Question

I have a table that lists products as well as displays a quantity text box and an Html.ActionLink. Each quantity textbox has a unique id derived from the product id. I think this should be simple but I can’t seem to figure out how to get the value in the associated textbox passed to my controller when the user clicks on the link. My code is below and any help is appreciated.

    <% foreach (var item in Model) { %>

    <tr>
        <td>
            <%= Html.Encode(item.Id) %>
        </td>
        <td>
            <%= Html.Encode(item.Description) %>
        </td>
        <td>
            <%= Html.Encode(String.Format("${0:F}", item.Cost)) %>
        </td>
        <td>
            <%= Html.TextBox(String.Format("quantity{0}", item.Id), "0") %>
        </td>
        <td>
            <%= Html.ActionLink("Add", "Add", new { id = item.Id, quantity="I want the quantity here?" })%>
        </td>
    </tr>

Answer 1

I think what you want is this:

<%= Html.TextBox(String.Format("item[{0}].quantity", item.Id), "0") %>

Have a look at the following Scott Hanselman blog post for more details about this:

ASP.NET Wire Format for Model Binding to Arrays, Lists, Collections, Dictionaries

See also this blog post from Steve Sanderson. It will allow you to edit single items:

Editing a variable-length list of items in ASP.NET MVC