Relative URL in JQuery Post Call

Question

I have the following situation.

I developed my first MVC Asp.Net application. it runs on my server at the following adress

http://localhost:59441/

I wrote some JQuery Post Methods that looked like this

  $.ajax({
        type: "POST",
        url: "/CeduleGlobale/UpdateCheckBox", ...

CeduleGlobale is my ControllerName and UpdateCheckBox is my methodName

When I put the Application on the testServer, it was put in a VirtualDirectory

hence the application is now

http://testServer/JprApplication/

no more port to specify and also an application Name

When I started to test, I quickly noticed my JQuery Post calls didn't work anymore...

I modified them so now the URL is

/JprMvc/CeduleGlobale/UpdateCheckBox

the problem is 2 fold.

1. this makes it hard to test on my development machine because IIS Express doesn't allow me to specify a virtual Directory.
2. I don't like hardCoding the Virtual Directory Name in the JQuery because I dont know what name the Application will have in the production environment and therefore i will have to modify my script before i can install the application in production.

I am sure I am missing some basic thing to simplify this.

Thanks

Answer 1

Depending on where you actually have your JavaScript located (inside the View or a separate JS file), you have a couple of options.

Option 1 - Inside the View

Simply use the Html Helpers to generate the links for you

<script type="text/javascript">
   $(function(){
        $.ajax({
           type: "POST",
           url: "@Url.Action("UpdateCheckBox", "CeduleGlobale")"
        });
   });
</script>

Option 2 - Standalone JS File

We typically have a function per page that sets up that page's handlers. So, we can do something like the following:

View

<script type="text/javascript">
    $(function(){
        SetOrderPage('@Url.Action("UpdateCheckBox", "CeduleGlobale")');
    });
</script>

Standalone JS File

function SetOrderPage(ajaxPostUrl){
       $.ajax({
           type: "POST",
           url: ajaxPostUrl
       )};
}

Option 3 - Standalone JS file Method 2

You could have a global variable in your in your JS file that is the siteroot. The draw back here is that you will need to hand create each of your action method paths. On each page, you could set the site root global variable as such:

Standalone JS File

var siteRoot;

View

<script type="text/javascript">
    siteRoot = '@Request.ApplicationPath';
</script>

Keep in mind you cannot use Razor syntax in a stand alone JS file. I believe that it is best to let Razor/MVC/.NET dynamically give you the site path or URL route as it will really cut down on the mistakes that could be made when moving between sites/virtual directories.