How to use star rating plugin in MVC 4 application?

Question

I want to use this star rating plugin in my MVC 4 application. I have Rating table like this:

 public class Rating
    {
        public int FromUserId { get; set; }
        public int ToProductId { get; set; }
        public int RateValue { get; set; }
    }

I have an action like this:

public ActionResult SubmitRating(int fromUserId, int toProductId , int rateValue )
   {
       return View();
   }

FromUserId is @WebSecurity.CurrentUserId and ToProductId is Model.Id

I have problem with ajax. I need to send RateValue to action. How can I send selected value to SubmitRating action in controller and reverse, to send back an answer from controller to view (to show selected value, to show any message to user etc.) ?

This does not work. How to write ajax code here?

$(function(){
    $('#star-rating').rating(function(vote, event){
        $.ajax({
            url: "@Url.Action("SubmitRating", "MyController")",
            type: "GET",
            data: {rateValue : vote},
        });
    });
});

Answer 1

Let's assume some things:

your HTML has the product id:

<div id="star-rating" data-pid="@Model.Id">
    <input type="radio" name="example" class="rating" value="1" />
    <input type="radio" name="example" class="rating" value="2" />
    <input type="radio" name="example" class="rating" value="3" />
    <input type="radio" name="example" class="rating" value="4" />
    <input type="radio" name="example" class="rating" value="5" />
</div>

so you can have a list of products instead only one product per page.

It's not a security practice to pass the user id if that's the same as the current logged in one, you could simple fetch the userid from the current session., so we would have in our controller:

public class ServicesController : Controller
{
    public ActionResult RateProduct(int id, int rate)
    {
        int userId = WebSecurity.CurrentUserId;
        bool success = false;
        string error = "";

        try
        {
            success = db.RegisterProductVote(userId, id, rate);
        }
        catch (System.Exception ex)
        {
            // get last error
            if (ex.InnerException != null)
                while (ex.InnerException != null)
                    ex = ex.InnerException;

            error = ex.Message;
        }

        return Json(new { error = error, success = success }, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
    }
}

this way you can easily call your rate like:

<script>
    $(function () {

        $('#star-rating').rating(function (vote, event) {
            var anchor = $(event.currentTarget),
                pid = anchor.closest(".ratting-item").data("pid"),
                url = '@Url.Action("RateProduct", "Services")';

            // show a loading div that would have a animated gif
            $(".loading").show();

            $.ajax({
                url: url,
                type: "GET",
                data: { rate: vote, id: pid },
                success: function (data) {
                    if (data.success) {
                        // all went well, here you can say Thank you

                    }
                    else {
                        // There must be an Exception error, let's show it

                    }
                },
                error: function (err) {
                    // the call thrown an error
                },
                complete: function () {
                    $(".loading").hide();
                }
            });
        });

    });
</script>

---

updated

$(this) does not return the correct element, so we need to use the event property that is passed along the call:

So we need to change to this:

var anchor = $(event.currentTarget),
    pid = anchor.closest(".ratting-item").data("pid"),
    url = '@Url.Action("RateProduct", "Services")';

a simple console.log($(this)) and then console.log(event); would tell you that, plus, if you fire Fiddler, you will see what's missing as well seeing the error on the returned call.

Project example on GIT

Here's the source code of this project working: https://github.com/balexandre/Stackoverflow-Question-14014091