Question

I’m writing my first ASP.NET MVC application and there is one big problem for me. I want to make a control which will represent a form, but when I try to generate labels and textboxes it returns to me empty page.

So, this is my model file (MyModel.cs):

namespace MyNamespace.Models
{
  public class MyModel
  {
    [Required(ErrorMessage = "You have to fill this field")]
    [DisplayName("Input name")]
    public string Name{ get; set; }
  }
}

This is MyFormControlView.ascx file with my control:

<%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl<MyNamespace.Models.MyModel>"%>
<div>
    <%
        using (Html.BeginForm())
        {
            Html.LabelFor(m => m.Name);
            Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.Name);
            Html.ValidationMessageFor(m => m.Name);
        }
    %>
</div>

And this is my Index.aspx file where I render the control:

<%@ Page Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Main.Master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<System.Collections.IEnumerable>" %>

<asp:Content runat="server" ID="MainContent" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent">
This is my control test!
<%Html.RenderPartial("MyFormControlView", new MyNamespace.Models.MyModel { Name = "MyTestName"}); %>
</asp:Content>

So, when I run my application the result is lonely caption: “This is my control test!” and there are no label or textbox on the generated page.
If I inspect the source code of the generated page I can see my <div> block, but it’s inner text is empty.

Answer 1

These methods return strings with the generated HTML code.
You aren’t doing anything with their return values.

You need to print the return values on the page using the @ sign:

<%= Html.LabelFor(m => m.Name) %>

Note that since these aren’t statements, there shouldn’t be a ;. In your example, the ; is harmless (it gets parsed as an empty C# statement); had it been inside of an HTML tag, it would have printed a ; to the HTML source.