Question

I am trying to learn ASP.NET MVC and I hit this problem: I have a ‘view product details’ form that I want to reuse as an add/edit form. (When you look at the product details, if you have the rights to do it an Edit link should appear; it should redisplay the same form, but with the textbox fields enabled this time.)

Right now the Details view looks something like this:

<% var product = ViewData.Model; %> <table>   <tr>     <td>Name</td>   </tr>   <tr>     <td><%= Html.TextBox('Name', product.Name, new { size = '50', disabled = 'disabled'})%></td>   </tr> 

Is there a way I could reuse it without putting too much logic in the view? For example, I will need to remove the disabled = 'disabled' part (but the size part needs to stay there), to put everything inside a form and so on.

If it can’t be done, that’s fine, I’m just trying not to repeat the same thing several times in case I need to change it (and I will).

Answer 1

You can always pass in a value indicating what mode you’re in or what privileges you have:

ViewData.Model.CanEdit 

So you might want to create a composite class for your model instead of just using Product

public class ProductViewData {     public Product Product {get; set;}     public bool CanEdit {get; set;} }