Question

I want to test a MVC action method which accpets a custom class parameter via POST (e.g. Book), I have problem passing the parameter via fiddler. Below is my code:

 [HttpPost]  
  public ActionResult BookEdit(BookModel bookModel)
  {

            ...
            return View(...);
  }

 public class BookModel
    {
        public BookModel()
        {        
        }

        public BookModel(Book book)
        {
            this.Authors = book.Authors;
        }

        public List<Author> Authors { get; set; }
    }

    public  class Book
    {
        public List<Author> Authors = new List<Author>();
    }

    public class Author
    {
        public string Name { get; set; }
    }

Below is the xml that is post to the action method

    <BookModel>
        <Authors>
            <Author>
                <Name>1</Name>              
            </Author>
<Author>
                <Name>2</Name>
            </Author>
        </Authors>
    </BookModel>

When I pass the xml, the parameter to the action method is null.

Any idea?

Answer 1

When I pass the xml, the parameter to the action method is null.

Well, that’s normal. I can’t see any code of yours which would parse this XML into a BookModel object. ASP.NET MVC doesn’t do this by default. It does it for JSON, but not XML.

One possibility would be to write a custom Xml value provider as shown here. Another possibility is a custom action filter attribute. Yet another one is a custom model binder.