Question

I am in the process of creating a new MVC v3 Razor web application and seem to be having issues in reading values from partial views.

I have a ViewModel (title) which is made up of three other ViewModels

    public ProfileVM Profile { get; set; }
    public SpecsVM Specs { get; set; }
    public GeneralVM General { get; set; }
    public Guid Id { get; set; }

I have a page which is strongly typed to the Title view model, on which I am using the @Html.RenderPartial syntax to render each of the other ViewModels (profile etc) to different partial view
This appears to be working correctly, but I would like only one button on the page to handle the posting of data, and want to capture the values entered by the user into the partial views.
Is this possible?
Thanks in advance

Generated HTML as requested of the form sections. I’ve not added the master page information

  <form action="/Titles/Title/Edit/2bb75b02-9dd7-e011-971f-0003fffb8797" method="post"> 
    <fieldset>
        <h1>
            Title Details</h1>
    <form action="/Titles/Title/Edit/2bb75b02-9dd7-e011-971f-0003fffb8797" method="post">
    <fieldset>
        <p>
            <input type="submit" value="Save" name="TitleGeneral"/>
        </p>
        <hr />
        <table>
            <tr>
                <td class="editor-label" style="width: 150px;"><label for="TitleCode">Code</label>
                </td>
                <td class="editor-label">
                    <input class="text-box single-line" id="TitleCode" name="TitleCode" type="text" value="T00006" /> <span class="field-validation-valid" data-valmsg-for="TitleCode" data-valmsg-replace="true"></span>
                </td>
                <td rowspan="7"> <img src="../../../../Content/demoBF.jpg" width="150px" height="150px" /></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td class="editor-label">
                    <label for="TitleName">Title</label>
                </td>
                <td class="editor-label">
                    <input class="text-box single-line" id="TitleName" name="TitleName" type="text" value="Beaches Of France" />
                    <span class="field-validation-valid" data-valmsg-for="TitleName" data-valmsg-replace="true"></span>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td class="editor-label">
                    <label for="SubTitle">Sub Title</label>
                </td>
                <td class="editor-label"><input class="text-box single-line" id="SubTitle" name="SubTitle" type="text" value="" />
                    <span class="field-validation-valid" data-valmsg-for="SubTitle" data-valmsg-replace="true"></span>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td class="editor-label">
                    <label for="SortingTitle">Sorting Title (If Different)</label>
                </td>
                <td class="editor-label">
                    <input class="text-box single-line" id="SortingTitle" name="SortingTitle" type="text" value="" />
                    <span class="field-validation-valid" data-valmsg-for="SortingTitle" data-valmsg-replace="true"></span>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td class="editor-label"><label for="ShortTitle">Short or abbreviated title</label>
                </td>
                <td class="editor-label"><input class="text-box single-line" id="ShortTitle" name="ShortTitle" type="text" value="TRO1" />
                    <span class="field-validation-valid" data-valmsg-for="ShortTitle" data-valmsg-replace="true"></span>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td class="editor-label"><label for="Comments">Comments</label>
                </td>
                <td class="editor-label">
                    <input class="text-box single-line" id="Comments" name="Comments" type="text" value="" />
                    <span class="field-validation-valid" data-valmsg-for="Comments" data-valmsg-replace="true"></span>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td class="editor-label">
                    <label for="Author">Author</label>
                </td>
                <td class="editor-label">
                    <input class="text-box single-line" id="Author" name="Author" type="text" value="" />
                    <span class="field-validation-valid" data-valmsg-for="Author" data-valmsg-replace="true"></span>
                </td>

         </tr>
        </table>
    </fieldset>
    </form>        <br />
        <br />
       <ul class="tabs">
            <li><a href="#tab1">Profile</a></li>
            <li><a href="#tab2">Specification</a></li>
            <li><a href="#tab3">Authors</a></li>
            <li><a href="#tab4">Editions</a></li>
            <li><a href="#tab5">Restrictions</a></li>
             <li><a href="#tab6">Licences</a></li>
              <li><a href="#tab7">Purchases</a></li>
               <li><a href="#tab8">Restrictions</a></li>

        </ul>
        <div class="tab_container">
            <div id="tab1" class="tab_content">
                <!--Content-->

    <form action="/Titles/Title/Edit/2bb75b02-9dd7-e011-971f-0003fffb8797" method="post">         
    <fieldset>

         <p>
            <input type="submit" value="Save" name="TitleProfile"/>
        </p>


    </fieldset>
    </form>            </div>
            <div id="tab2" class="tab_content">
                <!--Content-->

