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I'm having a problem where a controller action is called at least twice. I have a view that has another view as its layout page, and the view is called multiple times. If I remove the specification for the layout then the action is consistently executed once. I looked through StackOverflow and other sites but couldn't find a problem which had the same characteristics as mine so I'm posting a new question.

   Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_ProfileLayout.cshtml";

Index.cshtml inside my Profile folder: @{
ViewBag.Title = "Index";    

Controller Action:
public ActionResult Index()
        //ToDo: BusinessLogic
        //This method gets called twice
        return View();

It seem's like a simple problem and I'm definitely missing something obvious. I've posted the sample project on this site: https://skydrive.live.com/#cid=F2DAB940147490B0&id=F2DAB940147490B0%21140

Any ideas what's wrong?


Update: Here's the view: @{ ViewBag.Title = "TestMVCProject"; Layout = null; }

    <link rel="Stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../../Content/ActiveSite.css" />    
    <link href="../../Content/themes/TestMVCProject/jquery-ui-1.9.1.custom.min.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
    <script src="../../Scripts/jquery-1.8.2.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script src="../../Scripts/jquery-ui-1.9.1.custom.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

<div class="container">
  <div class="header">  
  <div id="loginimagecontainer">
  @using (Html.BeginForm("LoginActions", "Account", FormMethod.Post, new { @id = "LoginActionsForm" }))
  <a href="#"><img src="/images/icons/message-icon.png" width="60" height="60" alt="Messages" title="Messages"/></a>
  <a href="/Account/LogOff"><img src="/images/icons/log-out-icon.png" width="60" height="60" alt="Log off" title="Log off"/></a>

  <div class="logotext"><img alt="TestMVCProject Logo" src="#" width="350" height="150" id="TestMVCProjectLogo" /></div>
  <div class="content profile">  
    <div id="leftPane">
        <img src="#" alt="Placeholder" width="165" height="200" id="ProfilePhoto" title="Profile Photo" />
        <div id="Username"></div>
        <div id="NavLinks">
            <div class="ProfileNavigation" onclick="Navigate('/Profile/Update')"><span>Profile</span><img src="/images/icons/edit-icon.png" width="30" height="30" alt="Profile" /></div>
            <div class="ProfileNavigation"><span>Search</span><img src="/images/icons/search-icon.png" width="30" height="30" alt="Search" /></div>
            <div class="ProfileNavigation" onclick="Navigate('/Photo')"><span>Photos</span><img src="/images/icons/camera-icon.png" width="30" height="30" alt="Photos"/></div>
      <div id="adcontainer">
        <h4>Ads go here</h4>
        <p>content goes here</p>    

    <div id="centerPane">

    <div id="redirectiondialog" class="dialog">
    <br />
    Hey, wait up... we're redirecting you over to the login page
    <br />

    <script type="text/javascript">    
        function Navigate(url) {
            window.location = url;
            return false;

and here's the footer page:

 <div class="footer">
    <div class="fltrt">Copyright 2012 TestMVCProject Inc&nbsp;</div>
    <p><a href="/Profile/Test">About</a> | <a href="#">Contact</a> | <a href="#">FAQ</a> | <a href="#">Advertise</a> | <a href="#">Support</a> | <a href="#">Feedback</a> | <a href="#">Login</a> | <a href="#">Register</a> | <a href="#">Privacy</a> | <a href="#">Terms</a></p>    

Update: @Tieson T: Thanks, I changed this to be Html.Partial instead of RenderPage. However the problem still persists as the action method still gets called twice... (Editing description as I don't have privileges to add comments)

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What does your layout view look like? –  Tieson T. Dec 23 '12 at 18:36
I just updated the description and added this information now –  user1717575 Dec 25 '12 at 3:46
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3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

I figured out the problem. There was this line in the code:

The src was going back to the same page. Once I replace it with a "" it works fine now.

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Maybe mark this as the answer if you can as it's still showing up as an unanswered question. –  Steve Owen Jan 4 '13 at 15:24
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Since your _Footer.cshtml view is just plain old HTML, there is absolutely no reason to call @RenderPage() to insert it into your layout. Use @Html.Partial() instead:


I honestly don't know for sure why the layout is called twice, but I assume @RenderPage() (which I've never had a need for) renders an entire HTML page and injects the results. You'd have to check the page source in your browser to confirm.


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I also faced same problem. The Action was rendering twice. The only problem was with

<img id="blah" src="#" alt="your image" /> 

Dont know for what reason src attribute of image was causing to perform rendering twice on page.

I just changed it to ""`

<img id="blah" src="" alt="your image" />

and it is working fine now.

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