Question

I have a create action that doesn’t send the CreatedOn and CreatedBy back to the HttpPost create action.

These are not user definable properties, and ideally i don’t want them displayed on the form at all. So how do i get these properties into the model, without having them on the form itself? Should they be hidden fields on the form?

The Controller

public virtual ActionResult Create()
    {
        var meeting = new Meeting
        {
            CreatedOn = DateTime.Now,
            CreatedBy = User.Identity.Name,
            StartDate = DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(5),
            EndDate = DateTime.Now.AddHours(3)
        };

        ViewBag.Title = "Create Meeting";
        return View(meeting);
    } 



    [HttpPost]
    public virtual ActionResult Create(Meeting meeting)
    {
        if (ModelState.IsValid)
        {

            _meetingRepository.InsertOrUpdate(meeting);
            _meetingRepository.Save();
            return RedirectToAction(MVC.Meetings.Details(meeting.MeetingId));
        } else {

            return View();
        }
    }

Answer 1

Should they be hidden fields on the form?

Yes, that’s definitely one good way of passing them. Note that this is not secure because the user can fake a POST request and modify them but that could be OK in your scenario.

So if you need security another way is to re-fetch them from the data store as the user cannot modify them in this form so they haven’t changed.