Now I've seen some questions like this, but it's not exactly what I want to ask, so for all those screaming duplicate, I apologize :).

I've barely touched ASP.NET MVC but from what I understand there is no ViewState/ControlState... fine. So my question is what is the alternative to retaining a control's state? Do we go back to old school ASP where we might simulate what ASP.NET ViewState/ControlState does by creating hidden form inputs with the control's state, or with MVC, do we just assume AJAX always and retain all state client-side and make AJAX calls to update?

This question has some answers, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1285547/maintaining-viewstate-in-asp-net-mvc, but not exactly what I'm looking for in an answer.

UPDATE: Thanks for all the answers so far. Just to clear up what I'm not looking for and what I'm looking for:

Not looking for:

• Session solution
• Cookie solution
• Not looking to mimic WebForms in MVC

What I am/was looking for:

• A method that only retains the state on postback if data is not rebound to a control. Think WebForms with the scenario of only binding a grid on the initial page load, i.e. only rebinding the data when necessary. As I mentioned, I'm not trying to mimic WebForms, just wondering what mechanisms MVC offers.