Question

I got the following Html:

<div class="horizontalRadio">
    <label for="SearchBag.DisplayTypeChips" id="DisplayTypeChipsLabel">
        <%=ViewData.Model.T9nProvider.TranslateById("CommonWeb.Chips")%>
    </label>
    <%=Html.RadioButton("displayType", DisplayTypes.Chip,
        Model.DisplayType.Equals(DisplayTypes.Chip.ToString(), StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase),
        new { @id = "SearchBag.DisplayTypeChips" })%>
</div>
<div class="horizontalRadio">
    <label for="SearchBag.DisplayTypeGrid" id="DisplayTypeGridLabel">
        <%=ViewData.Model.T9nProvider.TranslateById("CommonWeb.Grid")%>
    </label>
    <%=Html.RadioButton("displayType", DisplayTypes.Grid,
       Model.DisplayType.Equals(DisplayTypes.Grid.ToString(), StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase),
        new { @id = "SearchBag.DisplayTypeGrid" })%>
</div>

Whenever Model.DisplayType is “grid”, everything is fine; the second button is checked.
When the value is “chip”, nothing is checked. In the debugger, I can see that Model.DisplayType.Equals(DisplayTypes.Chip.ToString()) is true. When I change the name of the buttons to something different, it works too.
Happens I don’t want to change the name because this is the name that makes sense. This is the name I’m using throughout my application …

Any ideas WHY this name is evil?

Answer 1

There is an issue in ASP.NET MVC with regards to having a property on your model with the same name as the name of a “grouped” element (like a select or a radio group).

See http://weblogs.asp.net/ashicmahtab/archive/2009/03/27/asp-net-mvc-html-dropdownlist-and-selected-value.aspx for details.

It might be this, it’s worth trying.