Returning a PartialView with both HTML and JavaScript

Question

I am making an AJAX call (with jQuery) to retrieve a PartialView. Along with the HTML I\'d like to send back a JSON representation of the object the View is dis

Answer 1

I think I found a pretty good way to do this, just wrap the JSON up in an HtmlHelper extension. Here's the class:

using System.Web.Script.Serialization;

public static class JsonExtensions {
    public static string Json(this HtmlHelper html, string variableName) {
        return Json(html, variableName, html.ViewData.Model);
    }

    public static string Json(this HtmlHelper html, string variableName, object model) {
        TagBuilder tag = new TagBuilder("script");
        tag.Attributes.Add("type", "text/javascript");
        JavaScriptSerializer jsonSerializer = new JavaScriptSerializer();
        tag.InnerHtml = "var " + variableName + " = " + jsonSerializer.Serialize(model) + ";";
        return tag.ToString();
    }
}

And you call it via:

<%= Html.Json("foo") %>
<%= Html.Json("bar", Model.Something) %>

The one catch that I can think of is that it isn't a completely perfect separation; you are still technically putting JavaScript in the HTML. But, it doesn't make an extra call to the server, and the markup in the IDE is still very clean.