Introduction
This is a simple tutorial to explain how to use jquery UI tab in MVC3 to create tabview in MVC. MVC does not support server side ASP.NET control like ASP.NET. MVC3 specially contains HTML helper class and Ajax class to support UI design. There is no helper class method that will provide tabview for the UI. In this tutorial, I will demonstrate how to create tabview in MVC3 using jquery UI tab plugin. I have not explained how to use jquery UI tab plugin because that is done better in jquery side. I request you to download jquery plugin and read how to use the plugin from here.
Background
Create MVC3 empty project by selecting view engine as the Razor view. Add Home Controller and Index Action. I have Database name Demo in my App_Data folder. For demo purposes, I have added Product
table in my database. Product
table contains the product id, product name and product description as follows:
Product Id | Product Name | Product Description |
1 | Bag | Cost up to 3 thousand. Manufacture product a and Product b. |
2 | Pen | Cost up to 500 Rs. Contain gel and ink pen. |
3 | Pencile | Cost up to 100 Rs. Contain 4,3,2,1 B pencile. |
4 | NoteBook | Cost up to 200 Rs. Contain 200 pages and 400 pages book. |
My intention is to create a simple Tab view where product name is defined as the tab and product description is defined as the tab content.
Using the Code
Let's start building our TabView
using Jquery UI Tab. I have created ADO.NET entity data model named Demo.edmx as my Model
in Model folder of MVC project.
I have instantiated Model
entity class as follows:
DemoEntities db = new DemoEntities();
Let's fetch all records from product
table and pass the records to the view.
public ActionResult Index()
{
IList<Product> productList = new List<Product>();
productList = (from m in db.Products select m).ToList<Product>();
return View(productList);
}
I have created Index
action in Home controller. I have added Linq expression to fetch record from product
table and type cast to List of product and pass that list to the view.
All set now, let's create TabView
with just a two step process.
Step 1: For each tab, create list item having anchor
tag with unique id prefix with '#' representing caption of the tab.
Step 2: For each list item, add div
with same id as that of anchor
tag id representing content of the tab. Div
id is not prefixed with '#'.
Note: For each tab anchor
tag and div
tag, id is the same but anchor
tag id is prefixed with #
where div
tag id is not.
Rest of the magic is done by the JQuery UI Tab.
I have created strongly typed Index view of typeof IEnumerable
collection of product
entity class and pass the list of product
entity class to the View.
@model IEnumerable<TabViewDemo.Models.Product>
@{
ViewBag.Title = "Index";
}
<div id="tabs">
<ul>
@foreach (var item in Model)
{
<li><a href=#@item.Name>@item.Name</a></li>
}
</ul>
@foreach (var item in Model)
{
<div id=@item.Name>
@item.Description
</div>
}
</div>
I have set product
name as my tab caption and product
description as my tab content. Tab caption is represented by the link name. Tab content is represented by the div
. Link
and div
elements having the same id represent a tab.
Note: Link id prefix with #
where div
id is not. I have a unique product name in my product
table. I have kept product
name as link and div
id where link id prefix with #.
Please confirm that you have added the following JQuery and CSS.
<script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery-1.4.4.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery-ui.js")"
type="text/javascript"></script>
<link href="@Url.Content("~/Content/themes/base/jquery-ui.css")"
rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<script>
$(function () {
$("#tabs").tabs();
});
</script>
We have selected the div
with id tabs as our tabview container which contains un-ordered list with anchor
tag as tab caption and div
tag as tab content that will be converted into tabview. Rest of the magic is done by the jquery UI tab plugin. You can customize your tab view based on your requirement by modifying CSS "content/themes/base/jquery-ui.css". This ends our simple demo of tabview. Hope you enjoyed this demo.