asp.net core mvc - Viewcomponent alternative for ajax refresh

Question

I have a viewcomponent that contains some reusable business logic that embed in various pages. This has been working fine. However, I now have a requirement to refresh the viewcomponent using ajax.

Is there any way to accomplish this? From what I have read, it is not possible, although that info was a bit outdated. If it is not possible, what is the best alternative?

Answer 1

On beta7 it is now possible to return a ViewComponent directly from a controller. Check the MVC/Razor section of the announcement

The new ViewComponentResult in MVC makes it easy to return the result of a ViewComponent from an action. This allows you to easily expose the logic of a ViewComponent as a standalone endpoint.

So you could have a simple view component like this:

[ViewComponent(Name = "MyViewComponent")]
public class MyViewComponent : ViewComponent
{
    public IViewComponentResult Invoke()
    {
        var time = DateTime.Now.ToString("h:mm:ss");
        return Content($"The current time is {time}");
    }
}

Create a method in a controller like:

public IActionResult MyViewComponent()
{
    return ViewComponent("MyViewComponent");
}

And do a better job than my quick and dirty ajax refresh:

var container = $("#myComponentContainer");
var refreshComponent = function () {
    $.get("/Home/MyViewComponent", function (data) { container.html(data); });
};

$(function () { window.setInterval(refreshComponent, 1000); });

Of course, prior to beta7 you could create a view as the workaround suggested by @eedam or use the approach described in these answers