    <form action="/Titles/Title/Edit/2bb75b02-9dd7-e011-971f-0003fffb8797" method="post">        
    <fieldset>


        <table>
            <tr>
                <td class="editor-label" style="width: 150px;"><label for="Pages">Pages</label>
                </td>
                <td class="editor-label"><input class="text-box single-line" data-val="true" data-val-number="The field Pages must be a number." id="Pages" name="Pages" type="text" value="96" />
                    <span class="field-validation-valid" data-valmsg-for="Pages" data-valmsg-replace="true"></span>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td class="editor-label"><label for="Plates">Plates or illustrations</label>
                </td>
                <td class="editor-label"><input class="text-box single-line" data-val="true" data-val-number="The field Plates or illustrations must be a number." id="Plates" name="Plates" type="text" value="64" />
                    <span class="field-validation-valid" data-valmsg-for="Plates" data-valmsg-replace="true"></span>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td class="editor-label">
                    <label for="PlateType">Plate Type</label>
                </td>
                <td class="editor-label"><input class="text-box single-line" id="PlateType" name="PlateType" type="text" value="Full-colour photographs" />
                    <span class="field-validation-valid" data-valmsg-for="PlateType" data-valmsg-replace="true"></span>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td class="editor-label">
                    <label for="Format">Format</label>
                </td>
                <td class="editor-label"><input class="text-box single-line" id="Format" name="Format" type="text" value="" />
                    <span class="field-validation-valid" data-valmsg-for="Format" data-valmsg-replace="true"></span>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td class="editor-label">
                    <label for="OtherSpecs">Other specifications</label>
                </td>
                <td class="editor-label">
                    <input class="text-box single-line" id="OtherSpecs" name="OtherSpecs" type="text" value="" />
                    <span class="field-validation-valid" data-valmsg-for="OtherSpecs" data-valmsg-replace="true"></span>
                </td>
            </tr>
        </table>

    </fieldset>
    </form>            </div>
            <div id="tab3" class="tab_content">
                <!--Content-->

    <form action="/Titles/Title/Edit/2bb75b02-9dd7-e011-971f-0003fffb8797" method="post">        
    <fieldset>


        <table>
            <tr>
                <td class="editor-label" style="width: 150px;"><label for="Pages">Pages</label>
                </td>
                <td class="editor-label"><input class="text-box single-line" data-val="true" data-val-number="The field Pages must be a number." id="Pages" name="Pages" type="text" value="96" />
                    <span class="field-validation-valid" data-valmsg-for="Pages" data-valmsg-replace="true"></span>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td class="editor-label"><label for="Plates">Plates or illustrations</label>
                </td>
                <td class="editor-label"><input class="text-box single-line" data-val="true" data-val-number="The field Plates or illustrations must be a number." id="Plates" name="Plates" type="text" value="64" />
                    <span class="field-validation-valid" data-valmsg-for="Plates" data-valmsg-replace="true"></span>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td class="editor-label">
                    <label for="PlateType">Plate Type</label>
                </td>
                <td class="editor-label"><input class="text-box single-line" id="PlateType" name="PlateType" type="text" value="Full-colour photographs" />
                    <span class="field-validation-valid" data-valmsg-for="PlateType" data-valmsg-replace="true"></span>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td class="editor-label">
                    <label for="Format">Format</label>
                </td>
                <td class="editor-label"><input class="text-box single-line" id="Format" name="Format" type="text" value="" />
                    <span class="field-validation-valid" data-valmsg-for="Format" data-valmsg-replace="true"></span>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td class="editor-label">
                    <label for="OtherSpecs">Other specifications</label>
                </td>
                <td class="editor-label">
                    <input class="text-box single-line" id="OtherSpecs" name="OtherSpecs" type="text" value="" />
                    <span class="field-validation-valid" data-valmsg-for="OtherSpecs" data-valmsg-replace="true"></span>
                </td>
            </tr>
        </table>

    </fieldset>
</form>            </div>
        </div>
    </fieldset>
</form><div>
    <a href="/Titles/Title">Back to List</a>
</div>
</td></tr>

        </table>

Answer 1

The problem is that the names of the input fields are incorrect. They are missing the prefix indicating the main parent property name. That’s due to trhe usage of partials instead of editor templates. Jimmy Bogard explained this perfectly in this blog post.

So instead of:

@Html.Partial("_somePartial", Model.Profile)

use:

@Html.EditorFor(x => x.Profile)

and the framework will take care of properly naming the fields.