Question

I have been reading hundreds of posts on ASP.NET blogs and questions on StackOverflow but I can’t find a solution to this (apparently) simple problem. Here is a simplified version:

Question Class

public class Question
{
    public int QuestionId { get; set; }
    public string QuestionBody { get; set; }
    public List<string> Answers { get; set; }
}

I have a simple form for the creation of a Question object. I know there isn’t an automatic EditorFor for collections, so I have tried with:

In my form:

<div class="editor-field">
     @Html.TextBox("Answers")
     @Html.TextBox("Answers")
     @Html.TextBox("Answers")
</div>

In my controller:

public ActionResult Create(Question question, List<string> Answers)
 ...

The answers are correctly passed but they are not being binded to my model!

Question #1: Does exist a way to automatically tie this List of strings to the List of strings contained in my Question model?

Then I tried to “force” this List to be the List in my model, doing:

   question.Answers = Answers;
   db.Questions.Add(question);
   db.SaveChanges();

But my collection is always being passed as empty. I think this is due to the ASP.NET MVC model binding and validation.

So, Question #2: Does exist a way to “modify” my question object just before it is saved to the database with db.SaveChanges() ?

Thank you.

Answer 1

you will need to create an editor template for your list see here:

Editor Templates for List<string>

or you can simply put

<div class="editor-field">
     @Html.TextArea("Answers")
</div>

then the returning info will arrive as string and you can then split that string by line and make a list of it using Linq extensions:

public ActionResult Create(Question question, string answers)
{
    var answerList = answers.Split('\n').ToList();
     question.Answers = answerList;
     db.Questions.Add(question);
    db.SaveChanges();
}