Question

I recently started an MVC project to query and to report the company’s users, everything seemed to be fine, except when I made a finduser form, I got all stuck!

you see I want the operator to be able to find the appropriate user by entering either hos pin,serial or calling number but the action links I make for the search operation all fail because they are made at the form_load time and so the empty string of text boxes get injected to them.

So my requests are:

1. How to make this filters work.
2. Now a little Ajax textbox suggester on user pin or serial would be great, please gimme a hint or two.

<table>
<tr>
<td>
PIN:</td>
<td>
<asp:TextBox ID="txt_pin" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
Serial Number:</td>
<td>
<asp:TextBox ID="txt_sn" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
CallingNumber:</td>
<td>
<asp:TextBox ID="txt_callingNo" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
CalledThisNumberToday:</td>
<td>
<asp:TextBox ID="txt_calledNo" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
&nbsp;</td>
<td>
&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>
&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
</table>
<%:Html.ActionLink("Search for user", "Details", new { pin = txt_pin.Text })%>

Answer 1

<asp:TextBox>? In an ASP.NET MVC application? I am afraid you got it all wrong.

I would recommend you going through the getting started tutorials here in order to learn the basic concepts of ASP.NET MVC: http://asp.net/mvc

In ASP.NET MVC you use models and in the views you use helpers in order to generate input fields.

So in your case you could design a view model:

public class SearchViewModel
{
    public string Pin { get; set; }
    public string SerialNumber { get; set; }
    public string CallingNumber { get; set; }
    public string CalledThisNumberToday { get; set; }
}

then you could design a controller action which will pass this view model to the view for rendering the search form:

public ActionResult Index() 
{
    var model = new SearchViewModel();
    return View(model);
}

and finally in your strongly typed view you would use HTML helpers:

<%@ Page 
    Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master"
    Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<AppName.Models.SearchViewModel>" %>

<asp:Content ID="MainContent" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server">

    <%= Html.ValidationSummary() %>

    <% using (Html.BeginForm()) { %>

        <div>
            <%= Html.LabelFor(x => x.Pin) %>
            <%= Html.EditorFor(x => x.Pin) %>
        </div>

        <div>
            <%= Html.LabelFor(x => x.SerialNumber) %>
            <%= Html.EditorFor(x => x.SerialNumber) %>
        </div>

        <div>
            <%= Html.LabelFor(x => x.CallingNumber) %>
            <%= Html.EditorFor(x => x.CallingNumber) %>
        </div>

        <div>
            <%= Html.LabelFor(x => x.CalledThisNumberToday) %>
            <%= Html.EditorFor(x => x.CalledThisNumberToday) %>
        </div>

        <p><input type="submit" value="Search for user" /></p>
    <% } %>

</asp:Content>

and the final step would be to implement the controller action that will perform the search and to which this form will be subimtted:

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Index(SearchViewModel model)
{
    if (!ModelState.IsValid) 
    {
        // the model was not valid => redisplay the form
        // so that the user can fix his errors
        return View(model);
    } 

    // TODO: perform the search
    ...
}