Pass complex object with redirect in ASP.NET MVC?

Question

Hi,

I have a action that looks like this :

[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Post)]
        public ActionResult Register(AdRegister adRegister         


        

Answer 1

ASP.NET MVC's tempdata should be perfect for this.

That said, TempData or Session is one option, but has some downsides like being quite violate and oftentimes murky or difficult to debug. What might be preferable is to "stash" the temporary value in a persistent store, such as the user's profile or your own database, then pass a key through the validate method which can then load the data from said store. This also opens up the possibility of recovering abandoned carts and such.

Answer 2

an idea would probably create a session variable and pass around a Key that references that session variable if the object is required acorss a few views?

Answer 3

One possibility would be to pass the simple properties in the query string:

return RedirectToAction(
    "Validate", 
    new { 
        foo = adRegister.Foo, 
        bar = adRegister.Bar, 
        ... and so on for all the properties you want to send
    }
);

Another possibility is to store it in TempData (for the lifetime of the redirect) or Session (for the lifetime of the ASP.NET session):

TempData["adRegister"] = adRegister;
return RedirectToAction("Validate");

and then retrieve it from TempData:

public ActionResult Validate()
{
    adRegister = TempData["adRegister"] as AdRegister;
    ...
}

Yet another possibility (and the one I would recommend you) is to persist this object in the POST method in your datastore:

[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Post)]
public ActionResult Register(AdRegister adRegister, IEnumerable<HttpPostedFileBase> files)
{
    ...
    string id = Repository.Save(adRegister);
    return RedirectToAction("Validate", new { id = adRegister.Id });
}

and then fetch it from the data store after you redirect:

public ActionResult Validate(string id)
{
    AdRegister adRegister = Repository.Get(id);
    ...
}