Question

I have a foreach based table in my MVC partial view:

<% foreach (var item in Model) { %>    
    <tr>
        <td><%= Html.Encode(item.FirstName) %></td>
        <td><%= Html.Encode(item.LastName) %></td>
        <td><%= Html.Encode(item.LastVisit) %></td>
    </tr>    
<% } %>

Next to it I have a different control with a bunch of fields that allow searching in many different ways, including option dropdowns (search based on certain IDs etc.):

<select>
    <option value="1">Local</option>
    <option value="2">Public</option>
    <option value="3">Special</option>
</select>
<input type="text" name="freeTextSearch" />
<input type="text" name="floorNumber" />

Would I use a custom ModelBinder here, or simply a “ContactFilter” object like this:

public class ContactFilter
{    
     public Int32 ContactSourceId;
     public String FreeTextSearch;
     public Int32 FloorNumber;
}

and then access it this way:

public ActionResult Filter(ContactFilter filter)
{
    // do filtering, return view
}

Or is there a better way of doing this? The other problem I am encountering is that I will need to include sorting and paging parameters (current page, sort field, direction) in the filter. The sort direction needs to be converted from string into a SortDirection enum instance. So I guess I can’t use the default Model Binder for this anymore, or can I?

Answer 1

Are you showing/hiding search fields based on the selected item in the dropdown? (Local/Public/Special)?

If so, you might want to change the form’s action with javascript when the dropdown changes, and create a controller action for each set of search fields that can be used at once.

Then each action on your controller can take only the parameters it needs. Seems like that might make it easier to test.

If the user can search on all fields at once, I think the method you propose is good.