Question

I have a situation where I am wanting an ‘Add’ View to accept an int from the controller but return a different type to the HttpPost controller method. Confusing, I know. The ‘Add’ View is used to create an object typed as a Widget, but I need to pass in the ID of the WidgetCategory. So in my WidgetController, I would have a method something like:

public ActionResult Add(int id) // 'id' is the WidgetCategoryID
{
    return View(id);
}

However, in the view, since in it’s intended to return a Widget to be added would start like this:

@using MyProject.Models
@model Widget
@{
    ViewBag.Title = "My Title";
    Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_MyLayout.cshtml";
}
@using (Html.BeginForm())
{
    // Insert markup here ...
}

My question is, how do I pass the WidgetCategoryID into the controller if it’s typed to return a Widget? I was hoping to add it as a hidden field inside the form like so:

@Html.Hidden(id)

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Answer 1

default model binder checks for request parameters by name and attempts to set properties on model according. If you need something more evolute, you can take a look to custom model binding. Btw, you can change your action to:

public ActionResult Add(Widget widget) // Widget class has one property named Id with public set
{
    return View(widget);
}

or

public ActionResult Add(int id) // 'id' is the WidgetCategoryID
{
    Widget widget = new Widget();
    widget.Id = id;
    return View(widget);
}

I slightly prefer the second form for creations, but I guess it’s a matter of tastes

Btw, your view’s form shall have inputs for each “important” property of the Widget object. (Hidden or text) via:

@Html.HiddenFor (m => m.Id);