Question

If I have a custom object like this:

public class StatisticsRequest
    {
        public string Level { get; set; }
        public string Analysis { get; set; }
        ...more properties
    }

Then can I declare an MVC2 controller like this?:

public ActionResult GetResponseStats(StatisticsRequest statsRequest)

and get my querystring parameters automatically parsed into my custom object?

It’s not working for me – can you do this?

Edit:

This is my entire controller class:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Mvc;
using Tradeshow.Models;

namespace Tradeshow.Controllers
{
    [Authorize]
    public class DashboardController : Controller
    {
        public ActionResult GetResponseStats(StatisticsRequest statsRequest)// string profileid, string analysis, string question, string answer, string omitheaders)
        {
            Tradeshow.Models.Mongo mongo = new Models.Mongo();
            // For top-level requests that don't specify the analysis, use the previously requested top-level analysis 
            if (statsRequest.IsTopLevelRequest)
            {
                if (statsRequest.Analysis == null || statsRequest.Analysis.Length == 0)
                {
                    statsRequest.Analysis = (String)Session["statsanalysistype"];
                }
                else
                {
                    Session["statsanalysistype"] = statsRequest.Analysis;
                }
            }
            string clientdatabasename = (String)Session["clientdatabasename"];
            Dashboard dashboard = mongo.BuildResponseDashboard(clientdatabasename,statsRequest);
            return PartialView("ProfileDashboard",dashboard);
        }
    }
}

This is my entire StatisticsRequest object:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;

namespace Tradeshow.Models
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Encapsulates the properties that make up a statistics request for generating one or more graphs and charts
    /// </summary>
    public class StatisticsRequest
    {
        public string Level { get; set; }
        public string Analysis { get; set; }
        public string ProfileId { get; set; }
        public string Question { get; set; }
        public string Answer { get; set; }
        public string TimespanFormat { get; set; }
        public string TimespanValue { get; set; }

        public bool OmitHeaders
        {
            get
            {
                bool rc = false;

                if (String.Compare(Level, "profile", true) == 0) rc = true;

                return rc;
            }
        }

        public bool IsTopLevelRequest
        {
            get
            {
                bool rc = false;

                if (String.Compare(Level, "profile", true) == 0) rc = true;

                return rc;
            }
        }
    }
}

And the simplest test querystring (which fails) looks like this:

/Dashboard/GetResponseStats?profileid=123&unique=775765

A lot of the time only one or two of the parameters will be passed in the querystring.

Edit2

One other point – the StatisticsRequest object is just an arbitrary object, and has nothing to do with the View Model. I created the StatisticsRequest object purely to encapsulate the request, not to support any form-based views etc.

Answer 1

If you call UpdateModel(statsRequest); the default model binder will fill in the data using query string and forms data if the properties match by name. You can also call TryUpdateModel(statsRequest); which will work only if all of the properties can be updated.