post and get with same method signature

In my controller I have two actions called "Friends". The one that executes depends on whether or not it's a "get" versus a "post".

So my code snippets look something like this:

// Get:
[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Get)]
public ActionResult Friends()
{
    // do some stuff
    return View();
}

// Post:
[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Post)]
public ActionResult Friends()
{
    // do some stuff
    return View();
}

However, this does not compile since I have two methods with the same signature (Friends). How do I go about creating this? Do I need to create just one action but differentiate between a "get" and "post" inside of it? If so, how do I do that?

Solution 1:

Rename the second method to something else like "Friends_Post" and then you can add [ActionName("Friends")] attribute to the second one. So the requests to the Friend action with POST as request type, will be handled by that action.

// Get:
[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Get)]
public ActionResult Friends()
{
    // do some stuff
    return View();
}

// Post:
[ActionName("Friends")]
[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Post)]
public ActionResult Friends_Post()
{
    // do some stuff
    return View();
}

Solution 2:

If you truly only want one routine to handle both verbs, try this:

[AcceptVerbs("Get", "Post")]
public ActionResult ActionName(string param1, ...)
{
//Fun stuff goes here.
}

One potential caveat: I'm using MVC release 2. Not sure if this was supported in MVC 1. The Intellisense documentation for AcceptVerbs should let you know.