Error Page When no Results are found

Question

I am creating an application that is boosting my C# skills nothing academic, so please can you help me am nearly finished and I want to be done by 12th Jan because am going on holiday.

The problem is I want to modify my code so it shows an error page when a search is not found for example I searched an event and it a page came up saying nothing is found and press this to go back. I am using MVC3 in C# here is my search code from my controller:

public ViewResult Index(string sortOrder, string currentFilter, string searchString, int? page)
    {
        using (var db = new UniversityNewsEntities1())
        {
            ViewBag.CurrentSort = sortOrder;
            ViewBag.NameSortParm = String.IsNullOrEmpty(sortOrder) ? "Name desc" : "";
            ViewBag.DateSortParm = sortOrder == "Date" ? "Date desc" : "Date";

            if (Request.HttpMethod == "GET")
            {
                searchString = currentFilter;
            }
            else
            {
                page = 1;
            }
            ViewBag.CurrentFilter = searchString;

            var FullArticle = from a in db.NewsItems
                       select a;
            if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(searchString))
            {
                FullArticle = FullArticle.Where(a => a.Headline.ToUpper().Contains(searchString.ToUpper()));

            }
            switch (sortOrder)
            {
                case "Name desc":
                    FullArticle = FullArticle.OrderBy(a => a.Headline);
                    break;
                case "Date":
                    FullArticle =FullArticle.OrderBy(a => a.Posted);
                    break;
                case "Date desc":
                    FullArticle = FullArticle.OrderBy(a => a.Posted);
                    break;
                default:
                    FullArticle = FullArticle.OrderByDescending(a => a.Posted);
                    break;
            }

            int pageSize = 3;
            int pageNumber = (page ?? 1);
            return View(FullArticle.ToPagedList(pageNumber, pageSize));
        }
    }  

This code fully works and all I need is a way that will inform who ever is using this when they search something and if its not found in the database a page will appear telling them nothing is found please go back via a hyper link. Am using ASP.NET MVC3 and this is my main controller and everything works up to know.

Answer 1

First check if any results have been found. Remove this line:

return View(FullArticle.ToPagedList(pageNumber, pageSize));

with something like

var results = FullArticle.ToPagedList(pageNumber, pageSize);
if (results.Any()) 
{
    return View(results);
}
return RedirectToAction("Error");

You'll need to add a new controller action in NewsController

public ActionResult Error()
{
    return View();
}

All the HTML for showing the error and the back link would go in a new view (Views/News/Error.cshtml), which you can ask Visual Studio to generate.