MVC ActionLink in the Umbraco request context?

Question

I'm currently working with Umbraco 6.1.6 and some mvc views and controllers. What I try to do is the following:

In my razor view I have the following line to create an actionlink:

@Html.ActionLink("Klik to search...", "Search", "Search", new { SearchText = "searchterm" }, null)

The actionlink fires the Search method of the SearchController (is a SurfaceController):

public ActionResult Search(string SearchText)
{
     if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(SearchText))
     {
        return RedirectToCurrentUmbracoPage();
     }

    SearchResult result = SearchManager.Instance.Search(SearchText);

    return View("SearchResults", result);
}

When I use an textbox and an submit button in an Html.BeginUmbracoForm this works well but when I use Html.ActionLink the RedirectToCurrentUmbracoPage throws an exception ( Cannot find the Umbraco route definition in the route values, the request must be made in the context of an Umbraco request ) and the results page does not use the specified style template.

How can I force the ActionLink to be made in the context of an Umbraco request? And does that bring back the styling like the other Umbraco pages?

Thank you for your time!

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered May 09 '14 at 13:10

I think your search is actually an action and not a link to an action.

In your controller, we should see this

//This is to display the actual search form
[ChildActionOnly]
public ActionResult Search()
{
    return PartialView("_SearchForm");
}

//This is to display the result of the search
[HttpPost]
[NotChildAction]
public ActionResult Search(string SearchText)
{
    if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(SearchText))
    {
        return CurrentUmbracoPage();
    }
    SearchResult result = SearchManager.Instance.Search(SearchText);
    return PartialView("_SearchResults", result);
}

While in your umbraco view, you should call this form with an Html.Action

@Html.Action("Search", "MySearchSurface")

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:22

0

Firstly, you shouldn't be using surface controllers to render pages like a search page. Instead they should be used to output page components, e.g. the search results.

Secondly, you could use a controller that inherits from RenderMvcController for your search page.

Lastly, you can't really use Html.ActionLink for retrieving the URL of a page published by Umbraco. See my answer here to explain why. Instead you need to use the Umbraco content cache, in other words walk the content object tree to find the search page, e.g. @Model.Content.Ancestors(1).Descendants("SearchPage").First().Url or something like it.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:22

Community

1
1

answered May 07 '14 at 14:18

Digbyswift

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Don't really agree with the last point. I was sure that Html.ActionLink works perfectly for a SurfaceController. Because surfaceControllers are based on MVC. Therefor it SHOULD work. If not, CHop is missing something or Shannon screwed something up. – dampee May 07 '14 at 19:26
1

They do work for SurfaceControllers. I didn't say they didn't. I said you can't retrieve the URL of a published page using `Html.ActionLink`. – Digbyswift May 08 '14 at 08:44
It does work indeed but the page does not apply the layout. I just get a plain HTML page. – May 08 '14 at 10:51

MVC ActionLink in the Umbraco request context?

2 Answers2