MVC3: Clicking a submit button to submit a form does not render partial view

Question

Ok here is the deal: Im using BeginRouteForm to submit a search. Anyway, when the button is not set to submit and I click the button, it runs the search just fine and it behaves as it should, meaning that the content is rendered properly. When the button IS set to a type of submit and the button is clicked, the content that is returned is simply some text and the HTML is not rendered at all.

It is important to note that the controller is attempted to return a partial view that is using javascript to replace some of the content using ajax (this means the content type is 'text/javascript').

Controller Method:

public ActionResult Search()
{
  [Do Some Work]
  return JsView("Index.js");
}

JsView("Index.js") just sets the content type to 'text/javascript' and returns the partial view that coincides with the parameter that was passed

Form Snippit:

<div style="float:right;">
 @using (Html.BeginRouteForm(ControllerActionName, SearchRouteValues, FormMethod.Get, new { id = "worklistSearch" }))
 {
   <input type="text" placeholder="Search Cases" id="SearchCriteria" name="SearchCriteria" value="" />
   <input class="search image-button no-text filter" value="Filter" id="worklist-search-button" />
  }
 </div>

PS: I seem to need to make the button a type of submit in order to get the form to submit using the enter key.

I would like to know how I can make this work so that it renders the view properly and allows me to click the submit button.

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 31 '11 at 20:03

Based on your description, it appears that you want to capture the submit event for your form, then make your AJAX call to your controller. If this is what you want, you then need to prevent the submit event from propagating, so that no POST occurs.

Using jquery, do something like this:

$("form").submit(function() {
    // make AJAX submission to controller
    // process JS returned from controller

    // stop submit event from propagating
    return false;
});

MVC3: Clicking a submit button to submit a form does not render partial view

1 Answers1