;
        this.SubNav = subnav;
    }
}

Your action method then comes out

public ActionResult Index(string mainnav, string subnav)
{
    return View(new IndexViewModel(mainnav, subnav));
}

This means your view has to be strongly typed:

<%@ Page Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage" %>

In your view, you output the data like so:

myobj.mainnav = <%: Model.MainNav %>;

An alternative solution if you use MVC3, would be to use the dynamic ViewBag:

public ActionResult Index(string mainnav, string subnav)
{
    ViewBag.MainNav = mainnav;
    ViewBag.SubNav = subnav;
    return View();
}

which would be accessed in the page as so:

myobj.mainnav = <%: ViewBag.MainNav %>;

However, I would recommend that you read up on unobtrusive javascript and see if you can improve your design to avoid this specific problem.