.NET MVC: Refactoring-friendly JavaScript

The Problem

It often happens that you need to make an Ajax call from you JavaScript to an MVC action. So you code it like this (I'm assuming that your JavaScript is in a separate file):

$.ajax({
    url: "MyWebApp/Data/GetAllProducts",
    type: "POST",
    dataType: "json",
    headers: { ... },
    data: { ... },
    success: function (data) { ... }
    error: function (result, error, moreInfo) { ... }
});

Later you decide the GetAllProducts action should really be called GetProducts, because you want to use the same action to get a list of all products, and a list of filtered products, depending on parameters.

So you refactor-rename the action using vanilla Visual Studio, or ReSharper, or another favorite plugin. But guess what? Now you have to go and manually change all your hard-coded JavaScript strings to point to the right action. It's possible that the tool will offer to change these strings too, but you never know whether it'll find all of them or not.

The Solution

In the Razor view of the relevant page, you can initialize your JavaScript like this:

$(document).ready(function() {
    MyScript.init({
        getProductsUrl: "@(Url.Action("GetAllProducts", "Data"))"
    });
});

Define your init function in the JavaScript:

var MyScript = new function() {
    var m_options;

    this.init = function(options) {
        m_options = options;
    };
}

Later you can make your Ajax call like this:

$.ajax({
    url: m_options.getProductsUrl,
    type: "POST",
    dataType: "json",
    headers: { ... },
    data: { ... },
    success: function (data) { ... }
    error: function (result, error, moreInfo) { ... }
});

Voila! Now when you refactor-rename the tool won't be confused and you just saved yourself half an hour of work. And, you can use the same technique to pass in other things from Razor. Just add properties to your options object.
And here is a link to the snippet in the solution at INT64:

http://www.int64.io/Home/Snippet/SWh2V1pxU0JEeG9sNE8wanJjVDljUT090