ASP.NET MVC: Use Html.Partial or Html.Action?

Question

I have a site with a navigation bar defined in the layout. The navigation bar is used in several views of the site and has some dynamic content that is generated from a couple of queries in the Database.

I am wondering what is the best practice to render this menu (defined in a partial view).

As far as I know I can do it in two ways, with some advantages and disadvantages for each one:

Using Html.Action: + It's completely independent from the view that is using the layout - It adds an extra request to render a section of the page - I'm adding an Action method that returns a Partial view that is not called from Ajax.

Using Html.Partial: + A simple request to render the entire view - Each view model must contain the information required for the navigation bar

I would really appreciate your insights on this since I have several scenarios like this one on my site and I'm not sure which one is the best.

Thanks!

Darin Dimitrov · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-13 07:39:00Z

14

I would use Html.Action especially if this menu contains some dynamic data that is fetched from the database. The advantage is that you can completely dissociate this fetching in an entirely separate action from the main one. In addition the output of child actions can be cached by decorating them with the [OutputCache] attribute. By doing this you could reduce the load on your database if the data doesn't change quite often.

It adds an extra request to render a section of the page

You must have misunderstood something about it. There is no additional request from the client. Everything is served in a single request. There is an additional controller instantiation and action execution but not a new HTTP request from the client. It's as if 2 controller actions were executed in the same request and their result aggregated into a single HTML page sent to the client.

edited Dec 13, 2011 at 7:39

answered Dec 13, 2011 at 6:52

Darin Dimitrov

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4 Comments

Nathan Taylor Over a year ago

While it is true that it executes just one HTTP request, it is also true that the overhead of rendering an action well exceeds that of rendering a partial.

Darin Dimitrov Over a year ago

@NathanTaylor, it's true. There is an overhead which exceeds that of rendering a partial. But this overhead is soooooooooooooooo much negligible compared to all the benefits that you get from using child actions that we should simply accept it. I mean you get separation of concerns, you get clean code, you get caching which will exeed in performance this of rendering a partial, so, yeah, use Html.Action.

Nathan Taylor Over a year ago

I certainly do not disagree, I'm just highlighting the facts. Html.Action FTW.

Tom Pažourek Over a year ago

@Darin Do you have some data or measurements about the performance differences?

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