Question

Hi I have an MVC textbox I’m populating like:

<p>Find: @Html.TextBox("SearchString", Request.Cookies["query"].Value as string, new { id = "search" })
        &nbsp; <input type="submit" value="Search" class="button" />
    </p>

This works as I wanted but the problem is if the user clears their cookies there will be a null exception obviously.

How are you supposed to set it up so that if the cookie is null then it doesn’t even try to put anything in the textbox?

Answer 1

Could you could use a ternary operator

<p>Find: @Html.TextBox("SearchString", Request.Cookies["query"] == null ? string.Empty : Request.Cookies["query"].Value as string, new { id = "search" })
        &nbsp; <input type="submit" value="Search" class="button" />
    </p>

The best solution would be to get the cookie in the controller and then pass it through using the viewBag or adding it to a ViewModel.