Question

I am trying to solve the following problem.

Lets say you have the the following code in your view

@foreach (var x in Model)
{
    <input type="checkbox" name="IDs" value="@x.ID"  /> 
}

The user then makes bunch of selections clicks some link. How do pass the the ids of the selected check boxes to the controller.

e.g you have the following link

@Html.ActionLink("Do Something", "ActionName", new { selection = ???? // i dont know how i reference the checke boxes })

I know I can put the loop in a Html begin form and make the link a submit button but this is an abstract of the problem i am trying to solve. In the actual application i cannot convert the link to button.

I would prefer not to use JavaScript if possible.

Answer 1

I do not know that there is a way to do this with typical MVC helpers. What I have done in the past is created the link so that it’s onclick called a custom jquery function that would select all of the inputs with type checkbox who are selected, and then create a list to be sent back.

Something like this:

$(
    $('#anchorid').click(function()
        {
            SubmitCheckBoxes();
        });
);

function SubmitCheckBoxes()
{
    var list = {};
    $(input[type="checkbox"]:checked).each(
        function() 
        {
            var identifier = $(this).attr('for');
            if(identifier == undefined)
                identifier = $(this).attr('name');
            if(list[identifier])
                list[identifier].push($(this).val());
            else
                list[identifier] = [$(this).val()];
        });
    //This must be here to make any json array not have brackets.
    //MVC binding will not work otherwise
    jQuery.ajaxSettings.traditional = true;
    $.post("./ActionName", list, function(data){//do something on response});
}