How do you persist querystring values in asp.net mvc?

Question

What is a good way to persist querystring values in asp.net mvc?

If I have a url: /questions?page=2&sort=newest&items=50&showcomments=1&search=abcd

On paging links I want to keep those querystring values in all the links so they persist when the user clicks on the "next page" for example (in this case the page value would change, but the rest would stay the same)

I can think of 2 ways to do this:

1. Request.Querystring in the View and add the values to the links
2. Pass each querystring value from the Controller back into the View using ViewData

Is one better than the other? Are those the only options or is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

i use a extension method for that:

public static string RouteLinkWithExtraValues(
        this HtmlHelper htmlHelper,
        string name,
        object values)
    {
        var routeValues = new RouteValueDictionary(htmlHelper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values);

        var extraValues = new RouteValueDictionary(values);
        foreach (var val in extraValues)
        {
            if (!routeValues.ContainsKey(val.Key))
                routeValues.Add(val.Key, val.Value);
            else
                routeValues[val.Key] = val.Value;
        }

        foreach (string key in htmlHelper.ViewContext.HttpContext.Request.Form)
        {
            routeValues[key] = htmlHelper.ViewContext.HttpContext.Request.Form[key];
        }

        foreach (string key in htmlHelper.ViewContext.HttpContext.Request.QueryString)
        {
            if (!routeValues.ContainsKey(key) && htmlHelper.ViewContext.HttpContext.Request.QueryString[key] != "")
                routeValues[key] = htmlHelper.ViewContext.HttpContext.Request.QueryString[key];
        }

        var urlHelper = new UrlHelper(htmlHelper.ViewContext.RequestContext);

        return string.Format("<a href=\"{0}\">{1}</a>", urlHelper.RouteUrl(routeValues), name);
    }